Our planned RSSN and SHLN educational workshops for the month of April had to be postponed for a future date due to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak as we continued to navigate this new landscape of life. As our team has adapted and heard the concerns of the resident service coordinators and supportive housing operators we continued to team up with CSH and LeSar Development to host a series of COVID-19 response related webinars back in March and have continued to host these webinars in the month of April. Our twice a month webinars have been attended by an average of 200 professionals in the affordable and supportive housing sector each time.

April’s webinars focused upon providing educational information around COVID-19, sharing resources related to food and helping resident’s combat loneliness during this time. On April 8th, we welcomed Michelle Sites from CoNam Management who discussed how their property management organization has adapted new policies regarding COVID-19 and what to do if a resident test positive. We also heard from Tricia Tasto Levien of Wakeland Housing and Development Corporation about how they have been creative in reaching residents and providing food resources.

On our April 28th webinar, we welcomed Gil Vera, Esq., Senior Attorney on the Housing Team for the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, who discussed the details of various eviction moratoriums (Federal/State/Local) and the impact it is having on affordable and supportive housing residents, including the protections the moratoriums provide and misunderstandings of the orders. In addition, we discussed the impact this is having on housing providers who are seeing reductions in rent collection.

We also welcomed Hanan Scrapper from PATH San Diego who discussed strategies to address tenant isolation and how they have been following a harm reduction model within their supportive housing programs. Hanan also shared sample agency policies that have helped with the adjustments in services in this the new environment such as calendars to give the residents with a new to-do for every day to help pass the time.

The Resident Services Support Network and Supportive Housing Learning Network are cornerstones of the SDHF mission on educating and collectively gathering the affordable housing sector in San Diego County.