icon Blueprint for February

The Feel Good Issue

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3 min read

Is it bragging if I open this issue by declaring it a win-win? Actually, it’s a win-win-win-win—for affordable housing management, for their residents, for government and for our readers. As our ace team of journalists delivered their stories this month, each one made me feel good, because they were all about supportive programs designed to make affordable housing residents feel good.

This issue is devoted to resident services and healthcare. In these pages you will read about support systems that improve lives, be it physically, emotionally and/or financially.

We begin with Darryl Hicks’ Talking Heads interview with Julianna Stuart of POAH on HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency program, which incentivizes Section 8 housing residents to strive in their careers by permitting them to save the money that would go towards additional rent as their incomes increase. If the ultimate goal of affordable housing is to support people to afford to move out of it, this program provides evidence it works. But, unfortunately and surprisingly, only five percent of the residents nationally take advantage of this opportunity. Maybe we can inspire increasing that.

USA Properties in Rosedale, CA has, under the stewardship of President and CEO Geoff Brown, been a pioneer in making extensive services available to tenants.

Now they have outdone themselves, partnering with LifeSTEPS to install in-home nurses in some of their properties, as well as training the entire on-site staff to be aware of potential resident health issues. Staff writer Mark Olshaker explains the company-financed pilot program. (There’s a Nurse in the House)

To encourage excellence in its resident services program, Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future has created a certification program nicknamed CORES (Certified Organization for Education & Services). Staff writer Mark Fogarty hears about the program from its administrator Eileen Fitzgerald, as well as from managers whose properties have been certified and residents who have benefitted. (CORES Certifies Resident Service Programs)

The state of Maryland, which is extremely progressive in developing resident support programs, offers incentives to community collaborations set up to reduce health disparities among racial and ethnic minority populations and among geographic areas, improve healthcare access and health outcomes in underserved communities and reduce healthcare costs and hospital admissions and re-admissions. Mark Fogarty looks at the plans and outcomes of that state’s Health Enterprise Zone (HEZ) innovation. (Making Healthcare Convenient)

And as our itinerant staff writer Scott Beyer completes his three-years of visits to cities across the country in New York, he visits with the staff at the Center for Active Design, an ambitious nonprofit organization that promotes architecture and urban planning solutions to improve public health. (Active Design for “Healthy Buildings”)

For those of you in areas confronting the cold of winter, I expect this issue will warm you. For those of you frustrated by the ineffectiveness of government, I expect this issue will encourage you. I hope it makes you feel as good as I feel about it.

Marty Bell, Editor