If multifamily housing property managers do not have clear policies in place on evictions and late fees and open clear lines of communication with residents, residents who may have contracted COVID-19 may withhold that information for fear of eviction.
Crisis management requires having real-time information by which you can react and respond, and a lack of communication robs the property management team of the ability to best serve and protect the community.
Establishing a clear communications loop is not difficult—it just needs to be started, or refined when it’s already in place. It involves being clear about what will happen when a resident comes forward with illness, encouraging residents to engage, and allowing them to provide real-time feedback throughout this crisis. Practice makes perfect.
Pick a Path
Federal, state, and local governments are increasingly stepping in to stop or stall evictions. Late fees and whether to even collect rent from those impacted are still open questions. These are business decisions that each property manager needs to make, but the sooner a company picks a path and communicates it out to their teams and residents, then it removes any uncertainty in an already uncertain time.
Clear Policies
Airlines have already wrestled with policy treatment, including how to help passengers speak up about potential illness and avoid endangering others. JetBlue, for instance, had to decide how to treat the news of a passenger notifying them after a flight that he had contracted COVID-19. For airlines it has meant reexamining cancellation fees, among other considerations.
Property managers are working their way through this process now. Clear policies can include allaying fears of eviction or late fees because a resident has been tested for or confirmed to have contracted COVID-19. It includes explaining what concrete steps the property manager will take when notified that a resident has COVID-19, and helping everyone come back to why it’s important to work together as a community by making it safe to speak up.
Every community is different in terms of the best way to get this information out, and it’s best to start with what already works and is in place. It may be a combination of flyers, emails, phone calls, or texts. As feedback comes in, the communications mix can be updated and tuned to what residents and a property management team find is easiest and clearest.
Address Distrust
The inherent problem, however, is that in a resident’s eyes the property manager may have too much power to be trusted with the information. Perhaps the property manager will not act against the resident now, they think, but they may in the future if the economy appears to get worse.
Property managers may be reluctant to put in writing promises of what they will, or will not do, when notified of potential or confirmed COVID-19. They may fear residents who will take advantage of this. If a spirit of distrust has crept into the relationship between residents and a property manager, it is hard to correct that in a crisis. But allowing an adversarial culture to persist is worse. Teams who have invested in building relationships, especially people-to-people relationships between employees and residents, can fare better.
This is where customer service, combined with compliance and policies, show their value. They are tools for avoiding the problems that crop up when there is too little communication.
Silence is Not Good
Hearing nothing from residents does not mean all is well, and may mean the opposite. It is better to hear from a resident that they have a fever, a cough, and are going to find a place to have a test, just to be on the safe side. That is better than hearing nothing from a resident who may be sick, or knows they are sick, but the property management only finds out a week or more later.
If employees are sick, they will speak up. Property management employees have sick leave as well as protections that make it less likely that they would come to work suspecting they may be ill, or if they have been tested for COVID-19.
But residents may be in difficult economic straits made worse by the pandemic and fear eviction if they speak up. Patient privacy regulations also may mean that health authorities will not share a resident's condition with property management companies. That may evolve given that airlines are notified when a COVID-19 passenger has been identified, but events remain in motion.
The very speed of the news, however, also introduces uncertainty and fears of the worst that can strangle the open communications necessary for property managers, employees, and residents to band together to help each other.
Where to Start?
The essential starting point is clear communication that property managers can stand behind, that is consistent with the best past behaviors of the company and its employees, and doesn't represent empty promises.
But it has to be done in the form of a loop. Clear communications have to go out, and every time the property manager shares information, it must include a way for residents to respond. Residents must be able to email, text, call, or speak to the best people on the property management team.
If residents have something they are nervous about sharing, they will not share it at first. Residents may test the lines of communication first with some trivial or difficult matter to see how property managers respond before opening up. That is why all communications are important, and why property management cannot be too busy to listen and respond.
The loop can be jump-started by one-on-one phone calls, pulse surveys to check how everyone is doing, or a combination.
Stay the Course
Property managers can help everyone breathe again by coming back to proven policies and practices that work and keeping open proven lines of communication and feedback. They can then continue to assess events as they change and provide fact-based updates.
Leaders can encourage residents and employees to share and problem solve together. Ultimately these lines of communications can lead to empowered communities that are safer and stronger. The key is to communicate in an organized, consistent, and continual fashion.