It’s firmly established that quality affordable housing goes well beyond “bricks and mortar.” What’s less clear are viable options for financing programs that improve opportunities for working families.
One of the primary strategies outlined in Illinois’
first-ever comprehensive housing plan, “Building for Success,” is to align the
efforts of all entities that fund and administer affordable housing development,
including state departments, local and federal governments, nonprofits, business
leaders, and financial institutions. Coordinating the many layers of
administration and funding for workforce housing development is certain to make
it easier for developers to get the housing built and renovated for the people
who need it most, particularly low-income families, seniors, people with
disabilities, and homeless people who live in job-rich areas near public
transportation. Toward this end, the Illinois Housing Development Authority
(IHDA) is already working with other state departments such as the Dept. of
Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Dept. of Children and Family Services, and
Dept. of Human Services to coordinate funding of
housing and services for these people.
This new policy has raised many
questions for developers, who are charged with providing much more for their
residents than four walls and a roof. Before the foundation can be laid,
multi-family housing proposals must meet many demands, including obtaining
community acceptance from reluctant neighbors and public officials; meeting
restrictive building and zoning codes; and coordinating multiple layers of
financing. In addition to overcoming these challenges, developers increasingly
must plan, budget and coordinate an array of supportive services for the
families and individuals who will call the community home.
Developers face
manyquestions when trying to accomplish this goal: What after-school
programs, financial literacy classes, or referral networks are available to
support residents as they attain self-sufficiency? What types of services are
necessary? Which of those services should be provided onsite and which off-site?
Who will provide those services?
And, most vexing of all, is the
question of how to pay for these services.
To realize answers to all of
these question, on April 31, 2005, The Enterprise Foundation
and
Neighborhood Reinvestment convened the symposium “Resident Services: Linking
Affordable Housing and Opportunities for Families,” in
Washington
,
D.C.
At the conference, 100 nationwide housing
experts gathered to concentrate on four main questions:
- How to structure housing financing to support resident
services in multi-family developments?
- How to underwrite the service package?
- What is the return on the investment and what outcomes
can be achieved?
- How
to leverage and attract resources beyond housing dollars to ensure a
sustainable funding model?
For summaries of the symposium agenda and its outcomes,
click here
.
Symposium participants focused on the “resident services coordinator,” or
RSC, model as a viable solution for affordable multi-family developments. The
RSC model is a “third way” that falls somewhere between the labor-intensive and
often costly “supporting housing” model (generally used for special needs
populations, such as ex-offenders or individuals who are formerly homeless or
have mental health challenges) and the informal “ad hoc” model of referring
families to community organizations and public agencies.
RSCs are individuals who work for
the development and link residents to services that allow them to achieve
self-sufficiency. Their role is complex: they must assess the needs of different
residents, connect families to available resources, and help them manage
personal crises, without assuming a “case management” level of responsibility.
Also, RSCs typically bring services onsite and engage in fundraising activities.
As explored in a recent “Building Successful Mixed-Income Communities” forum,
co-sponsored by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the
Metropolitan Planning Council, in order to achieve success, service providers
must coordinate their work with both the property management and governance
structures at the development. RSCs do this, benefiting not only the families
receiving services, but also the development itself (by reducing turnover rates,
preventing evictions, and easing the work of property managers) and the
surrounding community (by supporting a well-served, well-maintained property).
It’s notable that in Chicago, the Service Connector program for families affected by the Chicago
Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation is taking an approach similar to the
RSC model. The program, managed by the Chicago Dept. of Human Services, aims to
help about 11,000 families who live in public housing and use Housing Choice
Vouchers reach self-sufficiency.
Participants at the D.C. symposium discussed a number of
approaches for funding RSCs in an era of severe decline in federal resources for low-income housing and
supportive services, such as cuts that President George W. Bush has proposed for
the FY2006 U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development budget. One of the most
innovative ways to fund RSCs proposed by symposium attendants is to incorporate
the cost into a development’s operating budget at a rate of $300-400 per family
per year. This idea, nevertheless, faces its own difficulties. For example,
although many states encourage developers to include services in proposals for
federal low-income housing tax credits, only a few states allow developers to
underwrite services through their operating budgets or provide grants for this
purpose. To learn more about funding challenges and strategies, click here
.
More information on RSCs is available at the American Association of
Service Coordinators
Web site.