The History of Way Finders

- Peter A. Gagliardi, President and CEO
 

Welcome to Way Finders, Inc., formerly known as HAPHousing.  Our new brand has been a long time in the making.

Starting life in 1973 as the Housing Allowance Project, Inc., this organization was originally created to be one of ten sites hosting the Experimental Housing Allowance Project, a planned three-year effort by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to create a new approach to providing housing to households that could not afford market rate rents. The Housing Allowance Project, Inc. tested one of several models for administering programs designed to assist renters with the cost of rent by providing funds to help with the monthly payment.

For our first decade or more, we were dominated by what became a very successful rental assistance program.  Building upon that program at our core, we were able to begin to address related matters such as eviction prevention, discrimination, and housing quality.

Over time, we were able to add new initiatives, ranging from first time homebuyer education and counseling, to weatherization to make homes more energy efficient, to landlord education through regular classes and a unique landlord manual that is now in its 7^th edition.

In the mid-1980’s, the Housing Allowance Project became involved in real estate development, focused initially on housing for people with special needs and revitalization of deteriorating rental properties in our cities. This was followed by our first steps into rental property management.

In the new century, we launched a more extensive effort to develop housing with a continued focus on family housing and urban revitalization. Our work included renovated and new homes for the first time homebuyer population.  And our rental property management work began to grow.  Today, we have 10 developments in our pipeline, consisting of more than 400 units of new or renovated affordable rental housing.

By 2008, we had expanded our facilities for homeless families from 9 units at Prospect House to a total of 55 units. Having become a significant part of the effort to address homeless, our role continued to grow; as a result, we currently operate nearly 200 units, have created a new approach through our Residential Resource Centers, and have added an integrated package of services, often in partnership with other organizations.  Today, our efforts include job readiness training and job placement, often with partners but also through the efforts of our own specialized staff.

Our efforts to prevent homelessness today routinely prevents 600-700 families from losing their homes annually. Our work with our partners has resulted in the number of families housed in motels in Western Massachusetts dropping to zero from a high of 457 in 2015.

Our revitalization work has brought dramatic change to Byers Street in the Armoury Quadrangle neighborhood and, with our partners, has brought 50 new or renovated homes to Springfield’s Old Hill Neighborhood, once burdened by more than 150 litter-strewn vacant lots, boarded up or burned out buildings, and deteriorating abandoned homes. Through Community Building and Engagement, we have been able to bring hope and leadership training to local leaders while building neighborhood efforts to improve health and well being, public safety, educational opportunity, and improved community facilities. We are currently working with properties and neighborhood organizations in Holyoke, building upon the wonderful expansion of the Holyoke Public Library.

Nearly ten years ago, the crisis of the day was foreclosure. Thousands of the region’s homeowners were in grave danger of losing their homes, often because of inappropriate lending practices that left owners with toxic mortgages. We rallied our peers and created the Western Massachusetts Foreclosure Prevention Center, a collaborative effort that led to many homes being saved.

In the area of homeownership, we have engaged our peers throughout Western Massachusetts to create the Western Massachusetts Homeownership Center. We have embarked upon an effort supported by NeighborWorks America to create a sustainable homeownership education and counseling program to ensure that there is not a repeat of the foreclosure disaster of the past decade.

Through all of this, our core program, Rental Assistance, has continued to grow, albeit more slowly than the demand would warrant. Today, we administer more than 5500 units of state and federal housing vouchers.  We have a waiting list of more than 28,000 households who, given the current level of turnover and the lack of new allocations, may have decades to wait for assistance. Pumping more than $40 million into the local economy each year, we make it possible for lower income households to rent apartments on the open market and make it possible for property owners to succeed – maintaining their properties, paying local taxes, and keeping their mortgages paid up to date.

Within the Rental Assistance program, we are promoting an effort known as Family Self Efficiency through which we have supported hundreds of participants in their efforts to improve their financial status, often leading to improved income through education and employment, ultimately resulting in freeing up the voucher for another family and often leading the former recipient to homeownership.

Needless to say, the Housing Allowance Project, Inc., which had already contracted its name to HAP, Inc. and its public brand to HAPHousing, has morphed into something else.

In 2014, we initiated a major Strategic Planning process. All of our employees, some 155 at the time, participated in that process. Each of our six lines of business developed its own strategic plan within the corporate strategic plan. 

We identified some key things:

• We were no longer well represented by our old name. We were becoming a new organization with an expanded mission and we needed a name that matched our aspirations.
• Our work going forward would be built upon our history of collaborations and partnerships, recognizing that together we were more than the sum of our parts.
• Stable housing was not the end of our work. Once a family is stabilized in their housing, the opportunity to make a real difference begins. By being cheerleaders, coaches, and mentors, connecting the dots and engaging our partners in the effort, we can and will support participants in all of our programs in their efforts to ensure that their children do well in school, that their families become more economically viable, and that they thrive.

As we came together on March 31 to announce that we are now Way Finders, Inc., we also announced that Way Finders, Inc., now has two new affiliates, MBL Housing & Development, LLC, a consulting firm based in Amherst that assists developers and owners of affordable housing, and Common Capital, Inc., a Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) that makes loans to new and growing small business, helping the business owners to improve their own economic status while creating jobs for others in the communities where they are located.

We are Way Finders, Inc., a new organization based upon the strong histories of HAPHousing, MBL Housing & Development, and Common Capital.  We are here to offer an integrated approach to community development, an asset enhancement approach to our work with our clients, and a collaborative approach to our peers and our partners.