Neither is fair, but both are unfair in different ways. Your preference for market distribution, as opposed to lottery distribution (which is what rent control essentially is) is largely an ideological one.
And only one of them makes it possible for both you and the person with more money than you to have an apartment.
And yet that is the phrase we use, because people do feel a sense of ownership about their living space even when legally they have no ownership. A lot of these policies come down to how much we want to back that feeling up with legal rights.
You can't be progressive and conservative at the same time! You can barely be progressive if you hold conservative view on one of the most important issues. You can only be centrist that way.
Can't speak for him, but if you believe a free market has the same housing results are as a centrally planned market, well, damn.