Philadelphia Housing Authority: About Face
Real Estate
Written by Liz Jones   
Monday, 31 December 2007
Philadelphia Housing Authority: About Face - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Carl Greene describes the strategies behind this urban housing authority’s amazing turnaround.
When Carl Greene joined the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) as executive director in 1998, he faced the traditional governmental agency wrought with bureaucracy and red tape. PHA’s technology was outdated, its business processes lacked coherency, and its inventory of low-income housing was deteriorating. In addition, no solid plan was in place to recruit talent despite the proliferation of colleges and universities in the area. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

Philadelphia Housing Authority: About Face - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Carl Greene, Executive Director
Greene interpreted his role in the organization as a direction-setter. He immediately began devising a plan to achieve four primary objectives: overhaul the organization’s technology and business structure to increase efficiency; create a strategy to recruit and retain talent; replace outdated properties and make aesthetic improvements to existing properties; and diversify the organization’s funding sources. “As a well-oiled organization, I believed we could manage our real estate like a private company,” Greene said.

Less is more
To get PHA’s technology and business processes in order, Greene first hired a group of business analysts, with newly acquired college degrees in their hands, to document all of the organization’s business processes. In 2001, PHA installed an enterprise resource planning system from Oracle, which helped eliminate the use of paper in several business processes, including requisitions for materials, time sheets, employee evaluations, and purchase orders.

Greene recalled the previous system for processing time sheets. Superintendents from more than 60 sites throughout Philadelphia hand-delivered time sheets to a central processing location where the payroll department manually entered the information into the computer system, and checks were delivered to employees personally. Today, superintendents input hours into the system directly, and all employees receive direct deposit. These changes allowed PHA to not only eliminate the need for superintendents to travel to the central office, but also reduce the number of employees in its payroll department. Greene added that the automated labor reporting system practically eliminated overtime.

“With so many locations, we needed to reduce the number of steps and people required to carry out our internal processes, and getting rid of paper certainly helped us to do that,” he said.

Shortly after implementing the ERP system, PHA adopted a customer relationship management system to improve communications and service to its 84,000 customers, as well as a check scanning system to speed up the process of collecting rent. Paper checks are now scanned into the central system, and the information is relayed to the bank where the money is credited to PHA’s account. “We no longer have to collect checks, ship them downtown, verify them, and manually key them in,” said Greene.

Creating a team
To create a team that could turn the organization around, Greene needed to rewrite a set of poorly defined job descriptions, develop a standardized performance evaluation system, and increase the number of non-unionized employees. He also needed to create a recruitment strategy to infuse the organization with young blood.

PHA developed a technical aid program, which recruits students from nearby Temple University, La Salle University, Penn State, Drexel University, and others, and rotates them through all areas of the organization. About twice per year, 30 individuals participate in the program. “I noticed that PHA lacked college trained individuals. For any organization to change, its employees need to demonstrate the ability to learn,” said Greene, adding that PHA developed co-op and internship programs with local universities as well.

As more college graduates joined the company, Greene created a number of new non-union job titles and decreased the number of employees in positions that would soon become obsolete thanks to technological advancements. Doing so helped change the ratio of union employees to non-union employees, a move that was necessary in creating a unified culture. “Sometimes union workers are more focused on their contracts and tend to clash in terms of organizational values with non-union workers,” said Greene, recalling that one office, when he first started, consisted of 98 union employees and two non-union employees. Today, he estimates the ratio is closer to 50/50.

“Also, we can’t change business strategies with unionized employees without going back and forth with the union. Sometimes, they don’t want to renegotiate unless a significant event occurs.”

As a result of technological advancements and restructuring, PHA reduced its overall employee count from 2,500 in 2000 to 1,200 employees today, while at the same time increasing the number of tenants from 50,000 to 84,000.

To complement its recruitment strategy, PHA developed an internal communications and basic training program to drive the new team-oriented culture home. According to Greene, the training program focuses on job-related skills as much as the intangibles, such as teamwork, diversity, empowerment, stewardship, and interpersonal skills. An annual retreat, quarterly off-site meetings, an employee newsletter, and rewards and recognition programs also serve to bind employees together. “Everyone needs to understand that five guys on the basketball court don’t make a team. A team is a group of people with interdependent skills and a common goal.”

Beyond expectations
Improving internal processes wouldn’t do the company any good from a marketing standpoint unless it had desirable properties to showcase, so Greene set out to identify the organization’s 10 worst properties and demolish them. Since he came on board, PHA has demolished 8,000 units and rebuilt 6,000—at a cost of $1.3 billion.

With the understanding that not all undesirable properties could be replaced at once, the organization identified properties that were in suitable condition and proceeded to paint, landscape, and repair them. “We wanted to let the marketplace know that we had short- and long-term plans for improvement. It might not get done right away, but it would get done,” said Greene.

Greene also wanted to diversify PHA’s financial portfolio. In the early 2000, it became the first housing authority to sell capital revenue anticipation bonds, which come with a sweet side dish for investors: low-income-housing tax credits.

PHA has a $1 billion rebuilding plan to replace more outdated properties over the next five to seven years. Not only has the organization’s efforts earned it investor confidence, but also confidence from the market. Greene credits at least some of that recognition to a new branding campaign that has the organization involved in a number of public events. “Our logo is ‘Building Beyond Expectations,’ and people can see that is exactly what we are doing as they drive by our properties.”
 
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