Timothée Chalamet and Sonia Sotomayor don’t have much in common – except that they both grew up in New York City’s Mitchell-Lama housing. It’s one of the few programs that once provided working-class New Yorkers with something increasingly rare: a path to a perpetually affordable home in a city now defined by soaring rents, deepening inequality and displacement.

Chalamet grew up in Hell’s Kitchen’s Manhattan Plaza, a Mitchell-Lama rental development originally built for performing artists. Justice Sotomayor’s family moved from NYCHA public housing in the Bronx (since renamed in her honor) into Co-op City, the world’s largest housing cooperative and a flagship of the Mitchell-Lama homeownership program.

For decades, these developments helped make New York City a place where working-class families could build wealth and stability. But that’s no longer the case. Since the mid-1980s, building after building has opted out of the Mitchell-Lama program, eroding the city’s stock of affordable co-ops just as the city’s population has grown and housing costs have skyrocketed. Modifications made to the Mitchell-Lama requirements, supposedly to spur rental development under the program, inadvertently allowed co-ops to also eventually exit the program.

Politicians have spent years talking about affordable housing in New York, but too often that conversation has focused solely on rentals. Affordable homeownership has all but disappeared from the political conversation. If they’re serious about solving New York’s housing crisis, the city and state can’t keep pretending affordable housing begins and ends with rentals. The government needs to invest in homeownership.

Luckily, New York doesn’t have to start from scratch. Mitchell-Lama still exists in state law, and the model remains viable — if New York’s leaders are willing to fund it properly and update eligibility requirements. With the Democratic primary for mayor all but behind us, the city is poised for new leadership that recognizes housing as the defining issue of this generation.

At the state level, too, Gov. Kathy Hochul remains eager to prove she can deliver real housing solutions after her ambitious statewide Housing Compact was defeated in 2023. Upstate lawmakers blocked that effort with cries of “local control, not Hochul control.” Fine. Let’s give the governor a way to help the one place that is asking for her help: New York City. Mitchell-Lama 2.0 could be that solution.

The original Mitchell-Lama program, passed in 1955, built over 135,000 units of affordable rental and co-op housing. Income caps and sales restrictions ensured many of these developments housed teachers, postal workers, tradespeople and artists. The program even secured housing across generations for families that could otherwise never have afforded to stay in the city.

Unlike other housing programs, Mitchell-Lama co-ops provided equity (although limited), allowing families to build modest wealth while keeping apartments affordable for the next buyer should they wish to sell. Boosting home ownership is important in a city where only 32.5% of households own their homes – a much lower rate than the nationwide rate of 65%.

But the program’s affordability was not truly permanent. Buildings could “opt out” of the program after paying off their mortgages, leading to fewer affordable units. Thankfully, Albany has begun to recognize the problem. Earlier this year, the state enacted reforms to make it harder for projects to exit Mitchell-Lama, an important first step.

But changes should go further. It’s time to lock in permanent affordability with updated income eligibility to better reflect today’s housing needs and create funding streams that ensure new developments can be financially viable from the start.

Critics will say these projects “don’t pencil out.” It’s true that costs have risen dramatically since the 1950s; even projects still in the program face substantial increases in monthly costs. That’s exactly why the government must step in with real funding. Affordable homeownership does not happen on its own – across the country, it’s encouraged through mechanisms such as the mortgage interest deduction. In particularly high cost areas, like New York City, affordable homeownership also requires upfront subsidies, low-interest loans and favorable tax treatment to fill the gap between what low- and middle-income families can pay and what it costs to build in the city today.

To be sure, Mitchell-Lama 2.0 wouldn’t be a silver bullet. Many families do not want to buy, and New York still needs drastically more affordable rentals. But leaving affordable ownership off the table altogether is shortsighted. Homeownership, especially cooperative ownership, has historically been one of the few reliable ways for working families, particularly families of color, to build wealth and stability. Ignoring that option means consigning generations of New Yorkers to perpetual precarity.

Mitchell-Lama helped raise generations of New Yorkers. Some went on to the Supreme Court and the red carpet, but most simply were able to have decent, stable lives in the neighborhoods they loved. It’s time to make affordable homeownership more than just a memory of a better New York – it should also be its future.

This post was originally published on Next City.