Will Blodgett

Will Blodgett has a story to tell about public housing in America. Part biography, part pitch, it is also the story of how Tredway, founded in 2021 with a mission to preserve quality subsidized housing, has acquired 9,000 multifamily apartments.

Recent closings include 1,200 units in Texas and 1,800 in New Orleans. Blodgett said Tredway will buy 10,000 more, and be up and running in 30 states by the end of 2026.

Blodgett shares his typical approach to financing: “You pair Section 8 [a federal housing subsidy] with bonds and [tax] credits. Section 8 helps pay the rent, and the bonds and the credits help for the rehabilitation of the building.”

In New York, Tredway’s first ground-up project, a stately 266-unit building created with the support of city agencies using Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), is underway at 860 Concourse Village East in the Bronx. A year ago, the company bought the Ocean Park Apartments in Far Rockaway, Queens, in a deal that made all 602 apartments rent-stabilized, and it partnered to buy four affordable housing buildings in Coney Island, Brooklyn, with more than 1,000 apartments.

The alphabet soup of agencies and regulations that comes with doing business in subsidized housing requires a mission-driven mindset, which Blodgett credits to personal experience.

As a teen in Chicago, Blodgett said he witnessed friends uprooted from their homes in high-rises owned and ultimately demolished by the Chicago Housing Authority. Later as a young adviser to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), Blodgett became determined to notch a win, no matter how small, and bend the agency to his good will. It did not quite work.

Today he gives a world-weary laugh reflecting on his effort to get plasterers at NYCHA to also paint walls, but the experience provided a fast lesson in perseverance. After stints at two companies with large Section 8 portfolios, he has found that small mercies can matter most to tenants — and investors — from installing dimmer switches to hosting a daily meal service.

“To the vast majority of investors, the mission is very important to them,” Blodgett said. “They begin to feel very good about what they’re doing.”