Mission-driven housing providers, including SAHF members, have long understood that a stable home connected to services can help residents achieve their goals. To help demonstrate this impact and accelerate systems changes that support resident services and improve resident well-being, SAHF launched the Resident Services Outcomes Initiative in 2012. Since that time, we’ve seen greater recognition of the impact of service-enriched housing and a growing number of providers moving towards measuring some resident outcomes.
As part of this culture shift, increasing numbers of stakeholders in the affordable housing field would like to understand which services may offer the greatest impact. This “Program Classification Framework” is a first step towards a common language for dimensioning not just the presence of services and resident outcomes, but the type of services provided. Using information from our members and partners, we have identified consistent categories and descriptions of programs and services to inform this Framework.
SAHF members and other affordable housing owners provide and connect residents to a wide variety of services at their properties, from community gardening to eviction prevention and financial coaching. Qualitative, descriptive information about these programs is important, but housing organizations with larger portfolios must also be able to collect information that can be aggregated across properties, such as program categories, dosage, and provider type. This Framework provides a list of 75 recommended program types that map to seven “Program Areas,” with definitions and examples for each. While organizations can tailor this list to their own goals and objectives, this provides a starting point for organizations working to expand or better categorize their programming.
This framework is one component of a systems approach to resident services, grounded in the resources, needs and opportunities of residents and communities, and integrated with or complimentary to other tracking conducted by housing providers, such as the tracking of resident participation/engagement with programs and short-term or long-term resident outcomes. We look forward to continuing to update and improve this Framework in collaboration with our members and partners.
The list of categories in this report can be provided in Excel. Reach out to SAHF’s Director of Data to request this information in Excel or another format.