YOUR BEST ASSETS TO ATTRACT & RETAIN RESIDENTS MIGHT ALREADY CALL YOUR PROPERTIES HOME.
There may be one or two residents in each of your properties with the desire and potential to start a community that can grow to where neighbors won’t want to move out and others will want to move in. We’re here to help find and fortify those valuable souls.
We’re here to unlock the wonders of multifamily housing.
America is facing a purpose crisis as well as getting sicker and lonelier while trending older.
But here’s the sunnier side of that tale for you and us all:
The meaning and friends that folks aren’t finding at work, school or in retirement are available in spades in a vertical village: a caring community for and by neighbors in apartment buildings or townhomes. What’s more, people can explore using their gifts in ways that they choose to strengthen their neighborhoods.
“How did a rental community in a competitive market go from stagnating at 65% occupancy at best for years, to 95% occupancy in 18 months?
A key ingredient is creating ways for the talents of our residents to be seen.“
ROB LEIBREICH
CEO and president of Goodwin Living
Our work is to help turn people’s urge to contribute into your success by activating activators: people in your properties with what it takes to engage neighbors around things that they care about.
SEE HOW WE ASSIST >>>
At an average of $3,872 per unit, rental turnovers are costly.
But friendships and purpose can help keep those costs down.
RealPage reports that multifamily housing dwellers are 8% more likely to renew their lease if they have just one friend in their property. Gallup reports that tying people’s contributions to an organizational purpose can reduce turnover by 32%. We’re proposing that dynamic also applies to renters in purposeful housing.
By nurturing latent leaders in your properties, our Village Activation Services are designed to help your properties become known as places where people connect and make a difference.
After an assessment to ensure your chosen property is village-ready, our activation support begins with a $497 Jumpstart Package in which we’ll guide aspiring village activators to…
DISCOVER
To learn what their neighbors wish for and are interested in trying.
CONNECT
To gather neighbors with matching wishes and interests.
ASSIST
To help connected neighbors do things that they’re curious about.
Delivered through 3 x 1-hr Zoom calls and PDF tools with specific guidance shaped by the results of your property’s assessment, the Jumpstart Package helps participants to get started and gain confidence.
If you have more than one village-ready property, we can serve up to five individuals from different locations at one time. For added support, we offer 30-minute check-in Zoom calls at $97 each.
If two event coordinators can produce benefits of around $188K a year, imagine the return of investing in activating the gifts, skills and passions of other residents.
Apartment Life houses a pair of event coordinators in multifamily properties to help create connections. They report adding about $188,154 in financial benefit a year to the average community through reduced turnover, increased leasing and value added for residents through an increased sense of community.
At A Village for Life, we seek to help you gain greater value by investing in people who have chosen to live in your properties—and who may have ties in the neighborhood—to do more than hosting events but helping people come alive through community development.
MEET YOUR ACTIVATOR:
Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Harmon is a longtime village maker, as well as scientist turned storyteller, caregiver and founder of A Village for Life.
A graduate of MIT and The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Mary-Elizabeth left the laboratory as a virus researcher and later joined the Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. There, she evaluated programs and wrote data-driven stories (i.e., reports) to make recommendations for their improvement. Her work has been used for Congressional testimonies, and she is a two-time winner of the Inspector General’s Exceptional Achievement Award.
A Michigander raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Mary-Elizabeth has been making informal villages since returning to the U.S. for college. At MIT, she won an award for contributions to extracurricular life on campus. At Hopkins, she won an award for professionalism and community leadership. As a neighbor, Mary-Elizabeth served on the board of the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association and was an active community builder in her former home at the Healey Condominiums. There, she was a dubbed “The Healey Communicator” by the board of directors.