Many buildings in the US are nominally owned by shell companies. Tenants who want to complain about mistreatment can't report the landlord's address, as required, because it is secret. The New York State legislature has passed a bill requiring these shell companies to hand over crucial information to the public, such as who owns them.

Billionaires are lobbying the governor, whose progressive commitments are rather weak, not to sign it.

I suggest approaching this with a somewhat different law: to require every company that directly or indirectly owns a building to hand over all the crucial information about its ownership. If an building-owning company refuses to do this, the punishment should be seizure of the building.

These billionaires and exploiters deserve no clemency or comfort when they try to screw their tenants.