How Lewiston Housing Used Haven Connect to Achieve 98% Occupancy
Results that Speak Volumes
Lewiston Housing has seen significant improvement with Haven Connect:
98% Occupancy Rates
97% Faster purges - 40 hours down to 1.5 hours
3 Hours saved per week with process automation
More viewings in less time due to process automation
Better accountability with all client communications
About Lewiston Housing Authority
Created in 1963, Lewiston Housing Authority is the municipal housing authority for the City of Lewiston, Maine. Lewiston Housing provides management, maintenance and resident services for 466 units of Public Housing, LIHTC, and market rate housing, and administers approximately 1,200 Housing Choice vouchers.
Why Haven Connect
Hollie Sprague is the Director of Property Management and Rental Assistance. Her numerous responsibilities include day-to-day oversight of property management, resident services, and capital planning, to name a few. Haven Connect was an obvious choice for Hollie's team because it empowers them to accomplish much more work in significantly less time. This results in massive cost savings for Lewiston Housing, and enables the team to focus on more impactful activities for their community.
“In the past, it would take two staff 40 hours to process purges, send letters, and update files. This was done once every other year due to the time consumption. But with Haven Connect, each PM spends 1.5 hours, twice a year. So we spend less time and have better accountability. And as a result, our occupancy rates have increased to 98% by using Haven Connect.”
Overview, Strategy, & Results
In early 2020, Lewiston Housing Authority was forced to quickly pivot from an office-based workspace to a home-based workspace for their employees. To accomplish this feat, Lewiston Housing would need to make the transition from non-web-enabled software and mostly paper-based processes, to a modern, web-based software that was primarily digital but could still support paper-based processes when needed.
Haven Connect empowered Lewiston Housing to seamlessly break away from the constraints of their previous systems, and to get work done in a way that made sense for their organization based on their own processes and preferences.
In addition to enabling Lewiston Housing to get work done when and where they want, Haven Connect has helped Lewiston Housing increase occupancy rates, fill vacancies more quickly, radically reduce the amount of time to perform waitlist purges, and improve accountability and transparency with regards to client communications.
Over the past year of using Haven Connect, Lewiston Housing's occupancy rates have soared to 98%, waitlist purges have become 97% faster, and staff are able to schedule more viewings each week in 3 hours less time.
“With Haven Connect, identifying an applicant who is interested in an apartment is a million times faster. I just watched my team fill a vacancy with Haven and the whole process took maybe 10 clicks. Everybody responded quickly and it was all clean. I can’t imagine doing this without Haven Connect now.”