About
Champions, Not Vendors
PermAffai was formed by people who have run the programs, closed the transactions, and sat in the chair when the decision could not be deferred.
AI-augmented tools, systems and services to scale impact, not replace people.
The firm exists because of a gap we watched from the inside. Housing organizations are asked to steward assets in perpetuity using operating capacity that was scoped for a single grant cycle. Meanwhile the technology that could carry some of that weight arrives as a sales pitch rather than an assessment, and gets bought before anyone has written down how the organization actually works.
We work on both halves of that problem. Five lines of work: technical assistance, fractional leadership, development advisory, stewardship systems, and training. Some clients need one. Most need one and then another.
We build what clients actually need, not what we imagined they'd need. Our work is rooted in community wealth building, and nothing we design ships without the education that makes it usable by the people who depend on it.
Where our systems use AI, they are built on Claude, configured for each program and maintained by us. The judgment stays with people. The formula, the records and the calendar are what the machine is for.
Matthew Wyman
United States Marine Corps combat veteran. Over a decade in shared equity housing and permanent affordability, across public-sector program administration, nonprofit technical assistance, and direct CLT program development, alongside real estate investment experience of his own.
In local government, he administered a county down payment assistance program, training and supporting the partner lenders who delivered it and translating regulatory requirements into guidance staff could actually implement. When program rules changed, he rebuilt and delivered updated training inside forty-eight hours so that delivery never stopped. While in county government, he supported the establishment of the community land trust now serving Tallahassee and Leon County. It is the same work he now helps other jurisdictions do, from the other side of the table.
In consulting practice, he has taken a homeownership developer from intent to an operating community land trust program — policies and procedures, the shared equity ground lease and resale framework, compliance considerations, financial modeling, facilitation with public-sector partners, staff training, and community-facing education. The measure he works to is whether the client's team can run the program without him afterward.
He has published on the community land trust model, setting out the five components — shared governance, shared ownership, shared equity, subsidy retention, and stewardship — and arguing that shared governance is the one most often left out, and the one that does most to keep a program trusted over time.
Ahmed Martin
Affordable housing development finance consultant. He leads PermAffai's development advisory work.
He has structured multifamily transactions across several states using Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, tax-exempt bond financing, solar tax credits, and layered soft funding. He has built the financial models used for credit applications and to secure debt and equity, coordinated lenders, equity partners, ownership groups, and outside consultants through to closing.
He began in construction project management, overseeing multifamily new construction and rehabilitation.
As executive director of an affordable housing nonprofit serving extremely low-income residents, he led a multi-year restructuring: fiscal oversight and financial reporting, budgeting and liquidity protocols, segregation of duties, procurement reform, and technology modernization. The stability that work created later made the portfolio's conveyance possible.
Capacity, not dependency.
We measure an engagement by what the organization can do after we leave, not by what we handed over on the last day. That standard shapes how the work is built.
Staff participate in the assessment that produces their own roadmap, so the recommendations arrive already owned. Procedures are written in the language the people executing them actually use, not in ours. Where we hold an operating seat, we hold it with an explicit plan for handing it to someone else. Where we build a system, the organization owns it outright and can run it without us.
We also build on what the field has settled rather than starting from a blank page. The base instruments exist because the sector learned something expensive, and they work. What we add is what sits on top of them — and we check the result against lender guidebooks so the homes stay financeable, and against the requirements of whichever programs and funding sources apply, whether federal, state, local or philanthropic.
Nothing we build is meant to make us necessary.
A home that's affordable once is a transaction. A home that stays affordable is a legacy. We believe this work is best judged by who lives in a home in fifty years, not only by who's housed this quarter.
If that's the kind of work you're trying to do, we should talk.
No pitch. Bring the problem in whatever shape it's currently in, and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right ones for it.
For procurement and contracting.
- Legal entity
- PermAffai LLC, doing business as PermAffai
- Primary NAICS
- 541611 — Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services
- Secondary NAICS
- 541618 — Other Management Consulting Services
- Unique Entity ID
- CST5R5S55CH3
- Contracting authority
- Matthew Wyman, Founder & Principal — sole signatory
- Practice area
- National. Available for engagements coast to coast.