“I fear not the dark itself, but what may lurk within it.” – Unknown
The struggles PHAs are facing can often feel like monsters hiding in a closet. These imaginary creatures lurk out of sight, but we know they are there, disrupting the peace and bringing chaos.
These hidden “monsters” undermine your PHA’s mission to provide safe, affordable housing. Addressing these challenges head-on is crucial for maintaining order and ensuring your agency operates smoothly, fostering a stable and supportive community environment.
Today, we are going to shine a light on the things that may be going “bump in the night” at your PHA.
Dracula – Is Backlog Draining the Life Out of Your PHA?
Clearing backlog is vital to the health of your PHA. Backlog directly drains the lifeblood of your agency and impacts your ability to effectively serve your community and move your agency forward resulting in a PHA that is essentially a lifeless entity in the community.
Backlog strains your resources, leading to inefficiencies and delays in processing applications, maintaining properties, and addressing tenant issues. It results in prolonged processing times, unmet needs, and decreased tenant and landlord satisfaction. All of this amounts to a significant impact on community perception and a decrease in landlord participation and lease-up rates.
Efficiently managing and reducing backlog:
- Ensures your limited resources are optimized
- Enables your PHA to provide timely and high-quality services
- Improves staff morale and productivity by preventing employee burnout and stress associated with overwhelming workloads
- Improves landlord satisfaction thereby increasing trust, participation, and lease-up rates
Ultimately, clearing backlog helps your PHA fulfill their mission of providing safe, affordable housing and enhancing the quality of life for their residents, fostering a more stable and supportive community environment. Unfortunately for most agencies, they are stuck in this negative cycle and either unsure of how to break through or unable to do so because all of their resources are allocated to keeping their agency running.
Our team of experts are the wooden stake that brings your struggle with backlog to a final end and gets your PHA back on track.
Dr. Frankenstein and His Monster – Piecing Together Your ACOP and Admin Plans
Using your ACOP and administrative plans strategically is crucial for your PHA to succeed. These documents ensure regulatory compliance, promote consistency and fairness, and streamline operations. They enhance accountability, improve decision-making, and increase participant satisfaction by providing clear guidelines and transparent procedures. Additionally, they help manage risks, allocate resources efficiently, and support strategic planning.
That’s a lot of benefits… and risk… that hang in the balance.
Regularly updating these policies ensures the PHA can adapt to changes and continue meeting community needs effectively. Your agency cannot afford to not utilize them as a resource for advancement. You have to turn a magnifying glass on your policies and start viewing them as a strategic tool to move your PHA forward.
Zombies – Is Your PHA Ready for Change?
We all know there are A LOT of changes taking place over the next few months. While change is never easy, resistance to change can significantly undermine your effectiveness and create an environment without life where you are simply going through the motions.
Factors contributing to this resistance typically include:
- Fear of the unknown
- Comfort with the status quo
- Lack of training and support
- Insufficient communication
The impacts of resistance can be severe, leading to organizational stagnation, reduced morale and productivity, missed opportunities for innovation, and increased financial costs. And now with HOTMA, resistance can have significant legal and regulatory consequences.
To overcome this, PHA leadership needs to model and support change, involve team members in the planning process, provide adequate training and resources, communicate clearly and effectively, and celebrate small wins to build momentum.
Addressing these factors head-on can cultivate a more flexible and innovative organizational culture.
Fighting Back
Don’t allow your agency to be paralyzed or ineffective due to fear. The key to combatting these monsters that lurk in the shadows is two-fold:
Be Aware.
You must be willing to face the monster to defeat it. You can’t hide from it, run from it, or pretend it doesn’t really exist. And you cannot make friends with the monsters. They don’t want to be your friend, and they don’t work well with others. If ignored, these monsters will become more and more destructive until you are forced to deal with them one way or another. Take advantage of the upper hand and face them square on. Be specific about what kind of monster you are facing, and then…
Be Armed.
Every scary movie ever has that one person who goes off by themselves and walks right into the trap of the bad guy. We can all see it coming a mile away. Don’t be that person.
Ask for help.
That could look like any number of options, including community partnerships or a change in your policies and procedures. Our personal favorite option is outsourcing to help you strategize and arm your agency. AMA has several tools, resources, and services available that have been carefully developed to assist you in all the areas you need it most. But either way, be sure you are armed and ready for your fight. Get the tools you need, find the resources, ask for help!
Turn on the Light
For those of us in the trenches of affordable housing, we have seen real monsters walk through the doors of our agencies in the forms of poverty and desperation. When we were kids, the answer to our fear of monsters was simply to turn on the light. And the answer to the monsters we face today is the same. Only now, you are the light.
Shine bright.