If you want to understand New York’s housing future, don’t just look at what’s getting built, look at what’s falling apart.

The partial collapse at Mitchel Houses in the Bronx earlier this year was a failure of policy more than a failure of construction. NYCHA’s staggering $78 billion capital backlog represents half of the nation’s entire public housing capital need. These dollars represent real consequences for NYCHA residents, like a broken elevator, a collapsed ceiling, or heat that won’t turn on when the temperatures drop.

For decades, NYCHA has been treated like an isolated bureaucracy or a problem to deal with. As Zohran Mamdani takes the reins at City Hall, yes, he’s inheriting a housing crisis, but he also has an opportunity to embrace NYCHA as the central pillar of our housing ecosystem and the single most important piece of housing infrastructure in the nation. Without NYCHA, every other affordable housing policy and safeguard — preservation, production, vouchers, tax credits — is moot.

If this administration wants to succeed on affordable housing, it must start by forging a better future for NYCHA.

For too long,........

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