Irvine, CA – Jamboree Housing Corporation received a special $15,000 grant from the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) as part of CSH’s Assuring Quality Initiative (AQUI) to assess and enhance the affordable housing developer’s program to assist residents living with permanent mental illness and to help end homelessness.
CSH, whose primary mission is to end homelessness, is providing the grant to Jamboree and several other leading supportive housing organizations throughout the U.S. The purpose of the grants is to produce improved programming performance models that could generate information that will be shared among supportive housing organizations to enhance the perception and practice of supportive housing nationally.
One of California’s largest nonprofit developers of affordable housing and a provider of supportive housing, Jamboree is using the grant to create a comprehensive quality improvement plan focused on the company’s current and future portfolio of supportive housing units that it has committed to develop as part of its new affordable housing properties.
To expand the company’s supportive housing capabilities and expertise, last fall Jamboree acquired HOMES, Inc. – a leading nonprofit provider of housing and support for people with psychiatric disabilities. As part of Jamboree’s Resident Services Group, this new nonprofit partnership is dedicated to the same expanded mission: to create more quality supportive housing for those with special needs. HOMES adds critical mental health programming and funding to Jamboree’s mission to strengthen communities by enhancing the quality of family life, according to Laura Archuleta, Jamboree president. Additionally, Jamboree’s Housing with HEART, another affiliate of its Resident Services Group, offers Jamboree residents free, non-clinical, onsite services and programs tailored to meet the needs of residents and their families at 38 of its 66 communities throughout California.
In response to CSH’s Assuring Quality Initiative, Archuleta says Jamboree is concentrating its efforts on three of the Initiative’s “Seven Dimensions of Quality” program categories. The three areas are: Dimension #1: Administration, Management, and Coordination; Dimension #5: Property Management and Asset Management; and Dimension #7: Data, Documentation, and Evaluation.
Jamboree specifically is focusing its assessment on the company’s supportive housing at Diamond Apartment Homes in Anaheim, California, a property Jamboree and HOMES began co-developing in 2006. Opened in January 2009, this innovative property provides both housing and mental health supportive services for formerly homeless individuals, who are living with mental illness, and their families.
In a state where the chronically homeless population outpaces the national average, local officials and affordable housing developers alike are applauding the merits of Diamond, an innovative and cost-effective solution in the fight to help end long-term homelessness.
Combining the creative use of land, sustainable building practices and strategic partnerships under one roof, Diamond is home to 24 families who earn no more than $30,120 – 30% of the area median income. Some 24 months later, Diamond continues to boast a 96% original resident retention rate. That level of success is unheard of in the mental health community, far exceeding measures of success in residential stability, increased skills or income and greater self-determination as set by the Governor’s Homeless Initiative – one of multiple layers of both public and private funding sources for the property – to create 10,000 additional units of permanent supportive housing for the population of homeless individuals with chronic mental illness.
The CSH grant is also helping to provide funding to Jamboree for software to modernize the company’s asset management practices. Just recently, CSH staff held a forum for the service providers and city and county officials associated with Diamond Apartment Homes to discuss best practices in delivery of resident services. The forum is resulting in the creation of several templates for service provision that Jamboree will use at its new Doria and Courier Place affordable housing developments in Irvine, CA, and Claremont, CA, respectively.
“This CSH grant provided important funding for us to make a more comprehensive assessment of our supportive housing programming, which will result in fine tuning our efforts to make a significant impact on these residents with such critical program services,” said Helen Cameron, Jamboree’s manager of Services for Residents with Special Needs and formerly executive director of HOMES. “We look forward to sharing our results with other organizations that we believe will benefit from our assessment, programming and experience.”
About Jamboree: Founded in 1990, Irvine, CA-headquartered Jamboree Housing Corporation is an award-winning, broad-based nonprofit housing development company that develops, acquires, renovates and manages permanently affordable rental and ownership housing throughout California for working families, seniors and people with special needs. Housing with HEART and HOMES Inc. are 501(c)(3) organizations and comprise Jamboree’s resident services group. A leading nonprofit developer, Jamboree is committed to sustaining excellence with high quality affordable housing that is good for the environment, the economy and local communities. It currently has about $250 million in affordable housing projects in its development pipeline and a $1 billion asset portfolio that includes the development of and/or ownership interest in 6,700 homes in more than 66 California communities. Currently, Housing with HEART programs and services that foster learning, health and community building are offered at 38 Jamboree communities with designated staff at each location. For more information, go to www.jamboreehousing.com.
About Corporation for Supportive Housing: The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) is a national nonprofit organization and Community Development Financial Institution that helps communities create permanent housing with services to prevent and end homelessness. Founded in 1991, CSH advances its mission by providing advocacy, expertise, leadership, and financial resources to make it easier to create and operate supportive housing. CSH seeks to help create an expanded supply of supportive housing for people, including single adults, families with children, and young adults, who have extremely low-incomes, who have disabling conditions, and/or face other significant challenges that place them at ongoing risk of homelessness. For more information, go to www.csh.org.