Fans of rent control cheered yesterday when the Supreme Court declined to take up a case challenging New York’s rent-stabilization laws. Yet killing the rent laws would be the best way to get us back to broadly affordable housing.

In March, Manhattan rents blew past their 2007 high: The average rent (excluding rent-stabilized apartments) is now $3,418. This is a real crisis; people can’t find or are being driven from their homes.

This, when the local economy is far from booming. As The Post recently reported, the city’s overall unemployment rate now stands at 10.2 percent. The rate in Manhattan, 8.5 percent, is still nearly double the 2007 level.

That means housing demand should be relatively weak, so the problem is supply. Indeed, only 2,229 apartments are slated to enter the Manhattan market this year — a third off the average of the last seven years.

Why are so few apartment buildings being built if rents are so high?

The city has a host of laws that make construction more expensive, but the rent laws are the worst.

Tenants living in buildings built before 1974 (and often their children) must be given a never-ending series of lease renewals at the “legal” rents. That means these older buildings can’t be demolished and replaced with modern high rises, because there’s no way to evict the protected tenants.

That’s why the city’s streetscape is still littered with century-old tenements — low-rise “walk ups” with outdoor fire escapes. In a free market, developers would assemble and then demolish several adjacent tenements, and build a modern structure with hundreds of apartments to replace those lost.

Thanks to the rent laws, even a single protected tenant can block a major development. They can even bar development of vacant land — if the open area is a green space used by nearby rent-stabilized tenants, it may be considered a protected amenity the landlord can’t take away.

The result: Rent laws have been effective in limiting the supply of the city’s housing stock, and in consequence have had the opposite effect on overall rent levels.

That is, they protect a lucky few — while leaving everyone else, especially newcomers, high and dry.

Yes, it’s possible to make sure Manhattan can still house a middle class without causing these sky-high rents.

For example, we could allow a developer to evict rent-stabilized tenants provided he had approved plans (and financing) for a new high rise, with some of the new apartments (more than those lost) committed to enter the rent-stabilization system.

Of course, the existing tenants would have to be displaced (at least temporarily) — but the law could give them first dibs on the new rent-stabilized apartments.

That wouldn’t be popular with rent-stabilized tenants, but it would enhance and modernize the city’s stock of affordable housing, while over time relieving the terrible shortage and surging rents we’re now seeing.

(The “luxury decontrol” provisions in the rent laws don’t do the trick: So long as a building has even one rent-stabilized tenant left, it can’t be razed to make way for a modern structure.)

In 1974, the Legislature declared that New York City was suffering a housing emergency and enlarged the class of buildings subject to the rent laws. But the 38-year-long “emergency” has only grown worse.

Most would-be renters have great difficulty finding an apartment — the vacancy rate is only 1 percent — and once they do, now face prohibitive rents: $1,953 for studios; $2,747 for one-bedrooms; $3,865 for two-bedrooms; and $5,107 for three-bedrooms.

Some crowd in with extra roommates; others are forced out of their homes — often to the outer boroughs — when presented with renewal leases they can’t afford.

This is terribly unfair, especially considering that rent stabilization is not means-tested. A millionaire occupying a rent-stabilized apartment with a rent below $2,500 a month gets the same protection as someone on welfare. The status quo also robs city government of millions in tax revenues it would derive from new rental buildings.

So, while the Supreme Court isn’t rescuing us from the mess we’ve made of our housing market, the alarm bell of surging rents despite high unemployment should wake us up. New York City simply can’t go on promoting affordable housing by granting absurd privileges to long-term tenants.

Stephen B. Meister, a partner at Meister, Seelig & Fein LLP, litigates real-estate cases, including some involving rent stabilization.