On March 21, Decades’ President Bill Bamford participated in the Housing panel at the New Jersey Association of Community Providers’ Annual Conference in Atlantic City, NJ. The panel, which also included Chris Canna, VP of Development at the Corporation for Independent Living; Roger F. Grutzmacher, NJ Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency’s Managing Architect/Technical Services; Kate Kelly, Executive Director of Supportive Housing Association on NJ; Asish Patel, Chief Operating Officer at Monarch Housing Associates; and Janel Winter, Director of Housing and Community Resources at the NJ Department of Community Affairs, discussed the challenges of the development process, design considerations and the diverse opportunities available for funding of group homes in addition to ways to eliminate waste in current maintenance operations to reallocate budget resources to fund a long term capital plan as required to prevent group homes from becoming insurmountable liabilities. This discussion provided impactful data and information that is helpful to organizations serving individuals with I/DD who live in facilities such as integrated apartment buildings and group homes.
“I enjoyed sharing Decades’ relevant data based on over 150,000 hours of managed maintenance efforts to date and solutions to reducing waste and unlocking funds for important capital initiatives with the human services community in such times of financial uncertainty. I also greatly valued learning from the other panelists,” noted Bamford. “With assisted technologies and other facility-related housing innovations, the independent living future is even brighter for our constituents.”
