Training Future Project Managers for the Affordable Housing Boom
Affordable housing project managers are like quarterbacks. They make sure their teammates do their part, prioritize what needs to happen, when, and keep the ball moving to the finish.
But there are not enough of them.
With more than $5 billion in local taxes and state programs allotted, most of it to build affordable supportive housing over 10 years, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2020 budget calling for $6.8 billion more in affordable housing funding, there is a critical need to train more project managers in order to tap these funds.
LISC LA and AmeriCorps have a game plan. The nonprofits have partnered to increase the ranks of project managers through the Los Angeles Housing Initiative Program (LA-HIP), a LISC LA AmeriCorps’ summer program that teaches affordable housing project management to interested adults. Launched in 2018, LA-HIP’s purpose is to attract promising individuals who are passionate about community development and, potentially, project management. LA-HIP is open to all, including undergraduates and postgraduate students. The program draws a diversity of participants, and many are from the communities they serve.
“It was, honestly, a very amazing experience,” said Dominic Gonzalez, a 2019 LA-HIP participant and Cal Poly Pomona undergraduate studying urban planning. “It was a lot of out-of-the box thinking addressing affordable housing through Accessory Dwelling Units. We learned the city process, how to vet people, starting from people who are interested in applying to the City of LA for the permit and they could provide financing on their own, to applying directly to the city for financing.”
Participants like Gonzalez, who served with LA Mas, an urban design not-for-profit that helps underserved communities through policy and architecture, gain valuable on-the-ground experience working as assistant project managers for affordable housing not-for-profits full-time from June through September for 450 hours. Innovative Housing Opportunities, LINC Housing and Hollywood Housing Corporation are among 15 not-for-profit organizations that have hosted LA-HIP participants. LISC LA also provides LA-HIP participants with three days of training with City of Los Angeles Planning Department, City of L.A. Housing and Community Investment Department, Boston Private Bank, Wells Fargo, Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, UCLA and other community development partners. The capstone – a day spent at the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing (SCANPH) conference to network and broaden their learning experience.
LA-HIP is a natural pipeline to jobs in community development and affordable housing development that pay a living wage or better. Many LA-HIP participants land jobs with community development not-for-profits post program; some with the organizations they served, others with different not-for-profit organizations.
Lyndi Joy Rosdail’s LA-HIP experience last summer serving as an assistant project manager with Innovative Housing Opportunities, a not-for-profit affordable housing developer based in Santa Ana, exposed her to the work that she really wanted to do. Now she works with another not-for-profit as a case manager.
“I was thinking I wanted to be more on the [affordable housing] development side, but through the AmeriCorps’ program I realized I wanted to be more on the direct [resident] services side,” said Rosdail, who is earning an urban planning master’s degree from University of California, Irvine (UCI). “It clarified where my real passion was. So now I am working in direct services.”
Rosdail said the LA-HIP assistant project manager experience helped her build the personal connections that led to a full-time job with The Friendship Shelter, a nonprofit year-round shelter, housing, rehabilitation and services provider for the most vulnerable homeless people in southern Orange County. “It is so rewarding,” she said. “Everything I do is to help people stay housed.”
Similarly, Evangelina Rodriguez, who worked on a rehabilitation project for New Economics for Women (NEW), a Los Angeles-based not-for-profit community and housing development organization, found her 2019 LA-HIP program brought to light the human impact of affordable housing development in a tangible, emotional way. During her stint as an assistant project manager, Rodriguez learned how to work with residents living in the building being rehabilitated. She found it particularly gratifying.
“It gave me a new perspective on the purpose of the work,” said Rodriguez, a graduate student earning a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from UCI. “Although tasks were complicated or intimidating, I was ultimately assured it was worth it.”
The “real world” perspective of first-hand experiences, she said, informed her broader career goal; to make Los Angeles a “more accessible and livable city for all.”
Gonzalez plans to work in affordable housing development after graduating from Cal Poly Pomona in 2021, and Rodriguez plans to work in community development after she graduates in June. Participants who pivot to direct resident services, like Rosdail, are a win for community development and affordable housing, too. There is lots of work to be done and keeping the most vulnerable people among us housed is critical to that work. To date, five participants completed LA-HIP in 2018, seven in 2019. A third cohort of HIP participants will be joining partner organizations in June. LISC LA’s goal is to grow the program year to year.
Every project manager joining the affordable housing development ranks helps fill the gap, and like a quarterback, guides a team of people from finance to permitting to construction to the end goal – building as much affordable housing as quickly as possible in communities for our neighbors who sorely need it.
