About Affordable Forever — Affordable Forever

Why this exists

The project grew out of the effort to preserve 63 Tiffany Place, a 70-unit Brooklyn building with LIHTC history. That fight exposed a larger problem: the information tenants need is fragmented across tax-credit records, regulatory agreements, financing programs, ownership documents and agencies — while preservation decisions can start years before tenants realize anything is changing.

The first question was simple: When does the affordability end? The deeper work showed that the answer is rarely one date. LIHTC can overlap with other subsidies, tax benefits, rent regulation and later preservation agreements. The real challenge is knowing the complete protection picture early enough to do something with it.

LIHTC is the first major focus because it is where this project has direct experience, usable national data and an urgent preservation problem. But LIHTC is not the definition of Affordable Forever. The larger proposition is that publicly created affordability should not be a wasting asset.

Read why I built Affordable Forever →

See the 63 Tiffany campaign →

What Affordable Forever does

Early warningFind LIHTC properties and preservation-screening signals before a crisis — then expand the preservation lens as reliable data becomes available for other programs.

Tenant organizingTurn an address search into a path toward neighbors acting together before a sale, expiration or preservation deadline.

ResearchBuild serious reports, policy briefs, maps and verified property dossiers from transparent sources.

AdvocacyShow policymakers the preservation picture in their own districts and connect evidence to concrete action.

The idea is not “a map of expiring LIHTC buildings.”

The map is the beginning. The larger project is to connect data → documents → organizing → policy → preservation. LIHTC gives us a place to build and test that infrastructure. The North Star is broader: once the public creates an affordable home, preserve the affordability permanently and reinvest in the physical building when it needs new capital.

The North Star

Affordable Forever is not asking only how to extend an affordability clock. It is asking what housing policy would look like if we started from the principle that the affordable home itself should endure.

Permanent means permanent.

Thirty, forty or sixty years can all be meaningful improvements over shorter terms. They are still temporary. When public resources create or preserve affordable housing, permanent affordability should be part of the public return.

Reinvest, don't repurchase.

Buildings wear out and require new capital. Affordability should not. Reinvest in roofs, elevators, boilers, accessibility and apartments without repeatedly buying back the affordability covenant at a later market value.

Preserve first — then build.

New housing matters, but a serious housing plan must count the affordable homes it loses as well as the homes it creates. Preservation belongs at the beginning of housing strategy.

Tenant power before crisis.

People need information, organizing capacity, purchase opportunities, qualified partners and capital before ownership or affordability decisions become irreversible.

How we handle facts

Affordable Forever distinguishes a database signal from enriched research and from a verified legal fact. Changing laws, bill status, agency term sheets and officeholders are checked against current primary sources before they are used as current guidance. Older reports remain valuable for history and ideas, but their present-tense claims are reverified.

Privacy matters to organizing.

Public property research

Building addresses, subsidy records, district geography and public regulatory documents can belong in public research tools when the source permits it.

Private tenant information

Names, emails, phone numbers, meeting attendance, organizer notes and campaign strategy should not be published in property files. Sensitive organizing work belongs in private systems, not the public registry.

Get in touch

If you live in a LIHTC building, want to organize, work on affordable-housing preservation, have a correction/source, are a reporter, or work in a public office: affordableforeverinitiative@gmail.com.