HOUSING AUTHORITIES OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF FRESNO

In order to better serve the owners participating in the Housing Choice Voucher program and to expedite payments, conserve resources, and reduce processing costs, the Fresno Housing Authority was able to improve Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) to owners.

The Housing Authority was able to interface Emphasys with our website in offering the 7,000 owners in our Housing Choice Voucher program the ability to view and print their payment history 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Mailing payments out monthly to the owners, along with their payment history proved to be very costly and time consuming. The Housing Authority needed a way to streamline the process while making sure our owners were getting their payments in a timely fashion. By instituting the Electronic Funds Transmission (EFT) and coupling it with owners having the ability to electronically access their payment history online, resulted in a substantial cost savings.

The payment history can be viewed and printed in several ways; tenant names, addresses, HAP payment amounts. By using their vendor number, owners can access their payment history going back several months and/or several years.

Process is more efficient and timely:
1. EFT and HAP payment history is accessed immediately by the owners, rather than waiting for 4 to 5 days to receive it through the mail. Owners are more satisfied in getting their payments more timely and the ability to access their account any time, day or night.
2. Accounting no longer prepares a payment history along with the check for each owner. This equates to savings in staff time, postage, checks, paper costs, printing costs, envelope stuffing, check returns (due to insufficient addresses), stop payments, etc.
3. Calls to the Owner Services Call Center have been reduced dramatically by 25% to 30%.
4. Calls to our Accounting Department from our Owner Services unit have been reduced by 20%.

Bottom-line: Our cost savings is approximately $67,698 annually.

Through the Emphasys interface with the Housing Authority website, we were able to achieve the strategic future goals of excellence in customer service while meeting cost saving goals by working “better, faster, cheaper.”

Emphasys utilized to full potential can increase efficiency and save costs.

MOBILE HOUSING BOARD

When the Mobile Housing Board purchased the Flex software, its housing administrators were told repeatedly that the product was not written for site-based waiting lists. Well, that is what the housing board had, so its employees had to MAKE it work. Nancy Wilson, Manager of our Leasing & Marketing Department worked tirelessly to develop workable procedures to use Emphasys Flex with a site-based waiting list system. Applicants place their names on as many lists as they wish. When their name comes to the top of a list, their status is changed to "I" (inactive) on all other lists so that the other sites do not call them in for interview. The system works well for the Mobile Housing Board.

TLINGIT-HAIDA REGIONAL HOUSING AUTHORITY

Even though Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority had not gone live, the housing authority’s efforts thus far are just the tip of the iceberg. The organization is well known and respected for the diversity of its many programs and especially its innovations. This conversion is certainly innovative and also challenging for Emphasys staff. It is sincerely believed that once installation is complete, it will be like a Vanguard for many other Indian Housing Authorities and they will likely follow the authority’s lead. The negotiations for its software package included extensive modifications to adapt the Neighborhood Revitalization software to become ideal for managing our NAHASDA funding, which is unique to Indian Housing. The installation will also perfect the NMH housing software prevalent in Indian country. We are also hoping to create a utility allowance and incentive program to help determine utility allowances while simultaneously promoting tenant conservation. The changes should enable us to reward tenants with 50% savings when their household falls below the allowance and to automatically charge tenants that consume more utility than the allowance provides.

CINCINNATI METROPOLITAN HOUSING AUTHORITY

Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority has implemented various modules of the Elite product lines. In November 2005 Housing Choice Voucher and Waitlist modules followed by LIPH and WO modules in July 2006. Also in July, CMHA went live with a beta product of Financial/Purchasing module of the Select/LIB software. Throughout this process, CMHA has provided recommendations to Emphasys on changes for enhanced functionality of their core Elite products lines. CMHA has also been in the forefront of testing many of Emphasys’s new product lines such as Partner Portal, Executive Portal, address validation software, file management system, and scheduling software.

CMHA worked closely with the Emphasys’s development team in designing, testing, and providing feedback for the enhancement and improvement of the functionality of Executive Portal product. CMHA’s project team, in conjunction with Emphasys’s development team, worked together before, during and after product development to ensure all case scenarios were reviewed and tested. CMHA devoted significant staff resources to the review of programming logic to ensure that no bugs existed. The primary goal for Executive Portal by CMHA’s viewpoint was to provide PHA’s with management reports to assist the organizations in running their programs.

CMHA staff and landlords, in partnership with Emphasys, tested and provided feedback on the Partner Portal. During this process, CMHA suggested that additional information about financial transactions, HQS inspections, and tenant certifications be included for landlords. This allows the product to maximize staff resources by providing landlords with another venue to obtain information concerning their HAP contracts. CMHA also provided recommendations to improve user-friendliness, thereby increasing landlord use of the new product. CMHA is continuing to work with Emphasys in the next phase of the development of the Partner Portal.

