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| Photo: Jackson Smith |
Resident services in affordable rental housing connect residents to available, quality services and benefits to help them maintain stability, advance their job skills, obtain better jobs and become financially independent. In addition, after-school programs provide safe havens and education support to help children succeed and stay in school. Without this housing-based support, it is daunting – and sometimes impossible – for parents working long hours in low-wage jobs to navigate the complex social services system of public and private agencies.
The National Resident Services Collaborative has completed its three-year Research and Policy Agenda. It contains recommendations for policy and systems change at the federal, state, local level and for affordable housing industry stakeholders.
Network Exchanges are opportunities to describe and highlight exciting, successful programs and models. We record these events archive them for your convenience. The archives include the WebEx recording of the class and any backup documentation.
The best practices and policy research developed by Enterprise in cooperation with nonprofit housing developers are reflected in a series of publications that are available electronically.
- Creating Opportunities for Families Through Resident Services: A Practitioner's Manual - A compendium of tools to help organizations design and implement effective resident services. It offers a recommended approach, tools for budgeting and tracking outcomes, how resident services can bolster the financial performance of the property and fundraising and almost 200 pages of hands-on resources that can be adapted for your programs in: employment; child care, after-school and youth programs; adult education and English as a second language; community safety and financial literacy
- More Than Roof and Walls: Why Resident Services are an Indispensable Part of Affordable Housing (PDF, 528K) – A paper for policymakers and funders that describes the current state of housing-based resident services and the challenges in financing them.
- State Leadership in Encouraging Family Housing Enriched with Resident Services: An Assessment of 2007 Housing Credit Allocation Policies (PDF, 789K) – This new publication reports on research on state policies in the allocation of Low Income Housing Tax Credits that impact housing-based, family resident services. Forty-four states provide incentives for family resident services.
- Program Costs and Staffing Benchmarks for Planning Resident Services for Families (PDF, 190K): This report describes research on the programs and budgets of seven nonprofit, affordable housing organizations that provide family resident services in their properties.
- Resident Services Section of the Enterprise Resource Database contains additional resources.
Enterprise has collaborated with NeighborWorks America to develop and deliver five days of training for resident services coordinators and managers through NeighborWorks America’s Training Institutes offered several times per year.
The Resident Services Tutorial describes how to determine what services would most benefit your residents, and then how to fund, staff, design, implement and measure the effectiveness of those services.
- Part One describes how to design a resident services program unique to your residents.
- Part Two offers hands-on tools to get started offering or partnering to offer services in: employment, English as a second language, child care or after-school care, safety and crime prevention and finally, financial literacy.
Each of these sections includes an overview along with multiple model documents to help you get started immediately with hands-on, helpful
tools. To locate a specific resource quickly, it also offers a complete listing of all resources in the resident
services tutorial.
Much work has been accomplished in the past several years with outcome measurement, policy research and development of best practices and training for designing and delivering family resident services. Although this hard work has been done through Enterprise Community Partners, NeighborWorks America and other members of the National Resident Services Collaborative, there is still more to be done. For example, because there is no consistent, dedicated funding source, funding for resident services coordination and on-site after-school and other services remains very difficult for nonprofit housing organizations to maintain.
Based on Enterprise’s experience, a reasonable estimate for housing-based services in typical affordable housing would be about $1,000 per unit annually. This would cover the cost of salary and benefits for a resident services coordinator, access to computers for residents and/or after-school and summer programs for children and youth. In larger developments, this may also support additional on-site programs.
- Recommended Resident Services Outcomes Measures (PDF, 21K). A list of 8 outcomes measures to help resident services coordinators measure the results of the programs they offer residents.
- Planning, Target Setting and Outcomes Tracking Chart Template (Word, 38K). This Word table allows you to plug in information surrounding the collection of outcomes for resident services programs you are offering. It includes 6 outcomes (after-school, youth engagement, adult education, job training, job placement, and other) but they can be replaced with outcomes of your choosing. This document helps you think through the definitions and information required to successfully measure your outcomes.
The Enterprise and Mercy Housing study demonstrates the positive impact of family resident services on property financial performance. The research conducted by Enterprise, in cooperation with Mercy Housing, found that family resident services helps reduce operational costs resulting from resident turnover, evictions and nonpayment of rent. Researchers looked at 36 properties comprising close to 1,800 units of
family housing.
AASC Online Families standardizes measures for resident services providers and allow you to communicate outcomes in the areas of:
- Education
- Employment
- Housing
- Finances
- Life skills development.
It was was developed by Pangea Foundation in collaboration with the American Association of Service Coordinators, Enterprise™ Community Partners, and NeighborWorks® America. More details on the Pangea website.
In partnership with the 13 members of the National Resident Services Collaborative and made possible with financial support from the Freddie Mac Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners and NeighborWorks America co-hosted a policy symposium on April 17 and 18, 2007 in Washington, DC to address solutions to the lack of sustainable funding for family resident services.
Affordable quality child care is critical to the functioning of any community. From our work with community and national partners, Enterprise has developed a range of resources for community-based organizations to develop or support home-based child care businesses and child care centers in their neighborhoods.
The Oregon Child Care Tax Credit (PDF, 520KB) describes the origins of a highly successful tax credit enacted in 2003, that provides new funding for child care operations and quality enhancements in Oregon. The document covers the inspiration, the rationale, the framing and advocacy leading to initial passage of the legislation in 2001, with the intent to discover whether child care could be viewed as an industry - rather than just a social service - and structured to encourage investment that supports quality. The report is useful to the child care industry and state and local governments looking for alternative approaches to their child care financing needs. Updated information on the current progress of the credit is also available.
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