It will be much easier to design an effective resident services program—and to gain support for it from key stakeholders—if you address the right issues from the start. First, you will need to know your residents and what their goals are. You will also need to align your services with your organization’s mission and leadership objectives. And, you’ll need to have appropriate space available on site or very close to the housing development. You’ll need to know local service providers, their offerings, policies and track records. You’ll have to define success and ways to measure the residents’ progress along the path to success. Then you’ll need to determine a budget for the services and your own staffing requirements, and finally staff the position. And all that is before you launch your program.
This section will help you move through this process with a thorough understanding of your options. You will even find here the results of research on staffing, program and other operating costs based on a survey of seven resident services programs. Use these resources, as many or as few as will serve you. Read them for background or adapt them to fit your specific needs. We hope they will pave your path to success.
1. Building Resident Services into the Housing Production Process: Use this document as a sample checklist to ensure that your organization does not overlook physical space needs and that you consider any property management issues related to occupancy when designing your resident services.
2. Designing and Establishing Space for Resident Services Programs: This document provides considerations and guidance for thinking through what space you will need, and how you could use it to your best advantage, when offering different types of resident programs.
3. Surveying Residents' Characteristics, Goals and Interests: For your resident services programs to succeed, it is imperative that you have a thorough understanding of your residents and their goals. The most efficient way to collect and analyze that information is through a resident survey. This document helps you think through designing your survey and analyzing your results.
4. Collecting and Analyzing Resident Data Using SurveyMonkey™: Luckily, there are a number of low-cost survey-creation tools available online to assist you with this process. This document describes the cost and capabilities of one such tool, SurveyMonkey.
5. Assessing Social Services for Resident Referrals: Whenever possible, resident services coordinators should refer residents to existing services in the community, if they are effective and accessible, rather than providing services directly. This document provides information on the issues that your organization should consider when choosing outside service providers, including how to assess providers’ effectiveness and how to build partnerships for resident referrals.
6. Setting Targets for Program Success: Success is more likely to occur if program managers set “doable but stretch” targets or desired outcomes for their efforts. Enterprise and our community-based partners have used the principles and processes developed by The Rensselaerville Institute to set targets for success for the adults, children and properties in our resident services initiatives. This document briefly outlines the steps we recommend, based on our experience during a three-year demonstration program.
7. Introduction to Microsoft® Excel-based Tool for Setting Targets for Program Success: Enterprise has developed a Microsoft Excel-based tool to help in planning and setting targets as well as providing a framework for reporting outcomes. This document explains the design and benefits of the tool. This Excel-based tool can be downloaded and customized. Download Tool. We also encourage you to provide feedback on the tool.
8. Systems for Tracking and Verifying Outcomes: It is important to develop systems for tracking the success of families and children receiving resident services to successfully manage your program and report results to stakeholders. This document explains the necessity for tracking outcomes and options for tracking them.
9. Budgeting, Staffing and Other Benchmarks from Seven Organizations Offering Resident Services: To provide guidance for resident services program planning, Enterprise supported research on the costs of operating a resident services program. The research included a review of the operations and budgets of seven nonprofit housing organizations with resident services programs. This document provides a helpful summary of their cost, staffing, and other investments in their programs.
10. Introduction to Microsoft® Excel-based Tool for Budgeting Resident Services Programs: To assist resident services coordinators and other program staff develop budgets, Enterprise has created a tool using Microsoft Excel that is easy to use and easy to customize to fit particular attributes of any program. This document explains the design and benefits of the tool, which is available in the online version of this manual. It also automates graphic illustrations of your budget information. This Excel-based tool can be downloaded and customized. Download Tool. We also encourage you to provide feedback on the tool.
13. Online Resources: The web site of the National Resident Services Collaborative is comprised of several national, regional and local community development organizations and established to improve and increase the delivery of resident services for families in affordable housing. Founding members are NeighborWorks America and Enterprise.
The web site of the NeighborWorks Learning Center Consortium is a demonstration program including 22 community-based nonprofit organizations operating active Learning Centers at their properties to delivery amenities and services to residents of affordable apartment properties.
The web site of the American Association of Service Coordinators (AASC) is a national non-profit organization representing service coordinators serving families, the elderly, persons with disabilities and others who are involved in creating and maintaining service-enhanced housing environments.
The Community Builders has prepared a practitioner’s guide, “Resident Success in Economically Integrated Socially Diverse Housing,” by Patrick Costigan and Leo Quigley, to share ideas and resources on effective practices in developing mixed-income, mixed-race housing. The guide is based on their own experience and the work of other developers and researchers.
