The problem is he has such a sweet deal, he needs to use the apartment even though he would rather someone else have the apartment. I don't think the goal of rent control is to trap people in a city so they can't leave.
There aren't really that many high rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering in NY. And even when there are - how much land does it actually take up? At the Central Park Tower for example, 180 oligarchs can launder their money in a 200'x200' plot of land. You'll walk by it in less than a minute without really clocking it.
> 180 oligarchs can launder their money in a 200'x200'
The vertical size of that, however, could be used to house at least a thousand (or more) people.
This is mostly a manhattan problem, but there's a quite large volume of the market there (due to the valuations) that are ultra-high-end, which tends to be vacant units used for money laundering. Same issue in a lot of the larger cities.
Luxury taxes (on both the sale, and ongoing yearly costs) can help reduce the problem as well as provide tax income for the cities. It's easily a win/win.
There aren't really that many high rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering in NY. And even when there are - how much land does it actually take up? At the Central Park Tower for example, 180 oligarchs can launder their money in a 200'x200' plot of land. You'll walk by it in less than a minute without really clocking it.
I do also complain about airbnb units :)