A Resilience Toolkit for Affordable Housing

When disaster strikes, affordable housing organizations have unique resilience problems to address—like ensuring their often-vulnerable residents remain continuously housed. “Ready to Respond” (R2R) is a staffing toolkit designed to help affordable housing organizations anticipate and smoothly respond to climate risks and other emergencies. Several groups, including Enterprise Community Partners and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, partnered to develop the tools, which are free.

The tools help teams set up a role structure within the organization that includes an emergency preparedness coordinator (who’s responsible for putting the plan together and maintaining it), as well as an incident commander, external communications chief, logistics chief, housing chief, and business continuity chief. Also provided are role descriptions and action checklists, along with a tabletop exercise so teams can practice their response.

The ultimate goal of the kit is to help affordable housing organizations protect assets and reduce resident displacement. Resilience planning can also boost investor confidence and possibly even lower insurance rates, according to Enterprise Community Partners.

More on resilient housing

Improving Resilience in Affordable Housing

Checking for Resilience in Multifamily Housing

How a Hurricane Forged New Hope for Resilience

For more information

Enterprise Community Partners
enterprisecommunity.org