Facilitating Federally Subsidized Housing Managerial Role Expansion: Beyond "Bricks and Mortar" to Lifespace Intervention With Vulnerable Older Tenants

Abstract

A mail survey of 95 upstate New York subsidized housing managers examined the issue of managerial role expansion. Data were collected pertinent to the proportion of their time that housing managers spend working with older tenants on support-service-related activities, and the organizational and managerial factors associated with such involvement. Major findings were the following: (a) managers spend a mean of 24.3% of their time on tenant-related tasks, specifically 9.5% on facilitating support service (health care and social services) use by vulnerable older tenants; (b) involvement in this specific service linkage task varied greatly across managers, ranging from 0% to 40.0% of their time; and (c) three predictors entered stepwise multiple linear regression-two organizational (having a written care management policy and a functioning tenant council) and one managerial (having received some service linkage training), together accounting for 40.4% (R2 = .404) of the variability in manager service linkage involvement (19.1, 13.4 and 7.9%, respectively). Implications for policy devel opment to facilitate subsidized housing managerial role expansion are discussed.