About Us: Peer Networks
Through the convening of quarterly day long peer-to-peer meetings, SAHF facilitates the exchange of information among its member organizations' professional staff. SAHF provides a forum from which its members can share best practices and discuss common challenges with the expressed goal of learning from one another’s experiences. SAHF’s peer groups comprise of the asset manager, developer, chief financial officer, public relations staff, and resident services groups.
Peer groups meet to discuss how SAHF can best support them in their work by addressing questions that arise during the course of doing business. At the request of SAHF's asset managers, for example, SAHF staff pulled together a series of conference calls on the subject of turning around troubled properties. Guest speakers identified by staff of the NeighborWorks® Multifamily Initiative volunteered their time to share their expertise with the group. The asset managers then came together once again, this time to hear a presentation about preparing for REAC inspections. A guest speaker from On-Site Insight led this informative session.
SAHF’s upcoming day-long meeting is with its public relations peer group for a session titled “Defining our place in a community—how best to enter, market and sustain a community.” Here SAHF members will discuss how best to navigate the political atmosphere in a community: who are the stakeholders and how can members work best with them when developing a property? Meanwhile, SAHF’s developer peer group is in the midst of planning its meeting to discuss the impact possible changes to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit legislation will have on their ‘deal making’ capabilities. Finally SAHF is currently in the midst of exploring how best to finance capital improvements in the interest of assisting its members to achieve energy efficiency and related operating cost savings, an initiative that grew out of a prior SAHF peer-to-peer meeting.