Let’s Talk Affordable Housing

YASC Conversations

By Mike Sederholm on Nov 26, 2024 in People

There’s a lot to like about attending the Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference (YASC). It’s a treat for both Yardi team members and clients alike.

The Yardi Party, for example, is always a lot of fun, especially this year as we celebrated 40 years. And there are hundreds of courses to choose from and new people to meet from every sector of the property and investment management industry.

But, if you ask a Yardi team member the best thing about YASC, you’ll likely hear that seeing clients in person and speaking with them face-to-face is what they look forward to most.

Late this summer in San Diego, Yardi representatives sat down for formal interviews with clients from the affordable housing industry. Interviewees included Christy Alvarado from MEB Affordable Management Services, Noel Gill from Northwest Real Estate Capital Group, and Priya Ramchandran from USA Properties Fund, among several others.

Each of the interviewees expressed an admiration for the affordable housing industry and the positive impacts it has on the communities they work in.

Christy Alvarado described how residents of MEB’s properties gain stability through an affordable housing unit.

“The families we work with might be on the cusp of becoming homeless and unfortunately looking at temporary stays with different family members because of losing their own home. Affordable housing gives them personal space for cooking, sleeping and bathing. That sense of permanence that affordable housing provides is a big differentiator from staying with a friend or family member while trying to get back on their feet,” said Christy.

MEB celebrates its families who move on to market rate housing not only because they’ve gained personal stability, but also because their departure opens affordable housing for another family in need. That cycle of housing stabilization is often supported by onsite services such as childcare, job training and personal counseling.

Our conversation with Priya Ramchandran of USA Properties Fund, Inc., touched on the topic of accounts payable for affordable housing. Priya described how her accounting team benefits from the Yardi Procure to Pay solution set.

“The sheer number of invoices our small AP team processes for our entire portfolio can become overwhelming, even resulting in some shut off notices and late fees. But we have eliminated those types of situations with AP workflows in Yardi Procure to Pay, which are easy to learn and use,” said Priya.

Noel Gill covered many interesting topics during the interview, including how his organization uses the Yardi Aspire learning management solution.

“We use Yardi Aspire to create unique learning opportunities for newly hired team members,” said Noel.

He added that staff turnover at the property level is an ongoing challenge for many affordable housing providers, including his organization, the Northwest Real Estate Capital Group. Aspire, says Noel, makes it faster and easier to onboard new hires and to get them trained on workflows necessary to get up and running quickly.

Noel also expressed appreciation for one of Yardi’s most core functionalities, accounting.

“We started with Yardi on Enterprise, going back to around the year 2000. Over all those years, I’ve never found a better accounting system than Yardi,” said Noel.

If you are a Yardi client and haven’t been to one of our conferences or live training events, visit Yardi.com/events to make plans to join us. Maybe you’ll be our next interview subject!