A number of efforts are underway by members of the National Resident Services Collaborative to share best practices with community development practitioners.

Basic, Enhanced, and Comprehensive Service Levels – Planning Framework for Services for Families and Individuals. (PDF, 26K)

The following resident services courses were developed jointly by Enterprise and NeighborWorks:

• Delivering Successful Resident Services Programs
• Resident Services: Adult Education and Workforce Development
• Resident Services: Youth Programs

The Community Builders has prepared a Practitioner's Guide to share ideas and resources with affordable housing developers, community leaders and policy makers with financial support from the Ford Foundation's Mixed-Income/Mixed-Race (MI/MR) Housing Initiative. The guide is based on The Community Builder's own experience and the work of other developers and researchers and includes the following:

• Describes effective practices in developing mixed-income, mixed-race housing
• Shares program tools and guidance
• Highlights efforts under way to advance the field

Download the report with all attachments (8.77 MB)
Download the report without attachments (2.73 MB with on-demand hyperlinks to the individual attachments):

Community Builders Practice Tools Page

Creating Opportunities for Families Through Resident Services: A Practitioner's Manual (Revised and Expanded Edition, September 2009). The manual describes how to determine what services would most benefit your residents, and then how to fund, staff, design, implement, partner and measure the effectiveness of those services. Each section includes an overview along with multiple model documents to help you get started immediately with hands-on, helpful tools you can adapt quickly to fit your needs. Download Volume One:  Implementing a Basic Resident Services Program. (PDF: 279 pages, 2.03 MB). Download Volume Two: Enhanced and Comprehensive Resident Services. (PDF: 305 pages, 3.55 MB).

Program Costs and Staffing Benchmarks for Planning Resident Services for Families: A Companion Publication to “Creating Opportunities for Families Through Resident Services: A Practitioner’s Manual” This publication, by Gore Flynn, is designed to aid organizations in designing and budgeting for resident services programs for families in affordable housing. It looks at the per-unit and per-participant costs of total programs as well as specific services including service referral and crises management, on-site youth and adult education and computer centers.

List of Resident Services Peer Network Exchanges

Resident Services: Bringing Services Home to Low-Income Families
A suite of new information tools for anyone interested in creating or expanding a resident services program.  This resource provides perspective into the value of resident services for low-income families.

Earned Income Tax Credit: Helping Families Build Financial Assets
The summary information provided in this EITC brief can guide housing owners and resident services staff in family affordable rental housing to the resources they need to share with housing residents and to partner with local EITC campaigns to bring tax preparation volunteers onsite to ensure that everyone in your properties and community can access the most significant tax credits available to working families.

Resident Services Peer Exchange # 2: Best Practices in After-School / Out-of-School Time Programming
This event features a discussion on Best Practices in After-School/Out- of- School- Time Programming, led by Sam Piha, Founder and Principal of Temescal Associates of Oakland, CA, a consulting group dedicated to building the capacity of leaders and organizations in education and youth development that are serious about improving the lives of young people. 

Resident Services Peer Exchange #3: Resident Services and Improved Property Performance
This highly-attended session was led by David Fromm of DAF Consulting LLC in Laurel, MD. David is well known and well respected in the affordable housing industry and has a wealth of practical experience in improving property performance and on enhancing the quality of resident life.

Resident Services Peer Exchange #4: Increasing and Enhancing Resident Participation
This session was facilitated by Jennifer Gonzalez of Alamo Mutual Housing in San Antonio, TX.  Jennifer is nationally known and respected as a leading provider of Resident Services programming in affordable housing settings, and shares with us her wealth of experience in positively engaging residents around program participation.

Resident Services Peer Network Exchange #5: Avoiding Summer Learning Loss
Hear about how the John Hopkins University, Center for Summer Learning is successfully helping practitioner's address the issue of summer learning loss.  This session was facilitated by Jennifer Eden Brady, the Center's Director of Professional Development, who has trained over 2000 providers that collectively serve more than 2 million children.  

Resident Services Peer Network Exchange # 6: Funding Your Resident Services Program
The guest presenters for this session were Jennifer Endo (Director, Resident Services, AHC, Inc.), and Rachel Ginsberg (Director of Community Building, Columbus Housing Partnership) who provided information on the funding streams that resident services programs can access to support their programming efforts.

Resident Services Peer Network Exchange #7: EITC
The Earned Income Tax Credit can provide as much as $4,824 annually for a family of four and is responsible for lifting more children out of poverty than any other government support. The EITC can help in paying for work supports such as child care and transportation and help families save funds for emergencies, education and homeownership

Resident Services Peer Exchange #8: Hoarding -- When Collecting Goes Bad
Presenter Karen Kent is the Clinical Supervisor of the Geriatric Regional Assessment Team at Evergreen Healthcare in Seattle, WA., and has extensive, practical experience in helping housing organizations successfully deal with the problems associated with hoarding.