HUD Affordable Housing Explorer — LIHTC, Multifamily, Public Housing + Opportunity Zones

One unified property list across three HUD programs at once, with a designated Qualified Opportunity Zone flag computed by point-in-polygon. Keyless, straight from HUD's own eGIS ArcGIS services.

Program	What it is	Live count
LIHTC	Low-Income Housing Tax Credit properties	50,566
HUD_INSURED	FHA-insured multifamily properties	17,582
PUBLIC_HOUSING	Public housing developments	6,211
Opportunity Zones	Treasury-designated QOZ census tracts	8,765

Counts measured live on 2026-08-01 and re-measured on every run — see data_vintage.

What makes this different

• Three programs, one row shape. LIHTC, FHA-insured multifamily and public housing normally live in three incompatible datasets. Here they share a single schema, so a portfolio screen is one query.
• Nothing is asserted that was not checked. opportunity_zone is three-valued: true, false, or null when it could not be tested. Every row names which HUD layers answered (lihtc_status, hud_insured_status, public_housing_status) and whether the result set is complete (result_complete).
• Truncation is disclosed, not silent. Every row carries records_available_in_scope — the exact number of records your filter matched — next to records_returned and results_truncated.
• HUD republishes these layers annually. Before anything is billed, the run asserts each layer's name, its column set and its record count against values measured live, plus a positive canary and a negative control on the QOZ layer. If HUD swaps a layer for a different vintage, the run fails loudly instead of quietly answering from stale designations.

Who this is for

• Affordable-housing developers and syndicators — comparable LIHTC deals in a market, with allocation amount, credit type, bond financing, QCT/DDA basis boost and unit mix.
• CRE acquisition teams — FHA-insured multifamily with REAC inspection scores, loan maturity, watch-list and default flags.
• Housing policy and research — subsidised stock per state or city with resident demographics and occupancy.
• Opportunity Zone investors — properties inside designated QOZ tracts, with the tract GEOID and Treasury rural flag.
• AI agents — one call per state; three-valued flags and per-layer status so the agent can tell "no" from "not checked".

Example input

{
  "states": ["CO"],
  "programs": ["LIHTC", "HUD_INSURED", "PUBLIC_HOUSING"],
  "city": "",
  "minUnits": 0,
  "includeOpportunityZoneFlag": true,
  "onlyOpportunityZone": false,
  "maxResults": 500
}

city matches as a prefix, case-insensitively. minUnits and onlyOpportunityZone are applied after fetching, so the run pulls a buffer beyond maxResults when either is set.

Output — every field

The property

Field	Meaning
program	LIHTC, HUD_INSURED, or PUBLIC_HOUSING.
source_id	HUD's own identifier: LIHTC HUD_ID, FHA property ID, or public-housing development code.
property_name	Project or property name.
address, city, state, zip, county	Location as HUD publishes it.
standardized_address	HUD's USPS-standardized street address.
census_tract_geoid	11-digit census tract GEOID from HUD's own geocoding columns.
msa_name, cbsa_name	Metro area.
latitude, longitude	WGS84 coordinate, where HUD publishes one.
units_total	Total units.
units_low_income	Income-restricted / assisted units.
units_occupied, units_vacant, occupancy_pct	Occupancy detail.
unit_mix	Bedroom mix (LIHTC in counts, Public Housing in percentages).
year_placed_in_service	Year the property entered service.
owner_or_manager	Owner or management agent. HUD leaves the LIHTC COMPANY column empty for all 50,566 LIHTC properties nationwide, so this is populated on HUD Insured and Public Housing rows only — use contact_name for LIHTC.
contact_name, contact_phone, contact_email	Published contact for the property.
program_detail	Free-text program summary.

Opportunity Zone

Field	Meaning
opportunity_zone	Three-valued. true = inside a designated QOZ tract. false = tested against the loaded QOZ layer and outside one. null = NOT tested.
opportunity_zone_status	Why: ok, unavailable (the layer did not answer), no_polygons_returned, no_coordinate_published (HUD publishes no lat/lon for this property), or not_requested.
oz_tract_geoid	GEOID10 of the QOZ tract.
oz_is_rural	Treasury rural flag on that tract.

LIHTC detail

Field	Meaning
year_allocated	Year the tax credits were allocated (distinct from placed-in-service).
allocation_amount_usd	Annual credit allocation.
is_bond_financed	Tax-exempt bond financed, i.e. the 4% credit rather than the competitive 9%.
credit_type	HUD's credit-type code.
construction_type	New construction, acquisition and rehab, or both.
nonprofit_sponsor	A nonprofit is the project sponsor.
target_population	Family, Elderly, Disabled, Homeless.
in_qualified_census_tract	In a HUD Qualified Census Tract (30% basis boost).
in_difficult_development_area	In a HUD Difficult Development Area (30% basis boost).

HUD Insured Multifamily detail

Field	Meaning
reac_last_inspection_score	Most recent REAC physical-inspection score, 0-100. Below 60 triggers HUD enforcement.
reac_last_inspection_date	Date of that inspection.
has_section_8	Active Section 8 contract.
is_subsidized	Carries HUD subsidy.
is_section_202_811	Section 202 (elderly) or Section 811 (disabled).
is_in_default	The FHA-insured mortgage is in default or delinquent.
on_watch_list	HUD has placed the property on its watch list.
loan_maturity_date	Maturity of the insured mortgage.
original_loan_amount_usd	Original insured mortgage amount.
contract_expiration_date	When the primary HUD assistance contract expires — the date the affordability restriction can lapse. Populated on 4,903 of 17,582 properties.

Public Housing detail

Field	Meaning
pha_code	Public Housing Authority participant code.
pha_total_units	Total units that PHA operates.
scattered_site	A scattered-site development rather than a single building.

Residents

Field	Meaning
pct_elderly	Residents aged 62+.
pct_disabled	Residents reported with a disability.
pct_minority	Residents reported as a racial or ethnic minority.
avg_household_income_usd	Average annual household income.
avg_rent_per_month_usd	Average monthly tenant-paid rent.

Provenance — read these before trusting a result set

Field	Meaning
lihtc_status, hud_insured_status, public_housing_status	Per-layer outcome: ok, partial, unavailable, or null (not requested).
programs_queried	Every program this run should have consulted.
programs_ok	The ones that answered.
programs_failed	The ones that did not. null when all answered.
result_complete	true only when every requested layer answered.
records_available_in_scope	Exact count matching your state/city filter, before minUnits / onlyOpportunityZone and before maxResults.
records_returned	Rows actually returned.
results_truncated	true when fewer rows came back than matched the scope.
data_vintage	The record and column counts measured on each HUD layer at run time. A change between runs means HUD republished a layer.
checked_at	UTC ISO-8601 timestamp of the run.

Inputs that populate the sparser columns

Columns	Verified live input
contract_expiration_date	{"states":["NY"],"programs":["HUD_INSURED"],"maxResults":500} — HUD publishes it on 4,903 of 17,582 properties (281 in NY, 47 in CO).
reac_last_inspection_score, loan_maturity_date, has_section_8, contact_email	Any run including HUD_INSURED.
in_qualified_census_tract, allocation_amount_usd, unit_mix	Any run including LIHTC.
pha_code, units_occupied, scattered_site	Any run including PUBLIC_HOUSING.
programs_failed	Populated only when a HUD layer fails. null on a healthy run is the good outcome.

How it works

1. Live drift assertions run first, before anything billable. Each layer's name, column set and record count is checked against values measured on 2026-08-01, and the QOZ layer additionally gets a positive canary and a negative control (a state code that must match nothing — this catches a silently-ignored filter). Any failure fails the run and bills nothing.
2. Each program is queried separately with an exact returnCountOnly count so truncation can be disclosed, then paged.
3. The program groups are round-robin merged so a capped run stays representative of every program rather than being monopolised by LIHTC, which has the most rows.
4. Designated QOZ tract polygons for the selected states are loaded and each property is tested by point-in-polygon. If the layer did not answer, or HUD publishes no coordinate for a property, opportunity_zone is null.
5. Filters are applied, results capped, and the billing gate runs before anything is written. If every layer failed, or nothing matched, the run fails with a message naming the cause.

