Will Blodgett

Will Blodgett
Will Blodgett
Born
💼 Occupation	Founder and CEO of Tredway,
👔 Employer	Tredway

Early Life

Will Blodgett is an American real estate executive, a lifelong entrepreneur, and the founder and chief executive officer of Tredway, a New York City–based national affordable and mixed-income housing investment and development firm. Since launching the company in 2021, Blodgett has built Tredway into one of the most active platforms in the United States focused on Section 8 preservation, mixed-income development, and mission-driven affordable housing at scale. By the end of 2026, Tredway is on track to own approximately 21,000 apartments across 36 states. Across his career — at The Related Companies, as a founding partner of Fairstead, and now at Tredway — Blodgett has led the acquisition and development of more than 40,000 units and $8 billion in real estate.

He is recognized as a leading voice in the affordable-housing industry and serves on the boards of several civic, cultural, and philanthropic organizations.

Early Life

Blodgett was raised in Chicago, where many of his closest childhood friends lived in the Chicago Housing Authority’s high-rise public housing. The displacement of those friends when the CHA’s high-rise developments were demolished became a formative experience that he has cited as the origin of his career-long focus on affordable-housing preservation. His family later moved to Laguna Beach, California, where Blodgett played high-school football.

Education

Blodgett attended Yale University, where he played football for the Yale Bulldogs. He later earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Career

Blodgett’s career in housing began on the operational side of government. He served as a Special Advisor to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) — the first hire under Chairman John B. Rhea, appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009 — helping run agency operations for approximately a year and a half. He then earned an MBA at MIT Sloan and joined The Related Companies, where he managed the acquisition, financing, and development of more than 4,500 affordable units for the firm’s Affordable Housing Group. There he developed expertise in the foundational financing tools of the affordable-housing industry, including the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), tax-exempt bond financing, and project-based Section 8 rental subsidies. In 2015, Blodgett became a founding partner of Fairstead, which he helped grow into a nationally recognized affordable-housing developer before launching Tredway.

Founding of Tredway (2021)

Blodgett founded Tredway in 2021 on the thesis that affordable housing is one of the most durable and impactful asset classes in American real estate, but that scaling it requires patient capital, deep operational expertise, and a willingness to engage in policy. Tredway is a vertically aligned platform combining institutional discipline with mission-driven outcomes. Blodgett describes the work as leveraging data, empathy, and technology to create affordable housing, strengthen communities, advance socioeconomic mobility, and deliver solid risk-adjusted returns.

The company is named for Alfred Tredway White (1846–1921), a Brooklyn philanthropist and pioneer of American “model tenement” housing. White built early multi-family buildings in Brooklyn that included private toilets in every unit and central courtyards designed for cross-ventilation, working from the conviction that one could “invest in the poor, not exploit the poor” while earning a modest 5% return. Blodgett has cited White as the inspiration for Tredway’s preservation-first model and its emphasis on healthy, dignified affordable housing.

Strategy and Portfolio

Tredway’s primary line of work is what Blodgett calls essential housing preservation — the acquisition, recapitalization, and rehabilitation of existing affordable housing at risk of being lost to market-rate conversion. The firm acquires these buildings, entrenches them in long-term affordability, and renovates them around the specific needs and input of residents and the local community. Its second line of work is the development of new mixed-income communities in markets where workforce families are increasingly priced out of stable housing.

Tredway operates with a deliberate local-partners model. Rather than running a single nationally uniform operating company, the firm partners with operators who have lived and worked in their communities for decades — an approach Blodgett describes as the cornerstone of how Tredway has scaled across 36 states without losing community-level care.

In 2025, Tredway acquired a portfolio of approximately 1,800 elderly affordable units in New Orleans, a transaction that preserved the housing portfolio of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The firm has since added daily food service, free wifi and cable, partnerships with healthcare providers, and on-site programming designed around aging in place with dignity and the reduction of senior isolation.

Resident Services

Tredway’s resident-services strategy emphasizes upward economic mobility and stability. The firm partners with Esusu, a financial-technology platform that reports on-time rent payments to consumer credit bureaus, allowing residents to build credit history through housing stability. Tredway also partners with Ounce of Care for resident mental and physical health programming and is building an in-house healthcare service for its elderly residents. In its senior buildings, the firm typically retrofits standard bathtubs into walk-in showers, installs dimmable lighting, and builds out community rooms with meal service, fitness facilities, and on-site health care; in its family communities, it runs before- and after-school programs and partners with daycare and tutoring providers.

Affordable Housing Policy and Advocacy

Blodgett has been a vocal advocate for federal and state policies that expand the supply of affordable housing in the United States. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition (AHTCC), the leading national trade organization advocating for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, and is a member of the National Leased Housing Association (NLHA), the leading advocacy group for project-based Section 8 preservation, and the New York State Association for Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH). He has cited the recent fixing of the 4% LIHTC rate and the reduction of the 50% bond-test threshold as meaningful federal wins, while arguing that HUD remains under-resourced relative to the scale of the country’s housing crisis. According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly half of American renter households are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing. In New York City, Blodgett is publicly engaged on local housing policy and has signaled interest in working with the Mamdani administration to advance housing-supply initiatives in the city Tredway calls home.

Philanthropy and Board Service

Blodgett serves on the boards of several civic, cultural, and philanthropic organizations:

Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) — Board of Directors. CMOM is building a new museum at 361 Central Park West (corner of 96th Street and Central Park West), with more than $200 million raised toward a $300 million capital goal; opening is expected in 2028.
American Institute for Stuttering (AIS) — board member; honored at the AIS Annual Gala in 2024. AIS is the leading U.S. provider of specialized stuttering therapy, with locations in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta and online services. Blodgett, who stutters, has spoken publicly about the “stuttering iceberg” — the visible disfluency above the surface and the underlying experiences of anxiety, isolation, and depression beneath it.
Westchester Youth Sports Empowerment (WYSE) — co-founder. WYSE opens access to organized youth sports for families who could not otherwise afford structured athletic programs and is establishing The WYSE Clubhouse in New Rochelle, a permanent youth-sports facility.
New Heights Youth — board member. New Heights uses basketball and academic support to help under-resourced New York City students reach college; alumni include former Knicks team captain Lance Thomas, who played at Duke.
Ethical Culture Fieldston School — board member.

Public Profile and Media Coverage

Blodgett has been featured across the affordable-housing trade press and major business publications. Commercial Observer published an extended profile in January 2026 titled “For Tredway’s Will Blodgett, Affordable Housing Is More Than Dollars and Cents,” and previously featured him in the publication’s 2024 Owners Magazine series. He was named to the Commercial Observer Power 100 in May 2026. Housing Finance covered the launch of Tredway in 2021. He has been quoted in coverage of LIHTC policy, Section 8 preservation, and New York City housing supply.

Recognition

2026 — Commercial Observer Power 100
2024 — Crain’s New York Business, Notable Real Estate Leaders
2024 — American Institute for Stuttering Annual Gala Honoree
Multiple industry recognitions for Tredway’s work in affordable-housing preservation and development

Personal Life

Blodgett lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and family. His wife is active with Keeping Girls in the Game, a nonprofit focused on retaining young women in youth sports. He co-founded Westchester Youth Sports Empowerment and remains active in the Yale football alumni community, where he mentors young athletes who have followed a path similar to his own.

References

Tredway company website — tredway.com
Personal website — willblodgett.com
American Institute for Stuttering — stutteringtreatment.org
Children’s Museum of Manhattan — cmom.org