There is a high level of customer satisfaction among multifamily property managers who deal with the HUD service coordination program and HUD’s service coordinators, according to the report, “Multifamily Property Managers’ Satisfaction with Service Coordination,” just released by HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research.

Multifamily property managers at Section 202 and Section 8 properties told HUD’s researchers they had a strong belief that service coordination improves residents’ quality of life. The study also found that service coordination appears to lengthen resident tenure: the average length of occupancy was six months longer among residents of properties with HUD-funded service coordination as compared with residents of similar developments without service coordination.

Program Background
The Service Coordinator Program (SCP) was authorized by the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act in 1990. The program is intended to match low-income elderly and nonelderly people with disabilities living in HUD-assisted housing with necessary services. The goal of the SCP includes:

• Facilitating the provision of services in federally assisted housing to prevent premature and inappropriate institutionalization.
• Improving the capacity of management to assess the service needs of eligible residents, and coordinating those support services to meet the needs of residents.

Since 1992, HUD has provided guidance for these services as well as addition rent subsidy or grant funds. HUD guidelines are flexible concerning service coordinators’ working arrangements—they can be hired directly by the development or be contract employees from another organization, work either full- or part-time, and serve as a coordinator for more than one development. HUD guidelines suggest that a full-time service coordinator could serve about 50 to 60 frail or at-risk low-income elderly or nonelderly people with disabilities.

As of February 2008, 3,742 multifamily housing developments with approximately 348,000 low-income elderly and people with disabilities were served by HUD-funded service coordinators

What Service Coordinators Do
A service coordinator is a social service staff person hired or contracted by an owner or management company.  The service coordinator’s primary functions are to:

• Determine the service needs of eligible residents.
• Identify the appropriate services available in the community.
• Link residents with the needed services.
• Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the supportive services.
• Perform other functions to enable frail and at-risk low income elderly and nonelderly people with disabilities to live with dignity and independence.

Service coordinators are specifically prohibited from being assigned responsibility as the project’s recreational or activities director, providing support services directly, or assisting with other project administrative work.

Paying for the Program
According to the research, most developments paid for service coordination using their operating budget. Among those developments with HUD-funded service coordination, the majority budgeted for service coordination as a permanent cost in their operating budget (1,992 developments or 53 percent). Other HUD-funded service coordination was paid for as follows:

• 1,541 developments (41 percent) had a HUD service coordinator grant
• 209 developments (6 percent) used residential receipts (excess Section 8 rental subsidy), excess income generated in Section 236 developments, or another funding source.

In some locations, there were sufficient resources to support service coordination, so HUD funding was not needed. One site reported “contracting with a local group, to provide on-site management and support to the tenants. The on-site management receives funding from the state.”

Some property managers said they never heard of the HUD grant, and some believed their sites were too small to merit a service coordinator on staff or thought they were not eligible for the HUD grant.

To see a copy of the full report, go to: www.huduser.org.