CMHA has also been involved from the beginning with Projected Based Accounting (PBA) and Asset Management mandated Operating rule changes from HUD. CMHA was one of the agencies that participated in the PBA Focus group led by Andrea Hartt, Manager of Advanced Financial Solutions. CMHA and Emphasys worked together in designing the changes for PBA and Asset Management in the Select product line. During this process, CMHA utilized its knowledge of the upcoming changes from multiple HUD-hosted informational meetings in Washington DC. Based on recommendations from CMHA, Emphasys developed the following enhancements to Select software: interfunding between Asset Management Properties (AMP), the addition of fields to the Purchasing and Inventory modules to assist in compliance with Asset Management requirements, and the creation of new AMP reports. CMHA is continuing its partnership with Emphasys in addressing the secondary level of HUD Asset Management requirements, including development of performance and utilization reports. CMHA was a beta site for the Select changes and is now fully operational with the first phase of PBA/Asset Management changes. CMHA has met and discussed with Emphasys staff changes required for PBA and Asset Management within the Elite product. The recommended changes will streamline reporting requirements and increase productivity of LIPH staff. One important enhancement recommended is an internal billing system allowing housing authorities to charge fee for service for centralized services and direct expensing of decentralized services to appropriate AMPs.

CMHA also requested additional functionality and has been working with Emphasys on developing future modules such as Legal module that will include tenant case history, third party energy consumption data upload into Elite for HUD-required analysis and reporting. CMHA has also been involved with the Case Management module which will allow for monitoring of tenant services, and Call Management which allows for tracking of community and stakeholders calls, issues and resolutions.

CMHA has assisted Emphasys by volunteering our time and resources for site visits and reference calls for Housing Authorities reviewing future Elite software purchase or upgrade. Over the past year CMHA has spoken to several medium to large housing authorities to facilitate their decision making process.

CMHA has been with the Emphasys product lines over the past 19 years and is looking forward to working with Emphasys in continued improvements and upgrades to their product lines.

MISSOURI HOUSING DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION

Like many housing finance agencies (HFAs), the Missouri Housing Development Commission (MHDC) administers a variety of housing programs for its state that often requires the use of several different software packages. These software systems often do not interface with each other because they are on different platforms and are often even developed by different vendors. This scenario makes looking up information to do large scale reporting a nightmare.

The MHDC multifamily departments have administration duties and financial obligations on several thousand properties across the state. These responsibilities can range from servicing a loan, providing grants, tax credits, providing compliance, administering Section-8 programs, etc. This means that the data on these properties could be scattered throughout several systems – making ad-hoc reporting lengthy, cumbersome and often unreliable.

With increasing demands from the public and elected officials to provide reporting – or even for staff or management to look up project information – MHDC required a solution to get at the data in a more efficient manor. MHDC needed the ability to do quick and efficient data queries from one system – but was not in the position to scrap all the current systems and start over with a new system or take on the daunting task of building a new system from scratch. MHDC needed an additional system whose job it is to query MHDCs other multifamily systems for data – and deliver the data to the end user in a quick and easy to use system.

MHDC researched this need with several solution providers and eventually partnered with Emphasys Software to develop such a system. Many weeks of research and planning went into this process. MHDC identified what data from each system that it wanted to report on. Then established a way to identify and match like projects to eliminate duplication. This was a great challenge – but the efforts were well worth it as MHDC and Emphasys staff worked many hours in research and development. Emphasys software took the needs of MHDC and developed a web-based portal that provides quick project look-ups and ad-hoc reporting in a central location. The system collects data from four multifamily systems, matches the data and pulls the data into a central repository. Now, through a web-based portal, staff can do easy project lookups to find developments – and narrow the queries by providing numerous options of search criteria, for example searching by city, county, legislative districts, loan number, project name, and etc. The new reporting system, dubbed “EPS” for Executive Portal System, now provides to staff development information and reports in an easy to use system. The system is so easy to use, it can even be used by those who know nothing about the back-end systems that EPS is collecting data from. The system provides a multitude of information on the multifamily projects MHDC administers, such as: project description, type of funding sources used, development costs, development sizes, unit rents, occupancy, inspection findings, owners and managers contact information, compliance records, financial and budget information, just to name a few. The EPS system even provides development photographs and a mapping interface, to boot.

 ARTHUR CATE - Chief Operating Officer

Knoxville's Community Development Corporation

 DONNA CRAMBLIT - Chief Technical Officer

Ohio Housing Finance Agency

 CAROL McCALL - Supportive Services / Special Programs Coordinator

Myrtle Beach Housing Authority

 ED PHILLIPS - Business Manager

Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority

 REEMA RUBERG - Director of Finance and Information Technology

Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority