The building was run under the state's Mitchell-Lama Housing Program, in which sponsors agreed to limit rents and their profit in exchange for low-cost financing and tax abatements for at least 20 years.

The rules that limit rents on 1.2 million apartments in the state are not one law but several.

Matt Schwartz, a vice president of Related Capital, said that all current low-income tenants would receive federal housing vouchers to limit rents to 30 percent of income.

Much of the controversy over the authority's waiver application has swirled around an important Federal regulation, known as the Brooke Amendment, that limits rents in public housing to a maximum of 30 percent of tenants' incomes.

The current laws limiting rents on more than one million apartments expire at midnight on June 15.

Under the program, which covered 140,000 city apartments in total, landlords agreed to limit rents for at least 20 years, in exchange for tax abatements and low-cost financing.

The leader of the State Senate has threatened to eliminate the laws limiting rents for roughly one million apartments beginning on June 16.

Congress passed a law limiting rents in certain areas for the purposes of controlling a deficit of housing due to returning veterans which took effect July 1, 1947.

Mr. Moinian designed the sizes of the units - 420 to 800 square feet - to limit rents.

The state laws that limit rents and rent increases on more than one million apartments, most of them in New York City, will expire on June 15.