The Company
Established in 1968, EAH Housing has become one of the largest and most respected nonprofit housing development and management organizations in the western United States. With a staff of over 750, EAH develops affordable housing, manages over 240 properties in California and Hawaii, and plays a leadership role in local, regional and national housing advocacy efforts.
EAH Housing is committed to developing and managing sustainable, healthy, and livable communities.
The Challenge
Streamlining relationships with applicants and residents
EAH works with thousands of households every month, including prospective and current residents. Throughout the residential lifecycle, from initial contact, through qualification, move-in and ongoing residency, EAH processes many types of transactions. Optimizing training, forms management, payments, service requests and more was an opportunity for EAH to gain efficiency and create happier living experiences.
The Solution
Affordable Housing Suite
EAH uses several components of the Yardi Affordable Housing Suite, including RentCafe Affordable Housing for online housing applications, service requests, payments and more, Yardi Aspire for team skills development, and Yardi Document Management for SharePoint for centralized access to documents.
The Story
Automation isn’t just a convenience
Automating affordable housing compliance isn’t just about reducing the workload for housing specialists. It also unlocks benefits for applicants and residents that aren’t possible without automation.
For example, RentCafe Affordable Housing helps EAH improve communication with access to automated tools that don’t require printing letters, stuffing envelopes or paying for postage. It also helps EAH communicate in a timely manner during emergencies.
Another example is the ability for households to pay rent online with automated payment processing. Yardi Procure to Pay helps EAH save hours of time for staff and residents, maximizes accuracy and reduces the need to process in-person payments made with checks or money orders.
Most importantly, according to EAH staff, is automating how households apply and qualify for an affordable housing unit. Self-updating forms and automated language translations simplify the process for everyone, saving hours of time and reducing the need for in-person intake interviews.
EAH is beginning the roll out of electronic signatures for leases with a single pilot property. Signing documents electronically is a feature of RentCafe Affordable Housing. EAH plans to use this for all new properties onboarded in the future.
Automation makes onboarding new properties easy
EAH Business Systems Manager, Karen Seaman, describes how built-in, automated tools help the affordable housing provider onboard new properties into their Yardi operating platform.
During one particularly busy stretch, EAH was able to add six new properties in less than a week. “It was so easy to bring in all resident data at once with the automated tool. And it wasn’t just basic property management records like move-in data, it included complicated compliance records, including initial certifications and the latest recertifications,” says Karen.
Yardi products such as Document Management for SharePoint and its learning management solution Yardi Aspire also mesh seamlessly with EAH’s Yardi operating platform with automated efficiency.
“Document Management enables each of our onsite teams to centralize files into an easily shareable filing system. Our floating managers can go in, from property to property, and see everything centralized with mobile access,” says Karen.
With Aspire, EAH rolls out learning plans to new and current team members, automating the content that they need to learn new skills and enhance current workflows. EAH leverages Aspire learning content covering core HR topics such as harassment prevention, fair housing and safety. EAH is also considering using Aspire as an assessment tool to learn more about the skillset of potential new employees.
