In the past decade, people working in the nonprofit sector have increasingly become interested in the creation of housing units to serve vulnerable populations. One local leader who has made the shift from social work to housing development and property management is Nathan Harmening.
Since April of this year, Harmening has served as the vice president of operations for AGB Real Estate, the development company that has opened 250 permanent supportive housing units in two complexes called Wallace Studios and Greenview Apartments. Prior to joining AGB Real Estate, Harmening was the executive director of I Am Next, an organization you may have read about in our July-16 issue when Contributor vendor Norma B. featured their work with young people aging out of foster care.
At AGB Real Estate, Harmening tackles a dual role of overseeing the property management operations for the company as well as scaling the supportive housing portfolio.
“We’re trying to be as trauma centered as we can in our property management approach,” Harmening said. “And we’re also really passionate about creating more housing opportunities for those vulnerable communities.”
Prior to becoming the vice president of operations for AGB Real Estate, you were the executive director of I Am Next. What got you started on this journey and why did you decide to move from the service provider to the landlord side?
This journey started in 2012. I was a social worker at that time. My job was to transport kids who were from Nashville, but placed in state residential facilities all across the state back to Nashville for court, home passes, therapy — whatever the need was. I was basically a glorified Uber driver. When a young person turns 18 years old in a residential facility, they have to leave on that day. So, my job was to take them to the next spot. More times than not, I was dropping them off in the worst possible places and sometimes even in homeless shelters. Housing became an instant passion of mine because of that.
It was very clear that our young adults aging out of foster care had extremely limited access to quality housing. So, I wrote a proposal and got it in front of our leadership at Omni Visions and was able to start our very first group home. We had five beds in a single-family home where we housed young adult males, 18 to 21, who were participating in extension of foster care. My love for housing started then.
Fast forward about 10 years, we were able to participate in a tenant-based rental assistance voucher program through THDA (Tennessee Housing Development Agency). It was a pilot where we administered the vouchers. The very first time that I handed one of my young adults aging out of foster care the keys to their very own apartment was one of the most life-changing days I’d ever experienced.
We were very proud of the group home that we created, and we have since created 30 of those beds spread out between Nashville and Memphis. But there’s not a ton of autonomy and privacy when you’re sharing a home with four other people. Having the opportunity to move a young person into their very own apartment, that was private and locked and no one else could get into, was revolutionary for my thought process.
As an executive director of a nonprofit, I always knew that I wanted to pursue the housing path. And as part of that pilot program, I connected with Ryan Samuel and Adam Rosenberg of AGB Real Estate, and we were able to house almost 25 young adults in one of their communities. I built a relationship with them, and when they called me and offered me a position with AGB Real Estate to lead their operations, it was the most organic and natural step forward in my career to get into development and be able to actually develop these housing opportunities.
What does a typical move-in look like for you from a) the provider side, and then b) how does that move-in differ from a landlord perspective?
You know, the provider is the parent. When a parent moves their kid into college for the first time, what do they do? They shower them with clothes, laundry baskets, cleaning supplies, food, all the things they need to get a really good start. And then, they have a hard time leaving and they have all the emotional issues that come from their kid leaving the nest.
But a provider is not a lot different. When I moved young folks into a group home or an apartment complex, it was the same thing. It was like, Hey, let’s go, let’s do the paperwork. I’ll take you out to lunch and do it. Let’s make this as painless as possible. And then once we’re done with that, let’s go to Walmart and let’s load up. I’m going to get you at least two weeks’ worth of groceries. I’m going to get you all of your laundry supplies, your cleaning supplies, and depending on what your clothing situation looks like, we’re going to make sure you have clothes, blankets, pillows, blinds, artwork.” I mean, how can we make this home a home? And then help them set it up – again, just like a parent would – we’re going to help you decorate. We’re going to help you make your bed. And then we’re going to give you the key, and we’re going to send you on your way. And here is my number, I will be available in an hour if you need me. I’ll be available in four hours if you need me. I’ll come see you tomorrow.
And then, we really have kind of an intense relationship with them on the front end while they’re acclimating, while they’re getting over the nerves of being alone. Eventually the goal is to let them be and let them come to us when they need support, and that support looks a lot different for every young person.
As a landlord, we take pride in the fact that we do try to go above and beyond as landlords for vulnerable communities and supportive housing. Our process is, we host the individual to sign the lease. We try to get to know them. We offer them their welcome basket, [but] as a landlord, we’re limited. We don’t have external funds coming in that can help us really buy everything they need. But we do have some supplies, and so we make sure that we give them everything that we can give them and send them on their way.
