January 27, 2015 Webinar: Affirmative Marketing Of Accessible Units

www.scanph.org/webinar

AFFIRMATIVE  MARKETING OF ACCESSIBLE UNITS  - How to list and find accessible rental housing on the Los Angeles County  Housing Resource Center website.

This web-based training is designed to help developers, lenders, property managers, housing locators, advocates and other affordable and accessible housing stakeholders understand the process for registering and finding rental housing on the Los Angeles County Housing Resource Center (LAC-HRC) website, with a special emphasis on features and best-practices for marketing the availability of accessible units.

In 2013, HUD published a proposed rule entitled Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), which is intended to cause recipients of federal housing funds to take proactive steps to identify and prevent violations of the Fair Housing Act.  Both the County and City of Los Angeles have increased their oversight and requirements for affirmative marketing of accessible units in affordable projects, and TCAC has doubled the requirement for the provision of tax-credit units that are accessible to persons with physical or sensory disabilities.

The LAC-HRC website (housing.lacounty.gov) has proven to be an effective tool for affirmative marketing of publicly-funded rental units. Funded by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and administered through a contract between the Community Development Commission and the national nonprofit, Socialserve.com, the LAC-HRC has recently added new features to help market accessible units.  The website meets national website design and content accessibility requirements, is available in multiple languages, and is supported by a bilingual toll-free call center that uses a relay service and TTY (text telephone) for deaf and hard of hearing callers.

This one hour webinar, presented by Shane Taylor of Socialserve.com, will have two parts. The first half of the presentation will be an overview of the LAC-HRC website’s free-to-use housing locator features, and an explanation of the differences between the public-view and the restricted-access view available to approved Agency Users.  The second half of the webinar will focus exclusively on the process for registering properties at the time of initial lease-up, with an emphasis on optimizing the marketing of ADA and/or UFAS compliant accessible units. This part of the presentation will be of particular use to property managers, project managers, and management companies involved with publicly-funded affordable housing developments.