HumanGood has extended its service coordination model to most of its communities and leveraged philanthropic support and community partnerships to enhance on-campus nutrition and wellness programs.
HumanGood has more than 100 affordable housing communities that, as of December 2025, are home to more than 9,200 low-income older adults. In California, Delaware, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, the nonprofit has both U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 202 communities and newer properties with Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) financing.
Through ongoing leadership support for service coordination, HumanGood has grown its service coordination team to nearly 80 positions across its network. This expansion aims to support the interrelated goals of:
- Enabling older adults to live independently and increase self-sufficiency with a person-centered planning approach.
- Reducing isolation and avoidable hospitalizations and nursing home admissions.
Because the quality of service coordination is essential to consistently achieving these goals, HumanGood has proactively invested in hiring and retaining a skilled service coordinator workforce. In 2024, internal documents show this team had more than 99,000 interactions with older adults.
Alongside service coordination, HumanGood has also been expanding nutrition assistance and wellness programs on its campuses. Partnerships with community service providers, such as those that offer health screenings, have made this expansion possible through their in-kind support. Additionally, HumanGood’s development team has cultivated donations and philanthropic support for nutrition, health, and wellness programs.
Keys to Success
- Expand service coordination incrementally with sustained support from organizational leadership.
- Recruit and retain service coordinators who are mission-driven and skilled in person-centered planning. Support them with professional development, coaching, and career pathways.
- Build health care and other partnerships to help expand service coordination staff and on-campus programs and services.
Service Coordination Model
Across its housing properties, HumanGood’s service coordination model emphasizes person-centered planning. The support begins with a non-clinical comprehensive assessment and the development of a person-centered plan to address needs. Service coordinators keep track of individuals’ priorities, educate them about services in the community, assist with making connections, ask if they are receiving the supports, and monitor well-being for changes.
In addition to serving individuals in HumanGood residences, service coordinators also respond to each residential community’s interests. They both directly create wellness activities and identify and engage community organizations, including faith-based organizations, universities, health care providers, senior centers, consumer health organizations, and other community nonprofit organizations. These local partners come to HumanGood residences to provide food distribution, health education, exercise programs, health screenings, assistance with insurance and benefits, and digital literacy and skills classes.
The nonprofit also has daily morning meetings for service coordinators and property management team members on campus to coordinate efforts to support the older adults they serve. HumanGood’s team includes a set of supervisors and coaches who help service coordinators use available tools, develop problem-solving skills, and adhere to quality standards and HUD guidance.
Workforce Investments in High-Quality Service Coordination
According to HumanGood, service coordination is most effective when team members develop strong relationships with individuals and have a full set of service coordinator competencies. For this reason, HumanGood has a multi-faceted strategy to hire and retain people whose attributes are associated with successful service coordination (e.g., trustworthiness, creative problem-solving, and communication skills, including empathy). They start by encouraging current employees to refer potential applicants. The hiring team uses both scenario-based interview questions and assessment tools to identify professionals with the needed attributes. The nonprofit also ensures team members are strongly committed to HumanGood’s mission of helping older adults “live their best lives possible.”
To retain staff, HumanGood strives to pay a living wage; in contrast, service coordinators in 25 states cannot afford to rent a place to live, according to the American Association of Service Coordinators 2023 salary survey. Other HumanGood retention practices include not only career pathways to supervisory and other advanced roles but also employee recognition programs that correspond to team members’ interests. For retention and professional development, the nonprofit has philanthropic support for ongoing training and education as well as a tuition reimbursement program. Team members can also access discounted tuition arrangements with partnering educational institutions.
Funding for Service Coordination
Service coordination—a standing line item in HumanGood’s housing operating budget—is financed with traditional funding sources. Like some other operators of HUD Section 202 housing, HumanGood has HUD service coordination funding for some residences. The nonprofit also fully leverages a HUD flexibility that allows the housing operator to propose an expense of up to 10 percent of a service coordinator’s salary to provide quality-assurance monitoring, technical assistance, review of participant files, etc. This allowable expense for quality assurance enables HumanGood to support service coordinators through shared ideas, oversight of resident services systems, data dashboards for systems and programs, and file reviews. At its LIHTC properties, the operation’s budget fully or partially pays for service coordination whenever feasible.
Philanthropic Partnerships for Health and Wellness
Philanthropic partnerships have been essential to HumanGood’s ability to promote health and wellness. Because of its large scale, HumanGood can support a development team (in the HumanGood Foundation) that cultivates philanthropic partners for on-site health and wellness programs. For example:
- Donations, grants, and private foundations support HumanGood’s Cupboards of Care® program, which provides nutritional counseling and pre-paid gift cards for purchasing produce, lean proteins, and other cost-prohibitive foods.
- A community foundation grant enabled one of HumanGood’s affordable apartment buildings in Tacoma, Washington to offer support counseling, care management on behavioral health issues, optional group education classes, and staff training on crisis intervention skills.
Health care partnerships have been another source of support. In California, HumanGood partnered with a managed care plan (MCP) to set aside 14 residential units for their MCP members, especially for individuals leaving nursing homes or other institutions. Another California MCP, through a time-limited Medicaid pilot program, provided in-kind support by locating a care navigator at a HumanGood residence three times a week.
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