Redefining affordable housing preservation
Better neighborhoods, same neighbors
Since announcing Retrofit LA's selection for the Sustainable Communities Investment Accelerator (SCIA) in July 2025, we've been testing assumptions, listening closely, and refining our approach. This is the first in a monthly series sharing what we're learning as frameworks meet real buildings, real balance sheets, and real communities.
Redefining Affordable Housing Preservation
Preservation is often framed narrowly as preventing demolition or market-rate conversion. In practice, it means much more:
Stabilizing existing affordable multifamily assets within nonprofit portfolios
Ensuring long-term affordability, not just short-term compliance
Retrofitting buildings to extend useful life, control costs, improve resilience and insurability, and protect residents from extreme heat and poor air quality
Protecting local, nonprofit ownership
Buying time for the production of new units
Preserving our most important asset: community
Our guiding principle: Better neighborhoods, same neighbors.
A Deal as a System Event
Deals are more than transactions:
They are units of progress towards the shared priority
They are shaped by the context in which they take place. By looking at a deal, we can understand the dynamics at work in the enabling environment
They can be interventions in the enabling environment, in which we test or change new ways of working
If deals are implemented as system events that allow for testing, developing, and strengthening elements of the enabling environment, they make future deals more doable and generate new opportunities.
The enabling environment is strengthened through:
Advancing needed policies and regulations
Retooling practices and processes
Applying or combining resources or funding in new ways
Fostering formal and informal relationships that last beyond the deal
Creating forums and platforms for ongoing collaboration
Shifting narratives
Our near-term objective is to preserve a “Batch” of 10 properties totaling 380 units housing more than 1,000 residents. We’re intentionally treating this batch as a system-learning opportunity.
Despite completing significant decarbonization upgrades, all properties are losing money monthly, have limited ability to raise rents, and lack sufficient reserves for urgent non-energy rehabilitation needs.
We're exploring blended capital solutions, including 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, CRA-aligned grants and debt, CDFI financing, program-related investments, and philanthropic capital. Through this first "Deal," we aim to surface barriers embedded in policy, underwriting, and capital stacks—and make future preservation deals easier.
What We Will Produce in 2026
Retrofit LA will generate practical outputs through core collaborative efforts and strategic participation in aligned initiatives:
Case studies quantifying how energy upgrades, operating costs, capital structure, policy, and insurance interact in preservation deals
A Retrofit LA Field Guide distilling three years of partner experience into a streamlined, replicable process
Cross-sector advocacy focused on policy alignment, regulatory reform, and gap-filling capital
Our priority focus areas:
Funding & Capital Structure – developing a dedicated, blended-capital preservation fund
Health & Social Co-benefits – advancing shared metrics connecting preservation with resident health outcomes
Insurability – mapping how upgrades affect insurance availability and cost
Narrative & Storytelling – building communications to grow the network and sustain this work
Building Shared Infrastructure
Our ambition extends beyond a single "Deal." We envision Retrofit LA evolving into durable shared infrastructure that supports affordable housing providers across Los Angeles as they stabilize, decarbonize, and futureproof existing portfolios.
By grounding systems change in real transactions and real communities, Retrofit LA is demonstrating what it takes to preserve affordability at scale—not by displacing residents, but by ensuring they can stay.
More to come next month as this work continues.