07/20/2026
Written Testimony following the 7/15/2026 City Council Finance Committee joint Hearing with the Housing Committee on: “Financial Tools for Maintaining the Affordability of Mitchell-Lama Housing”
My name is Jay Hauben. I am a cooperator and Board Treasurer at the RNA House, a 207 unit M-L co-op in Manhattan. I thank you for allowing the public to submit written testimony after this significant hearing.
First, a story of good public policy
As you know, the Mitchell-Lama (M-L) program was created by the Limited Profit Housing Companies Law passed by the legislature in 1955. Now as amended. It is Art II of the Private Housing Finance Law, consolidated in 1961. The 1955 law addressed two pressing problems: the post WWII housing shortage (likely worse than today) which was causing constant rent increases, coupled with the Federal government's subsidizing white working class flight to the all white suburbs. The law provided for government supported financing of the cost of developing M-L projects by the sale of 40 or 50-year City and State bonds and by federal HUD loans. The State or municipalities financed 90% of the project costs with low interest rates that made possible reduced rents or carrying charges. The incoming cooperators’ equity collectively covered 10% of the development cost, allowing for the original share buy-in cost to be low. In addition the law allowed municipalities to grant tax abatements ranging between 40 and 100%, allowing for low initial rents and carrying charges.
The long term stable housing that the M-L law thus created served a public purpose—that of allowing New York low and moderate income workers to live in the city where they worked and allowing neighborhoods to be diverse and to grow and flourish. The not-for-profit nature of Mitchell-Lama co-ops and rentals ensured ongoing affordability for those in NY’s working-class who were able to get a unit. The 1955 Mitchell-Lama law had no provision for the owners of rental buildings or the owners of shares to buy out of the program (referred to as "dissolving the housing company" or "going private."). To the contrary, one of the eight limitations explicitly specified in the law was that the housing company rental or co-op could not voluntarily dissolve. Amendments to the 1955 law eventually allowed for privatization of co-ops and rentals
The 1955 law was good public policy providing the legal framework and adequate financial help for the development of housing affordable by low and moderate income New Yorkers, an example of a social housing policy originally expected to continue in perpetuity. Up until 1974, the M-L program provided about 150,000 units of co-op and rental housing in NYC and throughout the state. Many of the units are still in the program and deeply or relatively affordable for working people. Many of the projects are also significantly diverse due to the publicly advertised, random-draw lottery waiting list system.
What is the Problem? Why this hearing?
We live in a society where home ownership and making profit are pushed as the norm. M-L co-ops are outside that norm. While M-L co-op share ownership is a form of collective home ownership, Mitchell-Lama shares are not owned as an investment or for a profit or for the generation of wealth. Their ownership is part of a system of mandatory resale of the shares back to the co-op upon leaving, returning to the departing cooperators or their heirs only what they paid in and then offering of the shares at that price to the next on the publically advertised, random-draw lottery waiting list. This system has been ensuring long time affordability but also availability to the full diversity of low and moderate income New Yorker and to the next generation and retirees.
The Mitchell-Lama program is an example of social housing. Sam Stein of the Community Services Society wrote in 2022:
By social housing, we mean housing in the public domain, operated, regulated and managed through a combination of government, non-profit and resident ownership. Its three key features are: deep affordability (or promoting social equality); decommodification (or insulating housing from market forces); and democratic management (or enabling residents to exercise control over their housing).
That is a key value for NYC. M-L housing is a way to house NYC‘s low and moderate income workers and retirees at rents they can afford, protected from the real estate market, in decent apartments in which they have a say in the governance available equally to the diversity of NYC people.
The problem is not that 37 developments are in deep distress and face 30% or more rent increases. That is the symptom of the problem. The problem is social housing needs strong financial support from its government partners The Mitchell-Lama program needs more money than it has been getting. A major challenge is to create a permanent funding streamline addition to monthly rent and carrying charges. The corporate and wealthier sections of society should be asked to help keep working people decently housed in the city where they work.
The Mitchell-Lama program was created by an initiative from Mayor Wagner and good State legislation in 1955. The Mitchell-Lama activist community from co-ops and rentals will work with the Mayor, the Governor, City Council and the Legislature to meet the challenges to the Mitchell Lama program including supporting legislation that creates additional funding streams.
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Appendix
Mitchell-Lama co-ops are an important example of "social housing." The three main characteristics of true social housing are that they are democratically run, are strictly not-for-profit (decommodified) and that they are deeply affordable by the people who live in them. M-L co-ops meet all three characteristics. For example, M-L co-ops are required to have annual elections of Board Members and the law has other protections for cooperator participation. Departing cooperators get no profit. They get back what they put in. And, with government financial and oversight help they stay deeply affordable by low and moderate income workers and retires
The good government policy was to make a law that recognized the need for adequate financial resources and subsidies, that provided oversight and that built in a mechanism to insure true diversity, which takes the form of a non discriminatory waiting list process based on lotteries and random drawing of names.
======================================================== Submitted 7/18/2026 Jay Hauben
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