Compile 32bit MIPS program on 64bit MIPS - possible?

Recently I came across a piece of great work by blahcat who created 64bit
MIPSEL debian image that runs on qemu.  See
https://blahcat.github.io/2017/07/14/building-a-debian-stretch-qemu-image-for-mipsel/

I tried to install multilib in the hope to compile 32bit mips code on this
64bit machine.  But it does not seem to work.

Does anybody know for sure whether this is a dead end or just a hiccup
which I should overcome?

Thanks.

Jun