Housing Forge is a modern, managed platform that fits your agency exactly and still works off the shelf: complete on day one, proven in statewide production, and flexible and expandable to your exact requirements. The existing housing software products on the market can do one or the other, but not both.
Handles your program requirements, no matter how complex. Six reasons agencies switch.
Housing Forge is built to be customized without losing your upgrade path. Legacy products offer configuration only, or a custom build that forks you off the core product and makes every future upgrade a project. Housing Forge is built so that custom code can be inserted at any point in the product as configuration, so any customization keeps you on the core product and on the standard release train.
Other systems silo each program and make applicants and staff repeat the same work for every application. Housing Forge runs public housing and voucher programs, state and federal, in one unified system: determinations that don’t depend on the program carry across every application a household has, while eligibility and qualification determinations stay program-specific.
You own all of your data, you can access all of it, and you can report on all of it. Pull any report you need without waiting on support: standardized and custom reports on every tracked field, including values the system computes but legacy reporting never shows you, available on demand.
Get the benefits of modern software with the confidence of proven housing workflows. Housing Forge is modern, purpose-built software with intelligent workflows, built and maintained on current technology by the engineers who wrote it. It is also the proven platform behind CHAMP, Massachusetts’ award-winning statewide housing portal, in production since 2018 with 99.99% uptime, SOC 2 compliant, and through multiple independent security audits with minimal findings.
Designed for your specific program rules: automated waitlist ranking that takes determinations into account, letters with conditional logic, automated handling of non-responsive applicants, offer rules baked into the workflow, and screening that applicants complete themselves. Where it helps, AI reads documents against your eligibility rules and transcribes paper applications, with every recommendation cited and confirmed by staff.
Housing Forge support is staffed by the engineers who built the platform. There is no escalation ladder: the person who answers can read the code, find the problem, and deploy the fix, and when you need something custom, the same team builds it. That team also brings you from the past to the future: we write custom extraction scripts for your legacy data, test the migration end to end, train your staff in person and online, and stage the rollout so nothing is lost and no one’s place in line changes.
Legacy software helps you manage housing. Housing Forge helps you manage the work.
| Capability | Housing Forge | Yardi | Emphasys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waitlist management with federal and local preferences | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Income determination and rent calculation (TTP, FMRs, payment standards, utility allowances) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Voucher lifecycle from issuance through lease-up, extensions, and terminations | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Submission-ready HUD 50058 records under current HUD rules | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tenant operations, work orders, and inspections | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Real-time dashboards and analytics | Yes | Yes, role-based dashboards | Limited: requires the Elite Insight Analytics add-on |
| Self-service reporting on all tracked data, including computed values | Yes | Limited: SSRS and a custom report writer, SQL skills needed | Limited: Report Wizard; analytics require an add-on |
| AI-assisted screening workflows, with cited sources confirmed by staff | Yes | Limited: AI assistant and income-verification add-ons; no cited-source screening | No AI-assisted screening |
| Compliance rules built into every workflow | Yes | Limited: HUD/PIC validation only | Limited: HUD/PIC validation only |
| Automated letters and notifications with conditional logic | Yes | Limited: template mail merge, no conditional logic | Limited: batch correspondence, no conditional logic |
| Modern online applicant portal with guided self-service | Yes | Limited: requires the RentCafe PHA add-on, licensed per unit | Limited: requires the MyHousing portal add-ons |
| Customizations that don’t break your upgrade path | Yes | Limited: case-by-case paid custom programming by change request; portal workflows can’t be customized | Limited: agency-specific custom builds; upgrades often break customizations or remove features |
| Multi-agency oversight tier (state, regional, local) | Yes | Not documented | Limited: statewide deployments, no oversight tier documented |
| Multilingual support for web portal, emails, letters, and printed forms | Yes | Limited: portal only | Limited: portal in English and Spanish plus a translation toolbar; letters not documented |
