At Restore Housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, 138 affordable homes now carry a 99-year affordability commitment. Tredway, the national affordable and workforce housing investment and development firm that acquired the property, has committed $10 million to capital improvements there, along with a resident-services program that includes food and health services.
Deals like that rely on financing structures that rarely get explained outside the industry. In a Sept. 24 op-ed for Commercial Observer, Tredway founder and CEO Will Blodgett laid out how those structures work and argued that they are the most direct path to protecting the country’s shrinking supply of affordable homes. Below are the key questions his piece raises, and how he answers them.
Why focus on existing homes instead of building new ones?
Because the country keeps losing affordable housing faster than it can replace it. Blodgett cited the 2026 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, which found that roughly seven million affordable rental homes have disappeared nationwide since 2014. Some became market-rate when affordability agreements expired. Others were lost to underinvestment.
Replacing those homes means building new ones, which Blodgett described as expensive, slow, and often held up by permitting, financing challenges, and community opposition. He was explicit that new supply remains essential. His point is that preservation works on a faster timeline, keeps residents where they already live, and deserves the same urgency as new construction.
What is the low-income housing tax credit?
It’s the foundation of most affordable housing deals in the country. Blodgett called it “one of the most successful affordable housing programs in American history.”
The mechanics run in a chain. The federal government allocates tax credits to the states. States award those credits to developers for specific projects. Developers then sell the credits to private investors, who use them to reduce their tax bills. The money investors pay for the credits becomes equity in the project, which lowers the amount of debt the building has to carry and makes affordable rents possible.
“The most powerful tool that we have in America for affordable housing is the low-income housing tax credit,” Blodgett said in a recent interview. “Strengthening that is very important.”
Where do tax-exempt bonds come in?
They are the second major piece. State housing finance agencies issue tax-exempt bonds to finance affordable projects, and when those bonds are paired with what is known as the 4 percent credit, they create a structure well suited to preservation.
According to Blodgett, that combination allows a developer to acquire an existing affordable property, renovate it, recapitalize it, and extend its affordability for another 30 or 40 years. For residents, it means the building gets the repairs it needs and the rents stay within reach for decades.
Why are those bonds hard to get?
Because there aren’t enough of them. The federal government caps how much private-activity bond volume each state can issue. In many states, including New York, demand for tax-exempt bonds far exceeds that cap, Blodgett wrote. Preservation projects end up competing with new construction for the same limited pool, and fewer homes are saved each year than demand would support.
Has anything changed recently?
Yes. To qualify for the 4 percent credit, a project previously had to finance at least 50 percent of its eligible costs with tax-exempt bonds. Recent federal reforms permanently reduced that threshold to 25 percent, which lets each allocation of bonds support more projects.
Blodgett has called the change “huge,” and in the op-ed he urged policymakers to keep looking for ways to stretch scarce bond resources further.
What other tools matter?
State and local governments fill in the rest of the financing stack. Blodgett pointed to payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements, property tax abatements, grants, and subordinate financing programs. These often close the last funding gap in a preservation deal, the difference between a project that pencils out and one that doesn’t.
Project-based Section 8 is another piece. It attaches rental assistance to specific buildings, which gives lenders and investors confidence that the property can sustain itself over a long affordability period.
Does any single program solve the problem?
No, and Blodgett made that point directly. He wrote that no single program can solve the housing crisis on its own, and that the tools only show their full value when public policy and private capital are aimed at the same goal.
A typical preservation deal combines federal tax credits, state-issued bonds, local tax relief, and private equity, each with its own rules and timeline. Getting all of them to line up is the core skill of the business.
What does that look like in practice?
Tredway’s portfolio offers several examples. In New Orleans this year, the firm acquired more than 1,600 affordable homes across 10 properties in five parishes, all occupied by older residents and residents with disabilities, with a 40-year affordability commitment and tens of millions of dollars in resiliency and building-wide improvements.
In Texas, Tredway acquired a 16-property portfolio of more than 1,200 apartments this year, with more than $10 million in capital improvements and extended long-term affordability for all residents. At Parkside Place in New Rochelle, New York, acquired in 2025, the plan includes a $5.6 million renovation for 180 apartments serving households at 60 percent of area median income.
In Far Rockaway, Queens, the 602-apartment Ocean Park property came with a new regulatory agreement with the city’s housing preservation agency that brought every apartment into rent stabilization.
How big is Tredway’s bet on this model?
Substantial. Tredway was ranked the 10th most active developer in acquiring and preserving affordable housing in 2025 by Affordable Housing Finance. The firm acquired 1,917 affordable homes that year and another 3,428 by the end of June 2026. In the op-ed, Blodgett wrote that Tredway is on track to own approximately 20,000 apartments across more than 35 states by year’s end, with the vast majority focused on preservation.
What’s the bottom line?
The financing is technical, but its purpose is simple. Each tax credit sold, bond issued, and abatement granted is a way of keeping a specific building affordable for the families and seniors who live there. Blodgett’s argument is that the country already has the tools to do that at scale, and that the constraint is how much of them policymakers are willing to make available.
