LOS ANGELES — For more than two decades, the low rent on Marina Maalouf’s apartment in a blocky affordable housing development in Los Angeles’ Chinatown was a saving grace for her family, including a granddaughter who has autism.

But that grace had an expiration date. For Maalouf and her family it arrived in 2020.

The landlord, no longer legally obligated to keep the building affordable, raised rent from $1,100 a month to $2,660 in 2021 — out of reach for Maalouf and her family. Maalouf’s nights are haunted by fears that her yearslong eviction battle will end in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor or worse.

While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units like Maalouf’s across the U.S. could be yanked out from under them in the next five years.

It leaves low-income tenants caught facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a twofold rent increase or more, or faced with a housing market in which costs can easily eat half a paycheck.

Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, a federal program begun in 1986 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low. It has pumped out 3.6 million units since then and boasts over half of all federally supported low-income housing nationwide.

“It’s the lifeblood of affordable housing development,” said Brian Rossbert, who runs Housing Colorado, an organization advocating for affordable homes.

That lifeblood isn’t strictly red or blue. By combining social benefits with tax breaks and private ownership, LIHTC has enjoyed bipartisan support. Its expansion is central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ plan to build 3 million homes.

The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for 30 years. For LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.

Not all units that expire out of LIHTC become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York.

Local governments and nonprofits can purchase expiring apartments, new tax credits can be applied that extend the affordability or, as in Maalouf’s case, tenants can organize to try to force action from landlords and city officials.

Those options face challenges. While new tax credits can reup a lapsing LIHTC property, they are limited, doled out to states by the Internal Revenue Service based on population. It’s also a tall order for local governments and nonprofits to shell out enough money to purchase and keep expiring developments affordable. And there is little aggregated data on exactly when LIHTC units will lose their affordability, making it difficult for policymakers and activists to fully prepare.

There also is less of a political incentive to preserve the units.

“Politically, you’re rewarded for ... a ribbon-cutting,” said Vicki Been, a New York University professor who was NYC’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development. “You’re not rewarded for ... making sure that you’re not losing a single affordable housing unit.”