CREJ

February 2022 — Multifamily Properties Quarterly — Page 35 www.crej.com Affordable Housing F or over 125 years, Volunteers of America has supported and empowered America’s most vulnerable, includ- ing the elderly, people with disabilities, at-risk youths, people experiencing homelessness and families with income insecurity. VOA also is charged with identify- ing new trends and meeting the identified needs by adding new lay- ers of programming. Housing is an identified need for all the populations that VOA serves and, for the past 20 years, VOA has been one of the largest providers of affordable housing in the Denver metro area and across the state. Within affordable housing, VOA has prioritized offering high-quality ser- vices recognizing the necessity of combining affordable housing with the necessary supportive services. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ broad body of research concludes that affordable housing coupled with supportive services helps vulnerable people live and thrive in their communities. Furthermore, its research also supports the following four main conclusions: • Supportive housing helps people with disabilities live stably in the community. • People with disabilities in sup- portive housing reduce their use of costly systems, especially emergen- cy health care and corrections. • Supportive housing can help people with disabilities receive more appropriate health care and may improve their health. • People in other groups, including seniors trying to stay in the com- munity as they age and families trying to keep their chil- dren out of foster care, likely also benefit from sup- portive housing. VOA has differ- ent housing mod- els to meet the needs of multiple populations, such as seniors, people with disabilities, people experienc- ing homelessness and families. The services-enriched housing team on site at our proper- ties must be well trained and able to not only serve residents but also address specific community needs. Staff must be skilled in many areas, including maintaining boundaries, effective communication, engage- ment, assessment, intervention techniques, data collection and program evaluation. Our hous- ing services staff has training that includes motivational interviewing, trauma-informed care, de-esca- lation/crisis prevention interven- tion, harm reduction, critical time intervention, crucial conversations, cultural competency, bias identifica- tion, ethics, mental health first aid and many more including popula- tion-specific training. Once the staff is trained, it is essential to have individualized wraparound services for all popu- lations. It often is said, “It takes a village.” This is basically what wrap- around services provide. The core components of wraparound ser- vices include: • Housing mediation: The VOA staff works diligently to identify ways to increase positive relation- ships between the landlord and resident. By responding swiftly to landlord requests and collaborating with residents to identify solutions that meet their landlord’s needs, staff can identify safe, quality ways to maintain housing for partici- pants. At times this may not be suf- ficient and legal action against the resident may occur. According to The Colorado Center for Law and Policy report of evictions, property managers are filing evictions for relatively small amounts of unpaid rent. Some average as little as $450 for subsidized housing, and for private landlords the average over the three years studied was less than $1,655. CCLP also identified a lack of emergency rental assistance resources and legal representation during eviction hearings as major gaps in decreasing homelessness. With wraparound services, access to rental assistance is provided. • Case management services: Case managers collaboratively develop individualized service plans with each resident to identify concerns, mitigate barriers and promote long- term stability through the provision of supportive services. • Employment services: Due to the current housing market it is VOA residents find benefits to wraparound services Angel Hurtado Senior director, Residential, Youth & Emergency Services, Volunteers of America H ope Communities is an award-winning Denver- based nonprofit organiza- tion that offers affordable apartments with deep sup- portive services at sites around Denver. Our mission is to assure that all our residents have a safe place to call home and the resourc- es they need to thrive. We have a resident-informed, multigenera- tional approach that helps children and adults deal with barriers to success and start on the pathway to meaningful employment, eco- nomic independence and mobility. The programs we offer are resi- dent-driven in all aspects and, as a result of that approach, programs and services are different at each site. They typically are facilitated by staff familiar with residents, who often have linguistic and/or cultural competencies that match resident demographics. Hope’s model of service is dis- tinguished from the typical model by that “tailoring” of staff and pro- grams to each property, allowing residents to access resources and build strong bonds and trust with staff. Programs and services are provided at no cost to residents as well as clients from the broader community. Hope acts as a com- munity hub in each of its neighbor- hoods – building trusted relation- ships, leveraging resources, facili- tating partnerships and extending programs that are vitally needed but perhaps difficult for other non- profits to accommodate. Even through the pandemic, in- person services were offered at all its proper- ties, knowing that many residents did not have access, or the technological or language skills necessary to deal with the life- threatening and socially intimidat- ing requirements for work, school and family obligations. The need for resource navigation, distribution of food and delivery of critical goods to meet basic needs has escalated dramatically since spring 2020. Processes such as applying for food, unemployment and rent assistance and renewal of refugee status require a great deal of time. To help residents deal with that, we began hosting “tent topics,” which utilized the large outdoor garden space at our East Colfax property, Hidden Brook, for food distribution, as well as resource navigation and access to services and goods made available by com- munity partners. Knowing that many of our residents and clients were underserved with vaccination programs, we worked with area partners to host 36 clinics, provid- ing more than 1,650 vaccines to hard-to-reach community members. Our distinctive approach uses sta- ble housing as the foundation from which low-income families can gain skills and access the resources they need to break the bonds of poverty. Nearly half of our clients are refugees from countries around the globe who need help learning the language, navigating through unfamiliar systems, and establish- ing new pathways to personal and family success. Our programs and services help them learn the lan- guage, how to navigate complex systems and build essential skills to both bond with others from their own culture as well as people from American culture. Programs are designed to help those families integrate into the community, and A community hub requires resident-driven programs Sharon Knight President and CEO, Hope Communities The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ broad body of research concludes that affordable housing coupled with supportive services helps vulnerable people live and thrive in their communities. Please see Hurtado, Page 37 Please see Knight, Page 37 While the Than family lived in a Hope apartment community, they created and grew a small business and eventually were able to purchase their own home.