Area of Expertise: Services Planning and Operations

This document provides a framework for practice in family supportive housing settings. It is intended to be a capacity-building tool for those who are designing or already providing case management services for families living in supportive housing. However, those in the supportive housing field are encouraged to further enhance this tool with their own experiences and practice protocols.

This guide is intended for supportive housing administrators and practitioners who are developing and involved in supportive housing efforts that serve families with children. Families being served by supportive housing efforts face a complex set of challenges including long-term and repeated homelessness, child welfare involvement, mental health issues, domestic violence, and a parental history of trauma. The instability, trauma and complex needs of these families not only impact their housing outcomes, but also their parenting and child development outcomes. Permanent supportive housing for these families provides a platform for adult healing, family strengthening and a healthier life course for the children and youth. To support a family’s ability to use the opportunity that supportive housing provides fully it will be important for supportive housing providers to build an environment that is both developmentally appropriate to the needs of children and responsive to the unique needs and pressures of parents.

This sample tenant manual was developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy in collaboration with the Corporation for Supportive Housing. It is specifically designed as a resource for supportive housing providers working with families, especially those families involved with the child welfare system. The goal was to develop a tenant manual that could be easily adapted for sites that are providing supportive housing for families. While it may be most useful to programs serving families at a single site such as an apartment building or a cluster of apartment units managed by the same housing provider, we encourage providers of scattered site housing to review and adapt with landlords as you find useful.

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

The Strong Families Fund is the largest pilot pay-for-performance project to finance Resident Service Coordination (RSC) in affordable housing for lower-income families. The initiative was created to measure the impact of resident service coordination on tenant and building performance within affordable housing. The performance-based contract approach helps to align all collaborating partners with a shared vision of success. This report reviews the results of the data collected through the first phase of the initiative. It demonstrates that using this performance-based approach to resident service coordination in affordable housing is a powerful way to increase economic mobility, health & well-being, housing stability, and community engagement and safety.

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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).

Rental and operating subsidies are critically important funding resources in supportive housing developments for people with extremely low incomes. Subsidies keep rents affordable while ensuring that the property owner has enough income to maintain and manage the property during the lifetime of the development. Subsidies ensure that tenants are less rent burdened by reducing their rent to no more than 30% of their income and that the building has sufficient revenue for operations.  As operating expenses increase, the revenue for the building must keep pace to cover these costs. Supportive housing providers should have a practice and policy to request increases annually or as eligible. Receiving subsidy increases when eligible provides more revenue to pay for maintenance and repairs, and ensures the building has funds to safely and stably house residents. This guide helps you understand how to implement this practice and resources for program specific rules.

This guide provides recommendations for existing housing developments that may need additional subsidies to serve an extremely low-income supportive housing population. If you created a supportive housing development but there were not enough subsidies available at the time of opening, are using subsidies that expired (e.g. Tenant Based Rental Assistance – TBRA), or want to replace a current subsidy that does not allow rent increases with one that does, this guide is for you.   Rental subsidies in supportive housing developments ensure affordability for residents while maintaining the project’s sustainability, bridging the gap between market rents and affordable rent for extremely low-income individuals and families. There are several government programs that support the inclusion of rental subsidies in supportive and affordable housing. Here are five approaches for owners and property managers to consider.

How Deborah’s Place Approaches Managing and Upgrading their Aging Properties

Deborah’s Place is the largest provider of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) in Chicago exclusively serving unaccompanied women who are experiencing homelessness. They serve more than 600 women a year with the following goal: once a woman comes to Deborah’s Place, they will never experience homelessness again. Deborah’s Place cares for their properties in a way that many providers strive to do. They use all the benefits of being a non-profit in finding creative approaches like philanthropy and volunteers to address and resolve challenges to keep their properties updated and well maintained. It is apparent in their housing stability outcomes that tenants like where they live and the services that come along with it, since Deborah’s Place maintains a 96% housing retention rate.