At first glance, it seems that there is no solution to the growing housing crisis. The problem seems so large and so difficult to grasp. Is it possible for a community to get its arms around the problem? Can a housing crisis be addressed? Can a community act so housing becomes more affordable? Are there other communities where a housing crisis has been successfully been addressed? Is there an effective model for a housing market evaluation and intervention?

Building Community Awareness: These sessions are conducted as forums designed to present an overview of the community's housing crisis and to build awareness of the need to address the crisis.

Community Assessment Workshops: These workshops bring together the stakeholders from the community in a facilitated discussion of the issues facing the community; to identify the community's strengths and weaknesses; and to begin the process of developing a housing vision for the community.

Community Action Agenda: Following the community assessment workshops, the next step for many communities is often the development of a community action agenda. Community assessment workshops results are summarized and meetings are held with key community leaders. The output is an action oriented agenda of next steps for the community.

Housing Needs Assessment: In order to begin the process of developing housing solutions, a community must assess its current housing situation. In a housing needs assessment, a community's housing supply (quantity, quality, type, and affordability) is quantified and evaluated, and that supply is compared to the housing needs of local residents, the local workforce, and retirees and second home owners.

Community Intervention Workshops: These workshops build on the community assessment workshops, refining the community vision, identifying specific housing goals, programs, and actions steps, and leading to the development of a housing intervention plan.

In these times of reduced funding for federal and state social programs, cutbacks in corporate-giving budgets, and limited foundation and endowment funding, it is important that agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other community groups be able to demonstrate the worth and value of their programs.

It is no longer enough to measure inputs to the process such as programs created, dollars spent or number of participants served. It is becoming more and more necessary to measure the results of the programs, and demonstrating to those funding the programs that their funds are being spent wisely.

Organizations need to evaluate the results of their programs and services and demonstrate the value to their sources of funding. Their future funding and economic survival may depend on their ability to demonstrate results.

Wyndham Financial can assist agencies and other organizations in evaluating the results of their programs and services. We apply proven, academically rigorous research techniques to study conditions pre- and post- program, isolate the effects of the interventions, and quantify the results of the programs.

Wyndham Financial is one of the pioneers in applying return on investment (ROI) methodology to community and economic development programs. Using this structured methodology, we are able to identify and isolate the benefits of a program, assign monetary value to tangible benefits and identify intangible benefits where values cannot be assigned, and program costs to program benefits.

Wyndham Financial specializes in housing, real estate, and community and economic development consulting. Depending on a client's needs, we can take a project from concept, through design, to implementation, handling all the development details for the client, or we can add expertise to specific development areas for the client.

Our target client base includes communities, nonprofit organizations, financial intermediaries, and foundations and other funders.

Wyndham Financial offers a full range of financial and project management services focused on real estate development and management, economic development, and nonprofit capacity building.

Our real estate services include overall project management; commercial property loan underwriting and analysis; affordable housing loan underwriting and analysis; and problem asset management and disposition. Our expertise includes the development of projects financed with low-income housing tax credits and extends to complex workouts and restructures of projects where the tax credit periods are expiring.

Economic development services include community strategic planning; Main Street revitalization; community competitive analysis; the creation of public and community development loan funds; and the underwriting and analysis of small and micro-business loans.

Please contact Dr. Hettinger at Wyndham Financial for details and availability