Use from an AI agent: quickstart

The smallest input that returns a real answer. Verified live on 2026-10-05: the run SUCCEEDED and returned 5 rows in about 10 seconds.

{
  "states": [
    "CO"
  ],
  "maxResults": 5
}

Call it through the hosted MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com?tools=malonestar/hud-affordable-housing-explorer) or straight over HTTP:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/malonestar~hud-affordable-housing-explorer/run-sync-get-dataset-items
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN
Content-Type: application/json

with the JSON above as the body. The response is a JSON array of dataset rows.

What comes back: one row per assisted property. Abbreviated first row from that run (the full row has 69 fields, all described in the output schema):

{
  "program": "LIHTC",
  "property_name": "MARYEL MANOR",
  "address": "12555 SHERIDAN",
  "city": "BROOMFIELD",
  "state": "CO",
  "units_total": 50,
  "units_low_income": 50,
  "opportunity_zone": false,
  "result_complete": true,
  "programs_failed": null
}

Read before you conclude anything: result_complete, programs_failed and results_truncated. opportunity_zone: null means unknown, not "not in a zone".

Input notes for agents

• states is required: 2-letter codes (["TX"]) or full state names. There is no default state; an omitted, empty or unrecognised value fails the run and bills nothing (before build 1.1.5 it silently searched Colorado).
• programs is any of LIHTC, HUD_INSURED, PUBLIC_HOUSING; city narrows within a state. maxResults defaults to 1,000.

Cost: $0.0060 per row at the Free-tier list price (paid plans get a discount), so the example above costs about $0.030. A run that cannot answer fails and bills no rows.

Use as an MCP tool

Available through mcp.apify.com. One call per state. An agent should treat opportunity_zone: null as unknown (never as "not in an Opportunity Zone"), and check result_complete before concluding a market has no assisted housing.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: one property row = one billed result. A failed run emits nothing and costs nothing beyond the platform's Actor-start event. Volume tiers apply automatically on paid Apify plans.

Was this useful?

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FAQ

Why is owner_or_manager empty on LIHTC rows? Because HUD leaves the COMPANY column empty for every one of the 50,566 LIHTC properties it publishes — verified live. contact_name and contact_phone carry the LIHTC allocation contact instead.

Why is opportunity_zone null on some rows? Because the property could not be tested — usually because HUD publishes no coordinate for it. Read opportunity_zone_status. A null is not a negative finding.

Why did the run fail instead of returning zero rows? Because a zero that comes from a failed layer, an over-tight filter or an outage is indistinguishable from a genuine "no such housing here". The failure message names the cause and nothing is billed.

How do I get everything in a state? Raise maxResults. Compare records_returned with records_available_in_scope to see what you are missing.

Is the Opportunity Zone flag legal advice? No. It is a point-in-polygon screen against HUD's published QOZ tract layer. Confirm with the tract's official designation before relying on it.

Related actors

• hud-qct-lihtc-boost-screener — Qualified Census Tract / DDA basis-boost check for an arbitrary coordinate.
• nyc-landlord-registry-lead-list, distressed-property-signal-stacker — owner contact and distress signals for NYC multifamily.
• fdic-sod-deposit-market-share-rollup — the lending market around a metro.

Telemetry

This actor can send one usage record per run to the publisher: the channel the run was started from (Console, API, MCP, scheduler, ...), a timestamp, the build number, a salted one-way hash of the account id (so repeat use can be counted without storing the id itself), and the NAMES of the input fields used. It never records input values, results or the account id, and it is used only to see how buyers reach the actor. It cannot slow the run by more than 3 seconds and can never affect your results or your bill.