| Full dataset export and API included | Yes | Limited: per-interface API fees and the Data Connect add-on | Limited: APIs sold as add-ons; full export not documented |
| One unified platform across the full lifecycle | Yes | No: Voyager PHA base product with separately licensed PHA Suite modules | No: Elite modules with portal and mobile add-ons |
| Integrations engineered natively by the original developers | Yes | Limited: third-party interface partners or paid change requests | Limited: partner-built integrations, not natively integrated |
| One application across every agency on the platform | Yes | No: portal per agency | No: portal per agency |
| Screening work shared across programs, with program-specific rules kept separate | Yes | Limited: shared application data; screening reuse not documented | Not documented |
| Dry-run list pulls: preview who a pull selects before committing | Yes | Not documented | Not documented |
| Immutable audit snapshots at pull, offer, and archive | Yes | Limited: waitlist history and archiving, no snapshots | Not documented |
| Automated handling of non-responsive applicants and rejection letters | Yes | Limited: purges via the RentCafe PHA add-on; letters from templates | Not documented |
| Multiple vacancies from a single waitlist pull, with built-in offer sequencing | Yes | Not documented | Limited: automated offers; multi-vacancy sequencing not documented |
| Advocate and caseworker delegation with revocable scoped access | Yes | Limited: referral-agency portal, no scoped delegation | Not documented |
The core platform currently supports state public housing, state rental vouchers (mobile and project-based), alternative housing vouchers, and federal Housing Choice Vouchers. New program types can be configured or extended to fit your exact requirements, including workflow modifications or net new functionality.
We build it. The engineers who wrote the platform build the expansion into your installation on a normal delivery schedule, so your requirement becomes part of your platform rather than a feature request behind thousands of other agencies.
Engineers. Housing Forge support is staffed by the engineers, QA analysts, and designers who built the platform and work on it every day. There is no escalation ladder: the person who takes your request can read the code, reproduce the problem, and deploy the fix.
Yes. Complex programs are where the platform was proven: CHAMP runs layered preferences, multiple program types, and a state oversight tier across 240+ agencies. Anything the core doesn’t cover out of the box, our engineers extend, configuring and building on the platform to match your rules, workflows, and integrations exactly, delivered into your installation on a normal schedule and maintained with every platform update.
Yes, and this is where legacy products fall behind. When federal funding shifts, agencies restructure to stay solvent: public housing converts to Section 8 to make better use of available funding, developments move into LLC ownership structures, and program rules keep getting more complex. Systems built around a fixed program model can’t follow those changes. Housing Forge treats programs, ownership entities, and rules as configuration, and our engineers extend the platform as your rules and structure change, so your system keeps pace with your agency instead of holding it back.
It powers CHAMP, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ statewide housing program, and has since 2019: 240+ agencies, 700,000+ applications, 2,000+ staff users, and a state oversight tier above all of it. It has been through multiple independent security audits and an accessibility audit, and it won a Governor’s Award for Excellence in Public Service. We will connect you with references.
Staged rollout is how this was done at statewide scale. Local agencies in Massachusetts were trained and working in the system months before the applicant portal went public, which meant bugs and usability issues surfaced with a friendly audience first.
Yes. Printed applications are generated from the same templates as the online forms in seven languages, so the two remain in parity. Staff enter paper applications inside tracked data-entry sessions that preserve the paper form’s original date, and AI-assisted transcription pre-fills about 90 fields.
Housing Forge calculates income, deductions, and rent under current HUD rules, and generates submission-ready form HUD-50058 records directly from your tenant data.
Yes. Full versioned exports of your entire dataset to your own warehouse are a standard feature, included in every deployment.
It is designed for accessibility and has been through an accessibility audit: screen-reader tagged PDFs, ARIA-wired form validation, skip links, and visually-hidden equivalents wherever status is shown in color.
Housing Forge integrates with the finance system you are not replacing.
No.
An intro conversation, a demo of Housing Forge, a conversation about your specific needs.
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