Explainers

A tenant opportunity to purchase act (TOPA) is a policy that gives tenants some specific rights when their building goes up for sale. Learn what it covers and what it doesn’t in this video.

Almost every state in the U.S. requires that landlords maintain safe and livable residential units. This is often called a “warranty of habitability.” In some places, there are laws that specify exactly what those requirements are; in others, the standards are less defined.

The financial intricacies involved in building affordable housing can be difficult to understand. This explainer breaks down the foundational concepts.

We don’t often make a clear distinction between investors and speculators, which makes it harder to identify harmful behavior—and to find solutions for it.

For such a commonly used term, “affordable housing” means a lot of different things to different people and in different contexts.

This video and related articles explore a ballooning crisis endangering affordable housing, even as the need for it keeps growing.

This video breaks down the LIHTC rent-setting process, and shows the surprising number of people it doesn’t serve.

A: This term means different things to people in the health sector and the community development or organizing sectors, which can get confusing.

There’s a lot of momentum toward resident-controlled housing. Do you know the three major forms it takes?

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit is famously complex. We can’t exactly make it simple, but we’ve broken down the basics, especially those that residents of a LIHTC property might want to know, as clearly as possible.

LIHTC developers must follow strict affordability rules—and fulfill other promises—for at least 30 years. While industry insiders insist compliance rates are high, tenant advocates say noncompliance is a real problem.

Shelterforce has put together a short video to explain what “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” or AFFH, means, and the history of its enforcement.