What Development Teams Can Learn From Asset Managers, Part 1: Design and Construction
A panel of affordable housing asset managers spoke to a packed room of development pros at the Housing Oregon Industry Support Conference on September 29. The panelists shared their perspectives on a critical question: How do decisions development teams make, before a project is up and running, impact long-term property operations and resident quality of life?
Audience participants listened, offered great questions and input, and took away fresh insights to bring to their work. The conversation surfaced useful information on matters ranging from landscape design to financial accounting. So, we decided to share it with a wider audience.
To watch the whole presentation, courtesy of Housing Oregon, scroll up. To read our recap, keep scrolling down. And before you do either, let me introduce and thank the panelists!
Natalie Thornton, Asset Manager, Community Partners for Affordable Housing
Brian Shelton-Kelley, former Portfolio Asset Manager, REACH Community Development
Holly Vander Schaaf, Assistant Housing Director, Our Just Future.
Introduction
You’re affordable housing developers. You leverage capital and orchestrate design and construction processes to get housing projects built and preserved. We’re affordable housing asset managers. We oversee affordable housing properties, after they are placed in service, through decades of useful life.
We—developers and asset managers—have a lot to learn from each other. And we’re all fortunate to belong to a shared community of practice that places high value on peer learning. Our shared purpose and sense of connection is why we’re having this conversation. So, let’s talk.
Design + Construction
As part of a project’s design and construction process, you consider the needs of multiple groups. There are residents who call the property home. Folks who work on-site: community managers, resident services staff, and service providers who use common spaces to meet with residents and deliver programming. And, finally, other property management staff and asset managers who are responsible for making sure the property provides safe and healthy housing over the long-term.
In our work as asset managers, we hear feedback from all these groups. We notice when problem issues emerge repeatedly, and when new kinds of issues emerge. Based on what we’ve seen and heard, we put together the following recommendations, both general and specific, for design and construction teams:
Let us help you bring an operations lens to design decisions. Consider these questions when you make design decisions—especially when you include an innovative or nonstandard feature in your design. We’re happy to help you find answers.
Who will maintain this system/feature, at what cost? And what if it breaks? We love natural habitat spaces and fancy new HVAC systems—when we have the funds to take care of them. If you include a special design feature, make sure you’ve researched the real cost of hiring a third-party vendor to maintain it and included that cost in the operating proforma. And if you’re thinking about specifying a fixture that can only be ordered from Germany, with a long lead time...well, maybe don’t do that. As a general rule, simpler finishes and mechanical systems work better for property and asset management folks.
What specific maintenance and repair procedures must be accommodated? We love solar panels. And our maintenance staff love having a water supply handy when the panels need to be cleaned.
How will kids and teens interact with it? Young people make up a large portion of residents at our properties. When designing a rooftop patio or any space, please take extra care in considering mishaps that could occur if a curious 2-year-old, or a creative 15-year-old, were to access the space unaccompanied by an adult.
How can this space/feature be more accessible, adaptable, and/or upgradable? Something as simple and low-cost as designing in the capacity to add grab bars to unit bathrooms will help the property accommodate a wider variety of users in the future.
Is it best to fund this (optional feature or system upgrade) now or later? When the time comes to do value engineering, bring us in to discuss priorities. We can offer a perspective on what upgrades might be realistically built into a future refinance, and which require investment now.
Make multipurpose common spaces user-friendly (not user-neutral). We appreciate it when you take extra time to understand and think through how specific users will interact with common spaces. Three general asks:
Make it flexible—not unfinished. Residents and other users enjoy having flexible, multipurpose spaces, which can be partitioned to create intimate spaces for smaller gatherings. And multipurpose spaces work best if there’s a place to store partitions, chairs, and tables out of sight when not in use. If the partitions are designed for easy set-up and take-down, even better.
Prioritize storage space. Resident services staff need places to stow equipment and supplies—such as whiteboards, games, and that set of five individual induction burners we use for cooking classes. Janitorial and maintenance staff need room to store their tools and supplies, too. Please don’t skimp on common storage space if you can help it! We’ve never seen a property that had too much.
Future-proof it. To put it simply: once upon a time, every new affordable housing project had a computer lab. Help us minimize future retrofitting costs by creating spaces that are adaptable to different uses.
Give landscape design the attention it deserves. With landscaped areas, an ounce of prevention and forethought is worth a pound of cure.
Manage invasives before they become a problem. As developable land becomes scarcer, more projects are being built near protected areas, many of which are overrun by invasive plant species. If you’re developing a site that borders a problem/risk area, help us avoid a future $50,000 blackberry mitigation bill! Three suggestions: (1) Avoid siting landscaped areas directly next to the natural area. (2) Work with the entity that owns the natural area to make sure problems are managed before you hand the property off to property management. (3) Make sure notes about invasives-related risk issues get written into the property’s preventive maintenance plan and annual property management checklist.
Give community gardens what they need to flourish. Our residents love their raised beds. Tending a garden is a manageable chore when you have a place to store tools and supplies—and easy access to a water supply.
Thanks for reading. And guess what—we’re not done! In parts two and three, we’ll discuss decisions related to designing your project’s legal and financial structure and the right and wrong reasons to install a water submetering system.
Liz Winchester is a Senior Asset Management Project Manager at HDC. See her full bio here.