Area of Expertise: Housing Operations

The first New York Supportive Housing Institute, a signature initiative of CSH, brought together a cohort of emerging developer teams for intensive and interactive workshops covering all aspects of creating quality affordable and supportive housing. The Institute provided tools and support to help teams build their project plans and convert them into reality.

Mentorship was a core component of the NY Institute. Each team was connected with a mentor who had deep expertise in affordable and supportive housing development in New York. Teams graduated from the Institute with a housing development plan and a path for acquiring funding. The cohort will collectively produce more than 400 new affordable and supportive homes across NYC, Long Island, and Westchester. The Institute ran from January 2025 until September 2025.

We extend our deepest thanks to all our sponsors, especially Deutsche Bank, whose generous support made this initiative possible.

This framework helps hiring managers, job seekers, organization leaders, and new program planners understand the different roles in supportive housing. It highlights core skills that supportive housing staff need to be successful housing and services providers. This resource is designed to help with onboarding/mentoring staff, designing roles and programs, and identifying organization-wide training needs.

For more than 30 years, supportive housing has transformed lives. The CSH Operations Clinic helps ensure properties continue to thrive by strengthening day-to-day operations and long-term sustainability. This one-pager describes the clinic and how it helps improve performance, stabilize operations, and better support tenants.

Supportive housing combines affordable housing with supportive services to help people who face the most complex challenges live with stability, autonomy, and dignity. CSH created these standards to guide a wide range of groups—including tenant leaders, housing developers, landlords, service providers, funders, property managers, government officials, and health care organizations—to work together to build and operate high-quality supportive housing.

The Quality Standards apply to all types of projects, whether site-based or scattered-site, and in rural, suburban, or urban areas. How the standards are put into practice may vary due to the diversity of supportive housing models.

This resource breaks down the core components of supportive housing and explains how to align a project with the CSH Quality Standards when planning a new development. 

The purpose of this Supportive Housing Property Management Plan (SHPMP) is to provide guidance to housing providers that operate housing programs that serve people who have experienced homelessness, are at-risk homelessness, or face barriers to housing, including people with extremely low-income, disabilities, poor rental or credit histories, and justice-involved histories. Property Managers who provide this type of housing should coordinate with supportive service providers to ensure their tenants can utilize services, both on-site and off-site, to maintain stable housing and meet these needs.

The SHPMP contains 19 sections, each with critical context, promising practice guidance, and key questions to consider when developing supportive housing programs and property management plans. 

The purpose of this Supportive Housing Services Plan (SHSP) Template and Guidebook is to provide guidance to supportive housing programs—both scattered-site and site-based—that serve people who have experienced homelessness, are at-risk homelessness, or face barriers to obtaining housing. Service providers should coordinate with property management to ensure tenants are connected to services both on-site and off-site that support long-term housing stability. 

The Supportive Housing Services Plan Guidebook contains 16 sections, each offering essential context, promising practice guidance, and key questions to consider when developing supportive housing programs and housing services plans. 

The purpose of the CSH Supportive Housing Services Staffing and Budget Tool is to support agencies, communities, and project planners to estimate comprehensive costs for supportive housing services. The tool uses a template that includes built-in assumptions around best practice for four staffing models: Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), Intensive Case Management (ICM), Tenancy Support Services (TSS), and Critical Time Intervention (CTI). Each of these models is well-researched and has a strong evidence base for efficacy with supportive housing tenants across a variety of constituencies. The tool allows the user to model out scattered site and project-based programs and input their average staffing costs, budget assumptions, and productivity expectations to determine rates needed by agencies for a fiscally sustainable program.

Last updated: August 2025

New York City is facing a homelessness crisis, with more than 140,000 people experiencing homelessness, including many in migrant shelters. Supportive housing is an evidence-based best practice that has been proven to reduce homelessness and interactions with crisis systems while helping individuals and communities to thrive.

This landscape assessment discusses challenges and gaps in addressing the needs of New Yorkers with high acuity health needs. It also presents recommendations for effective interventions and promising models.

Speaking with supportive housing tenants about their finances can be challenging and sometimes uncomfortable. Income and expenses are often very private and sensitive matters for people. Being clear, direct, and respectful can help with navigating these discussions and ensuring tenants understand their rental obligations. This document is meant to serve as a primer for supportive housing staff (services and property management) on how to assist tenants with paying rent on time and in full (and how to help them when they can’t).