By Emily Casebeer Development costs in western Washington and across the United States continue to increase. According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the Associated General Contractors of America, the cost of construction is rising (Anderson, 2018). Hard construction makes up a large portion of these costs. 30% of hard construction costs are… Read More Affordable Housing is Unaffordable to Build
By Diane Anastos Anyone who has ever volunteered with a community council, a nonprofit board or a nonprofit organization is familiar with turnover; the complaint that it’s always the same people doing all of the work and the personality conflict that crop up. As the Resident Initiatives Coordinator for the St. Paul Public Housing Agency in… Read More Public Housing Resident Councils: How to Encourage Resident Participation
Diversification of tenant needs is a broad topic. This morning pitch of the Collaborative Housing session showed all in attendance that trying to start a whole new housing industry from scratch is the definition of responding to tenant needs. Estonia started a major housing reform around 10 years ago. Estonia is a good example… Read More How Estonia is Managing Major Housing Reform
The European Federation for Living (EFL) just wrapped up its annual autumn conference located this year in Gent, Belgium. Over sixty participants from across Europe attended the conference, ranging from social and public housing associations, universities and research institutes, and private businesses working in the housing sector. Tenant engagement and cooperative and collaborative housing… Read More Collaboration, Cooperation and Tenant Engagement: The Future of Social Housing
The latest assault by the Republican Administration on affordable housing should have every executive team at every PHA across the nation thinking about ways to diversify, streamline and mix up their operations. One of the most interesting ways to protect your PHA might just be to get into the Moving to Work game. If you… Read More Why Every PHA Should Go For Moving To Work (MTW)
In a fast paced and often competitive work environment, top performers in the housing sector rarely stand still for long. Add to this the speed of technological advances, combined with an often highly volatile and fluctuating jobs market, and there can be no doubt those who embrace change and are responsive to new ideas have… Read More Retaining Top Performers – Embracing New Ideas
In my several years working in affordable housing, I visited maintenance teams all around the USA and Europe. Sometimes I met with monstrous teams of maintenance staff and other times a small group led by a manager. The one common theme is that morale and training make or break the ability of a maintenance team… Read More How the Seattle Housing Authority is Getting SMART with Maintenance Training and Innovation
For those who work in affordable housing or homelessness in the USA, it is very easy to walk into a room and throw out terms like continuum of care, Section 8, project based, tenant based, LIHTC, WBARS or any other smorgasbord of words and phrases. However, for the lay person the world of affordable housing… Read More Affordable Housing and Homelessness in America: Navigating a Confusing World
Linda Dreier | Patrick Kammerzelt | Philipp Ringswirth | Marlene Samhaber | Julia Staufer The Consequences of the Housing Act 2015 revisited Compared to the Netherlands as a whole, social housing is more popular in Amsterdam. This is illustrated in the figure below: While half the housing stock in Amsterdam consisted of social rented housing… Read More The Aftermath of the Dutch Social Housing Act of 2015
Rewards can be very subjective for top performers, not least due to varying motivational factors, accepted reward parameters within each market sector, and personal circumstance. Within the public sector for instance, where financial rewards may be more controlled, above all else communication, empowerment, and job satisfaction are key (Cuthbert & Ward). A holistic approach to each individual’s needs and… Read More Public/Social Housing: Why You Need to Reward Your Top Performers
Housing Futures 