Twenty-six U.S. states have fewer residents than the number of homes the country is short. Will Blodgett used that comparison in a Sept. 24 op-ed for Commercial Observer to give a national shortage a recognizable size.
Blodgett is the founder and CEO of Tredway, a national affordable and workforce housing investment and development firm. His op-ed argued for public-private partnership as the most practical way to protect and expand affordable housing, and much of it rests on specific numbers. Below are eight of them, taken from the piece and from Tredway's public record.
4.7 million
The size of the national housing gap, according to U.S. Chamber of Commerce figures Blodgett cited. The same source found that nearly a third of households are cost-burdened. Blodgett warned that if the trend continues, the effects will reach well past the rental market, since a stable home underpins a household's finances and health.
7 million
Roughly how many affordable rental homes have disappeared across the country since 2014, according to the 2026 report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Some left the affordable market when their affordability agreements ran out, and others fell away after years of underinvestment.
Blodgett's point is that each affordable home that leaves the market has to be replaced through the same slow, expensive construction process before the country makes any net progress. Preservation, he argued, moves faster and keeps residents where they already live. He was clear that new supply is still essential.
177,000
The approximate number of apartments operated by the New York City Housing Authority, where Blodgett spent about a year and a half, starting in 2009, as the first hire of then-chairman John B. Rhea. He later earned an MBA at MIT and joined Related Companies, where he learned the financing tools that underpin most affordable housing deals.
"While working at the New York City Housing Authority, the country's largest housing authority, I saw firsthand that operating roughly 177,000 apartments on a limited budget within a massive bureaucracy is extraordinarily difficult and there's no easy answer," he wrote.
He presented that as a structural problem. Housing authorities, in his account, are essential institutions working under constraints that make repairs and modernization hard to keep up with.
25%
The share of a project's cost that now has to be financed with tax-exempt bonds to qualify for the 4% low-income housing tax credit, down from 50%. Blodgett noted that the federal change is permanent.
In states like New York, Blodgett wrote, demand for tax-exempt bonds far exceeds the federal volume cap, so preservation deals compete with new construction for the same allocation. A lower threshold lets each allocation cover more projects. Blodgett urged policymakers to keep looking for ways to make that scarce resource go further.
"The reduction of the 50 percent test on the affordable housing tax credit was huge," he said in a recent interview.
30 or 40 years
How long affordability can be extended when public financing tools are combined with private capital, according to the op-ed. The usual combination is tax credits and bonds, often with local help such as tax abatements or payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements. A developer can use them to acquire an aging affordable property, renovate it and commit it to affordable rents for decades. At the center of most of those deals is the low-income housing tax credit, which Blodgett called "one of the most successful affordable housing programs in American history."
"No single program can solve the housing crisis alone," Blodgett wrote. "But, together, these tools demonstrate what is possible when public policy and private capital align around a common goal."
99 years
The real estate affordability commitment at Restore Housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where Tredway acquired 138 homes. The deal includes $10 million in capital improvements and a resident-services program with food and health services.
Ninety-nine years is well beyond the 30- and 40-year terms common in real estate preservation deals. It locks in affordability for several generations of residents.
1,917 and 3,428
The number of affordable homes Tredway acquired in 2025, and then in the first half of 2026. The 2025 total helped place Tredway 10th on Affordable Housing Finance's list of the most active developers in acquiring and preserving affordable housing.
Among those acquisitions, the Coney Island portfolio, with 1,096 affordable apartments, is being upgraded with electrical, plumbing, security and accessibility work. In Texas, a 16-property portfolio of more than 1,200 apartments came with more than $10 million in capital improvements and extended long-term affordability for all residents.
20,000
The number of real estate apartments Blodgett wrote that Tredway is on track to own by the end of 2026, across more than 35 states, "with the vast majority focused on preservation rather than ground-up development." The firm operates in 11 states today.
New real estate construction is part of the plan too. Alongside its preservation work, Tredway has more than 2,000 homes in active ground-up development, according to the firm's website.
