The Company
The mission of CAHEC Management, Inc. is to provide customized property management services that exceed the expectations of its owners, residents and communities by empowering its staff through exceptional coaching and training. Since 1985, CMI has worked to ensure residents in the Southeast have access to high-quality affordable housing by partnering with owners to create vibrant communities our residents can call home.
The Challenge
CAHEC Management Inc.’s compliance team was stressed with a growing workload. Determining eligibility of new applicants and current residents took an extended amount of time given the sheer volume of files to review and the complexity of applicable affordable housing regulations. Future growth was a challenge without first addressing and resolving the challenges of compliance.
The Solution
Yardi RightSource
Yardi RightSource clients receive expert support to make the most complex compliance tasks faster and less of an impact on staff. RightSource offers fast reviews to ensure compliance data is in place for applicant and resident files. Affordable housing providers can also add full-service compliance workflows with a simple to use interface with Yardi Voyager.
The Story
CAHEC Management, Inc. (CMI) is a leading affordable housing property developer, owner and manager based in Columbia, South Carolina. Its sustained growth and successful properties are laudable. Its portfolio includes more than 370 properties and 16,000 units which are 100% affordable housing, spread in states across the southeast United States.
As CMI grew, and as affordable housing reporting requirements became more complex, CMI also experienced significantly more compliance work. Its team specialists responsible for complying with the array of affordable housing programs CMI participates in was greatly challenged by the vast number of applicant and resident files that needed review.
Reimagining CMI’s Compliance Process
Babbie Jaco has been on the team since 1984. She was one of the first employees to be hired, and as the company grew, she became a principal in Boyd Management and their development agency, WWJ, LLC. In 2020, Babbie and her partners sold their interests in Boyd Management and WWJ, LLC to CAHEC of Raleigh, North Carolina.
RightSource provides CMI with a dedicated team of affordable housing experts who audit applicant and resident files for compliance with all applicable program rules. CMI has since streamlined many of its affordable housing compliance processes and created greater partnerships and cooperation within its organization and external partners.
“With RightSource, our file reviews are complete in about 24 hours with clear notations about what’s missing and valuable advice on how to make things right. It is much faster than our previous processes, which means we get qualified residents moved into units more quickly,” says Jaco.
The services provided by RightSource have transformed CAHEC Management’s relationship with its compliance team. “We refer to the team as compliance 2.0 now that we have RightSource. Before, they were heads down and pencils up file auditors. There was a ton of information to go through and a lot of circumstances where one side didn’t agree with the other. That long and dragged-out process is much more efficient now,” says Jaco.
The metrics that CAHEC Management gets from RightSource are also valuable, and something they didn’t have in the past. Contracting with RightSource for file reviews helps CAHEC Management track how long file reviews take, and record how many reviews are necessary based on individual managers and their teams. CAHEC Management uses those metrics to establish best practices for other teams and to identify room for improvement.
These organizational process improvements have also created the important benefit of growth potential. “Affordable housing program compliance is complex, and our manual processes were challenged and costly. To grow, we needed to rethink our processes and find new efficiency. After researching all the players in the field, RightSource was the best choice for CAHEC Management,” says Jaco.
