And I am committed to creating spaces where people thrive
Hello. I'm Richard Kofi Boakye Bempong, but everyone calls me Kofi — and you can too.
I'm obsessed with cities and what makes them work. This site is a collection of my work and writing. I'm completing concurrent degrees in urban planning and public administration at Harvard this spring, and I'm actively looking for what's next.
A map of the affordable housing finance system for everyone who has sat in a room full of housing people and wondered whether they were the only one who felt lost.
March 2026 Housing PolicyThe LIHTC program has financed 3.5 million homes. But the small developers best positioned to close the remaining gap can't get through the door.
March 2026Decades before "placemaking" became a planning buzzword, Main Street programs were quietly rebuilding local economies from the ground up. The lessons still apply.
Coming SoonReal Estate Finance, Affordable housing underwriting, mixed-use development, and place-based strategy.
Full 4% LIHTC development pro forma for a 51-unit mixed-income affordable housing project in Mattapan, Boston. Eight interconnected worksheets covering credit pricing, multi-source capital stacking, and 23-year operating projections.
Full private equity acquisition model for a 240-unit Class B value-add apartment. 36-month levered DCF, dual-tranche debt, renovation pipeline, and two-tier GP/LP waterfall with promote.
Ground-up 90-unit luxury multifamily on a city-owned North End site, designed to facilitate residential-to-office conversion. Full development model with SOFR construction loan, lease-up engine, and three-tier GP/LP waterfall.
Full development and operating financial model for a 12-acre agro-hospitality resort in Bomfa, Ghana. Covers $2.9M capitalization, revenue waterfall across farm, lodging, and events, and a 10-year IRR analysis for equity investors.

I grew up in Accra, where I learned early that the built environment is never neutral. The neighborhood you're born into determines whether the floods reach your front door, whether you can get to school, whether your family has room to actually be together. That understanding has followed me across everything I've done since — founding a coworking space, repositioning a mixed-use building, underwriting affordable housing deals in Boston, and now finishing dual graduate degrees at Harvard.
I'm someone who moves between worlds that don't always talk to each other: finance and design, public purpose and private capital, West Africa and the American city. I find that interesting. I think the work gets better when you don't stay inside one of them.
I'm intellectually restless by nature. I read across fields, follow threads that don't obviously connect, and tend to stay with a question longer than is probably useful. That's what pulled me toward planning and housing finance, and it's what keeps pulling me toward the harder questions. Not just how to make a deal work. But what the deal is actually for.
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