Rent control was an emergency wartime measure which, with important modifications, was still with us five decades later. Tales of rich people paying $200 a month for seven-room apartments on Central Park West set ordinary New Yorkers' teeth on edge; Mr. Koch famously, while Mayor, refused to give up his rent-controlled apartment in Greenwich Village. Host and guests take us, as lucidly as the subject permits, through issues such as when "luxury decontrol" kicks in (removing controls when a person's income and rent reach a certain level), who may inherit a rent-controlled apartment, and what protections ought to be given the poor--although they don't spell out, for the benefit of non-New Yorkers, points such as the difference between "rent control" and "rent stabilization," and the fact that it is the State legislature, not the City Council, that has authority to change the law. One sample from this spirited exchange: EK: "The poor people, overwhelmingly, are not really concerned [about the possibility of decontrol], because in the areas where poor people live, the rent's not going to go up appreciably, if at all. But on the Upper West Side,... I believe it will go up 100 per cent. And that would remove the middle class from this town, and that would be bad...." RS: "I've been hearing for the last forty years that if we don't do this or don't do that, we're going to lose the middle class. I state the middle class is still here."