Genger, welcome.
What are the most pressing challenges in meeting the
housing needs of diverse communities?
And I suppose with that, what are the opportunities?
The challenges, unfortunately, are numerous.
They are the same kind of macroeconomic challenges we face
collectively.
They are interest rates and the consequences of folks who have
purchased homes and now have low interest rates, locking out
people who might want to go purchase homes but who are also
facing higher interest rates and therefore higher cost of entry
if that home is available.
It is the mismatch between wages and affordability.
It is more broadly the consequences of zoning and what
is happening in it at the local level in terms of preventing
potential new building and the use of parcels of land in a way
that is additive to what is foundationally the issue on our
housing economy supply.
Fortunately, while there is inadequate supply, there is also
consensus around the fact that there is inadequate supply.
There is a common understanding that we are somewhere between 4
to 6 million units short of housing in this country, and
that we need a collective motivation to address those
things.
Unfortunately that consensus may stop at identifying the problem
though you can't fix a problem that you don't agree exists.
And so I am heartened to see that that opportunity has
presented itself and I'm so excited to be part of the
solution of solving it.
Talk to me if you would about what Amherst is doing
specifically to prioritize and support residents' needs.
So, Amherst has a long history of being very focused on
delivering the service of housing because we do believe
that so much of a person's opportunity and access is caught
up in the location of their home, the quality of their home,
etcetera.
But we also recognize that as as a landlord through our operating
platform Main Street Renewal that we have an obligation to
meet consumers where they are and that comes with the
responsibility of understanding that life happens.
And so going back on our platform to 2017, we have had a
resource available to our residents a, a group of social
workers and program specialists are our CARES team that is
really focused on addressing individual needs in a very
bespoke fashion.
And so if residents contact us and they explain their situation
and and we do what we can to support them in maintaining
their housing stability, anything from connecting to
local resources to, in some cases, delivering our own
resources, financial certainly otherwise.
And that focus on social emotional support and financial
education and empowerment is really at the heart of what we
try to deliver at Amherst.
How are you measuring that social impact and what do you
think that other companies can learn from what you do?
It's an interesting question about how you measure social
impact, right.
I think you can look at interactions.
So in 2023, we served through our CARES program, something
north of 3,000 residents in a multitude of situations.
So that is a metric. You could look at particularly going back
to the pandemic, the amount of rent we forgave to make sure
that people had that stable housing around the the
implications of the pandemic and that's tens of millions of
dollars.
We could look at the investment we made in helping residents
apply for rental assistance and the rental assistance they
received through the federal government $46 billion program
and that is north of $25 million in resources that we are able to
connect residents to to maintain that housing stability.
But myself, what really sort of motivates me on this social
impact journey is really those anecdotal stories.
It is the family who a mother and daughter who you know both
are are leasing homes from us who get to be in close proximity
and who get to have a home that is accommodated to meet a
physical disability.
It is a family who is facing a domestic violence situation and
is able to relocate. It's a family that has seen financial
strife and we are able to support them.
Those individual stories are really what matters.
So of course we have to put metrics to it, and you know I
can point to the value proposition that comes with the
loss avoidance and credit loss mitigation that comes with
investing in service, in wraparound services.
I think that there's a deep history and context around that
through the foreclosure crisis that we can apply here.
But I think we it's important to not lose sight of what it means
for that individual consumer and family.
Genger, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.