Empowerment Unites: Public Housing Agency Specialization and Private-Sector Property Management

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Public housing property managers have been known to think and operate differently than private-sector property managers. Approaching the same tasks from different fundamental mind sets has resulted in wide discrepancies in both basic operational principles and product quality. New support from the Department of Housing and Urban Development has allowed the public-sector world and private-sector property managers to establish a "validated grammar" of operating principles from which they can provide the highest quality product from the best use of available resources.

Within the scope of its responsibilities, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) supports the use of publicly owned residential property to provide affordable housing to the low-income citizens of America. Yet how to include public housing into the family of property management professionals has been an enigma for years. From a layman's perspective, the most basic stumbling block has seemed to rest in the fact that the private sector is competitive and profit motivated, while the public sector is not. However, while making money or not making money may appear to be the key philosophical separation between the public- and private-sector mind set, more refined distinctions of fundamental civil service duty have made it difficult to envision public-sector property managers as CERTIFIED PROPERTY MANAGERS[R].

Recently, however, HUD has given public-sector managers a new opportunity to contribute competitively and professionally to the property management profession. Under recent …