The New York state legislature is calling for the revival of Mitchell-Lama, a program that built over 160,000 affordable housing units in the mid-20th century. It’s a welcome proposal — but we need bigger ambitions for social housing policy today.
The failure of Hudson Yards should be both an object lesson and an opportunity. Grotesque hyper-luxury, with taxpayer subsidy no less, has had its day. Let’s build for regular people. Hudson Yards could be a monument to what was, and could still be.
Labor organizations and tenants’ associations have a lot of common ground. After all, tenants are workers, and workers need housing. Decades ago, unions built affordable housing cooperatives for workers.
The labor movement once built 40,000 units of low-cost co-op apartments for working class New Yorkers. Those units are embers of a vision that once fired the labor movement: Build for human need, not for profit. Labor can build it again.
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