Housing becomes ‘at risk’ either when its rent affordability restrictions expire, or because mismanagement or disinvestment cause the property to deteriorate and become unsafe, if not uninhabitable. However affordability is lost, communities are disrupted and poor people are displaced from their homes.

According to the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, in the decade from 1993 to 2003, 1.2 million affordable rental homes were lost from inventory. The same Joint Center study asserts that for every two affordable units lost, on average only one new unit is built, and as a result, there are now 5.4 million more low income households than there are affordable apartments available.

Preserving already-built housing is POAH's response to this challenge. Preservation is responsible.  It is good stewardship.  It is environmentally friendly.  It wastes less, and conserves more.  Preservation recognizes that these properties—the buildings, the land, the homes—represent an essential resource that should not be discarded thoughtlessly. Preservation is also realistic.  In many communities around the country, housing that was built 20 or 30 years ago is unlikely to be duplicated.  Most new affordable housing production is—for both zoning and financial reasons—on a significantly smaller scale than what was built previously. And preservation costs less.  The average cost to preserve an affordable rental home across the country is about $73,000, or about one half to one third the amount to build a new rental unit anywhere in the U.S. today.

Read about preservation policy.