Operating an affordable housing portfolio, whether comprising Section 8 housing, rent controlled properties, or LIHTC units, comes with both the standard challenges faced by all property managers as well as unique obstacles presented by the specific nature of affordable housing. If dealing with disconnected software, bandwidth issues, and high staff turnover rates wasn’t enough, affordable housing operators have additional considerations around compliance and transparency to keep in mind, as well as facing unmanageable lead volume due to high demand and low supply. Unfortunately, the traditional property management tech stack just isn’t enough to accommodate the specific needs of property managers with affordable portfolios.
Fortunately, emerging AI solutions designed specifically for the property management industry are available and can help affordable housing operators reduce bandwidth issues, manage high lead volume, and ensure prospects are treated equitably. With that in mind, today we’ll be diving into three areas where AI can come in and help make an immediate impact towards solving the pain points faced by many affordable housing operators.
Managing High Inquiry Volume
It’s an understatement to say that affordable housing is more desirable than ever in light of skyrocketing housing prices across the US. To put the scope of the demand into scale, in New York City alone there have been over 25 million applications for only 40,000 affordable housing units since 2013. Leasing teams at affordable properties are just not equipped to deal with that type of volume, meaning calls and inquiries go unanswered on a daily basis, making it difficult for prospects to even join wait lists for units at these properties.
AI can step in to fill that gap by managing prospect inquiries 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across channels including email, text, voice, and webchat. Even if there are no vacancies in the affordable housing property, it can at least ensure the prospect makes their way onto a waitlist that allows them an opportunity to eventually secure an affordable unit. EliseAI’s LeasingAI automates 90% of prospect communications, giving on-site teams time back to deliver excellent resident experiences rather than serving as a glorified call center. This time back is even more valuable when you consider it in the context of qualifying and recertifying prospects for affordable housing.
Expediting the Qualification and Recertification Process
Qualifying prospects for affordable housing is a time-consuming and operationally challenging process that involves collecting an extensive amount of documentation. For property management teams that already struggle with high lead volume, adding in an additional layer of complexity in the form of income verification is another obstacle. Some affordable portfolios have switched to a centralized model that takes the burden of income verification off the plates of on-site teams and passes it off to a centralized leasing office, but if their existing tech solutions don’t help expedite the process it will still prove difficult to keep up with the volume of qualification work to be done. If that wasn’t enough, yearly recertification requirements means collecting all those income verification documents on a yearly basis. Many operators currently handle this at the property level, meaning on-site staff are responsible for chasing down the required paperwork. And as one affordable housing operator using EliseAI pointed out, many residents in affordable housing work during the hours the property management office is open, making it hard to coordinate with them for document collection.
Fortunately, AI can simplify qualification and recertification by handling initial income requirement screening. Beyond that, an AI can actually ask prequalification questions about household size and all forms of income, including wages, health employment, housing vouchers, child support, alimony, social security, and unemployment payments. For recertification, AI can also manage document collection and follow-ups across a variety of channels. EliseAI’s ResidentAI can extract and validate information from various documents, such as pay stubs, ensuring that they are from consecutive periods and associated with the correct employer and recipient. It identifies missing documents, such as bank statements or recurring gift certifications, and follows up accordingly. The AI also can provide continuous visibility into the document collection process and update income calculations based on new information provided, simplifying and speeding up the recertification process.
Increasing Access to Affordable Housing for Non-English Speakers
The Fair Housing Act mandates that affordable housing providers do not discriminate against prospects who are non-English speaking, which can pose a variety of operational issues for property managers with limited translation resources. Operators who receive a high volume of inquiries from non-English speaking prospects have traditionally needed to hire bilingual staff members or specialized translators, both of which can be cost or availability prohibitive. Fortunately, emerging AI solutions can help bridge the gap and ensure that language barriers aren’t an obstacle to operating an affordable housing portfolio.
AI is an incredibly powerful tool for quickly and accurately translating languages, enabling property management teams to seamlessly handle prospect inquiries in non-English languages without bilingual staff. For example, when a prospect or resident interacts with one of EliseAI’s AI assistants in a non-English language, Elise’s multilingual capability understands and responds by automatically translating it into English in EliseCRM for the agent. Our AI assistants can currently field inquiries in 51 languages via text email and chat, including Arabic, Bengali, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Punjabi, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese Simplified and Traditional, and more. Here’s how it works:
- Elise translates the message into English
- Elise runs comprehension models to parse out what the lead is saying
- Elise generates a response, including client specific language
- Elise translates back to the language being used and responds
All of this happens almost instantaneously, allowing Elise’s AI assistants to handle prospect and resident inquiries in under 5 minutes on average. Compare that to the hours that an agent might spend waiting for a translator to help them respond to a message and you can understand why leading affordable housing operators use EliseAI to help them manage their resident and prospect communications.
In addition, Elise’s VoiceAI product can field resident and prospect phone calls in German, Italian, French, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish, with plans to support more languages soon. Want to put Elise’s voice assistant to the test for yourself? Click here to call her, or simply dial (866) 855-2509.
Getting Started with AI for Your Affordable Portfolio Today
For affordable housing operators, implementing an AI solution can go a long way towards helping solve common issues such as, handling prospect inquiries around the clock, managing the qualification and recertification processes, and improving access to housing for non-English speakers. The technology is evolving and adapting so quickly that the scope of what it is able to handle will only continue to expand. With that in mind, there’s no better time than now to onboard an AI solution.