Area of Expertise: Housing Lending and Development

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. 

This critical resource will identify the need for the creation of 38,000 units of supportive housing, the anticipated cost of addressing this need, and recommendations for funding mechanisms that have been proven to expand the resources needed to create supportive housing opportunities.

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. 

There are many types of agreements that need to be executed during the supportive housing development process. This document describes different circumstances that require an agreement and the different elements of a development partnership agreement. It also provides space for developers to take notes and track progress on the various agreements they are executing. Practitioners can utilize the fillable fields to record agreement details, note outstanding tasks, and track progress toward execution.

These recommendations encompass a statewide action plan to end homelessness and address Pennsylvania’s need for supportive housing. These recommendations incorporate feedback from the Pennsylvania Supportive Housing Coalition members along with core elements of other effective state plans on homelessness.

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

This is a resource guide for nonprofit housing sponsors interested in pursuing supportive housing development in New York State. It covers all the latest information about supportive housing financing programs, and incentives.

The focus of this guide is the early project planning and feasibility stages of development. It offers practical information on co-development partnerships, site selection, acquisition, and tools to help your staff and board of directors assess readiness and risk tolerance. Both experienced supportive housing sponsors and those new to development will find useful information to guide planning for your organization’s next supportive housing residence.