When it comes to a conventional property, or let’s say someone who does move into one of our communities who isn’t coming out of homelessness or working with a provider, move-in can be pretty sterile. Come in, sign the lease. Hey, welcome to this community. Here’s your key. Here’s the mailbox. Here’s how you submit a maintenance request. Good luck. Make sure, rent is due on the first, no later than the fifth.
So, we do a little bit of both. For folks that come in that don’t need the things, then we leave them alone, and we take a more traditional approach. For folks that do [need more], we try to go above and beyond and try to personalize it as best we can.
Do you see a lot of case managers come along to the lease signing as their client moves in?
No. The quickest answer to that is no, we don’t.
It absolutely does happen sometimes, but candidly, what we get more than anything is a notification from a case manager that this person will be there at this time. Now, that’s not in every case. We do have some really good case managers that will show up on lease signing day and just make sure they’ve gotten everything taken care of. But does it happen as often as it should? Absolutely not.
You are working with a vulnerable population here in Nashville, including people who just moved from outdoor situations — at times directly from encampments. What types of support services do you see they need from that landlord perspective?
My opinion on this may differ from a lot [of people]. And I want to start by talking about what they don’t need. What they don’t need is a case manager that sees them once a week, that treats them more punitively than relationally; someone that comes in and yells at them when they do a thing wrong. That’s certainly what they don’t need.
You can get into basic needs for sure and say, look, yeah, they need food, they need clothing, they need blankets. And we try to help. We connect them with The Store on 12 South, so they can go grocery shopping twice a month. We give them a bus pass. We try to meet some of their basic, tangible needs.
But when it comes to more of a case management need, what they need is someone onsite who is not hiding away in an office, who is out and has a presence at the community, who actively tries to create healthy relationships with these folks and is there to help them whenever they need [with] what they need. A lot of these folks are so disenfranchised already, and when they hear case management, it can be a trigger because the amount of “case managers” these guys have had in their lives is more than we can even count. So I personally want to get away from that term, and I want to offer (service providers) that are on-site who can put them in their car and take them to a doctor’s appointment, who can take them grocery shopping, who can go in and help them learn how to operate their stovetop, and who are an assertive presence to make sure that we’re keeping folks accountable, but be in a relationship rather than be a sterile case manager that is part of “the system” or “the man.”
When you offer support, but you do it in a way that’s not mandatory, [residents] come to us on a daily basis. They come to property management on a daily basis and say, “Hey, you know, this is going on, I need this. I’ve got this issue here. My mom is not feeling well.” It’s a range of things from “I need a bus pass” to, “I just need to talk to somebody.” So, in a perfect world, we at AGB would employ our own onsite community support specialists because I think that helps create a culture. And when you have a really healthy culture and a supportive culture, it builds trust with the community members. I think that works for the benefit of both the individual and for the property.
From a landlord perspective, when you have someone who has reliable and healthy connections and takes pride in the community that they’re living in, that’s more cost effective for the landlord because it keeps things more intact. I’d much rather see a nimble, almost peer support-led group of folks interacting daily, and on all shifts — a couple community support folks during the day when doctor visits are happening, when people are grocery shopping, and then folks that are there overnight to de-escalate and provide intervention when it actually happens — instead of having to call a case manager and hoping they show up within a week to help someone who needs help right now. In a perfect world, we at AGB would employ our own on-site case manager.
What opportunities do you see for Nashville to make a dent in homelessness?
We obviously know that there’s a huge need. I hope that we can come up with a solution that makes sense and that brings everyone to the table. I think the Barnes Fund has got the potential to be a great catalyst for that.
When it comes to opportunities to make a dent in homelessness, I think we’ve got to really look at public-private partnerships and what we are so proud of with AGB is that we can bring units to the market very quickly and efficiently. We don’t have to wait for antiquated bureaucracies to follow their old, outdated processes. We can use private equity to do really good work and do it quickly. I’m really excited about Hospitality Hub, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they can bring to Nashville. They’ve got a great model in Memphis. I’m really excited about other partnership opportunities that we are working on.
But I do think it all comes down to learning how to utilize and leverage private equity to bring units to the market quickly and efficiently, so that we can house individuals and then partner with nonprofits and governments to make it successful.