1
Data signal
An administrative dataset reports or calculates something about a property: LIHTC history, an early-warning date, units, subsidy status, credit type or ownership category. Useful for screening — not automatically a legal conclusion.
Methodology & sources
What the data can tell us — and what it can't.
Affordable Forever is built to create urgency without manufacturing certainty. Public data can tell us where to look. A governing agreement, contract or recorded restriction is what can tell us what legally controls a particular building.
Three evidence levels
We do not want a map marker, a spreadsheet row and a recorded regulatory agreement to look equally authoritative. Every building dossier is designed around three distinct levels of evidence.
2
Enriched research
We join additional public records to the property: other subsidy programs, owner type, tax-benefit records, transactions, district geography or agency program data. Better context, but still subject to source limitations.
3
Verified legal fact
Affordable Forever has reviewed the controlling regulatory agreement, HAP contract, recorded restriction, agency document or other authoritative source and preserved the source and verification date.
The central rule: an approaching LIHTC screening year may not be the final legal expiration date. That is not a reason to ignore it. It is a reason to verify the documents and organize while there is still time to act.
Why our LIHTC date is an early-warning date
The National Housing Preservation Database documents that its LIHTC subsidy-end date is automatically assumed to be 30 years after the year the tax credit was placed in service. A project's actual affordability may run longer because of state or local requirements, later refinancing, resyndication, a separate regulatory agreement or another program. Some older projects can also have different statutory histories.
What we display
- LIHTC database status: Active, Inconclusive or Inactive.
- A projected / listed LIHTC early-warning year.
- Total property units where that is the available map field.
- Deeper source data only in organizer/research views.
What we do not infer
- That every unit in a LIHTC property is currently income restricted.
- That the early-warning year is the controlling legal expiration.
- That a property with no other federal subsidy identified has no other protection.
- That nonprofit ownership means a building is automatically safe.
For a property-specific answer, the goal is to find the actual extended-use/regulatory agreement and then check every overlapping protection. The site keeps the screening year separate from a verified governing date when a controlling source has been reviewed.
The NYC research-enrichment layer
For New York City organizer and legislative tools, Affordable Forever now adds a separate research layer built from the NHPD All Subsidies export. It is keyed to the same property IDs but never overwrites the raw map data.
2,587NYC LIHTC property records in the current enrichment extract
970records with a for-profit owner signal
460records with a nonprofit owner signal
1,135records where owner type remains unknown
889records with 4% credit identified
975records with 9% credit identified
108records showing both 4% and 9% history
615records where credit subtype remains unknown
These counts describe the coverage of this research extract; they are not a count of currently expiring buildings. A property can have multiple subsidy records across time, and ownership categories can be incomplete. The site therefore labels these as signals, not verified ownership/legal findings.
Other active federal signals
The enrichment layer can identify active records such as HOME, Section 8, HUD-insured financing or public-housing history when present in the source export. That forms one layer of the Affordability Protection Stack.
What it still misses
A federal preservation database cannot by itself give us every NYC or New York protection. 421-a, J-51/J-51R, 485-x, HPD/HDC agreements, HCR restrictions, rent stabilization and recorded covenants require additional sources and property-level verification.
Our main data and geography sources
NHPD
Core preservation screening data and the All Subsidies research export. Used as an early-warning and enrichment source, with its documented limitations preserved.
National Housing Preservation Database →HUD LIHTC Database
Federal LIHTC project-level data including address, units, placed-in-service year, credit type, construction type and other financing fields. This is an important independent/open federal research source as we strengthen the public data backbone.
HUD USER property data →NYC Council geography
Official NYC Department of City Planning Council district geography. The current district geography was checked against the current DCP release.
NYC Planning open data →NY legislative geography
U.S. Census Bureau TIGERweb current State Legislative District layers, using the January 1, 2025-vintage current geometry for New York.
Census TIGERweb →New York LIHTC rules
Current HCR/HFA Qualified Allocation Plans, term sheets and regulatory documents. We do not reduce “New York” to one affordability term because different financing pathways and layered agreements can impose different requirements.
HCR current QAPs →How a building becomes “verified”
The verified-property layer is intentionally separate from the bulk datasets. Raw source data remains untouched. When a building is researched, we record the fact, source, evidence level and verification date in a separate property research record.
01
Find the governing documents.Extended-use agreement, regulatory agreement, HAP contract, restrictive declaration, financing documents or current agency record.
02
Build the Protection Stack.Identify LIHTC plus Section 8, HOME, tax benefits, HCR/HPD/HDC restrictions, rent regulation, preservation financing and other layers.
03
Record the source, not just the conclusion.A verified date should link back to the authoritative document and show when the research was last checked.
04
Keep uncertainty visible.If ownership, expiration or protection status cannot be established, the correct result is “needs research,” not a guess.
Research and publication rules
Current beats convenient.
A 2016 report can be historically important without being a safe source for a 2026 program rule. Laws, QAPs, term sheets, bill status, officeholders and agency guidance are rechecked before present-tense use.
Primary sources carry the factual load.
Agency documents, statutes, official bill records, regulatory agreements and administrative datasets establish the factual backbone. Journalism and policy research add interpretation, context and questions.
One number needs one meaning.
“Total units in LIHTC properties” is not silently relabeled “affordable homes.” A screening-year cohort is not called an expiration cohort unless the governing dates have actually been verified.
Research should lead to action.
Reports should identify who has authority and what can be done: tenant organizing, purchase rights, preservation capital, notice, administrative reform or longer/permanent affordability.
Privacy and public research
Public property research and tenant-organizing data are different things. Building addresses, public subsidy records and public regulatory documents can appear in the research tools. Tenant names, phone numbers, emails, meeting attendance, organizer notes and campaign strategy do not belong in the public property files.
Read the contact-information policy →
Corrections are part of the methodology.
If a property record, source interpretation or explanation appears wrong, send the building/source and what you found to affordableforeverinitiative@gmail.com. The goal is not to defend a database error. The goal is to make the preservation picture more accurate.