4.2 Implementation

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How Can Localities Develop an Implementation Plan and Track Progress?

A local housing strategy outlines a locality’s planned approach to addressing its housing needs. An implementation plan ensures that someone is responsible for each of the planned policies and programs. Monitoring provides a mechanism for tracking progress and making necessary mid-course corrections to achieve goals established in the local housing strategy.

Establishing Goals

As part of the process of developing a local housing strategy, localities should identify meaningful goals and metrics that enable them and the public to track the jurisdiction’s overall progress in achieving its housing policy objectives. There are three main types of goals for a local housing strategy. Hover over each tile to learn more.

1. High Level Goals

These describe the expected overall achievements of a local housing strategy. Many housing strategies, for example, promise to “Produce at least X thousand units of affordable housing” or to “Help Y thousand renter households become homeowners.”

2. Programmatic Goals

These describe the expected achievements of a specific policy or program within a housing strategy. Having a programmatic goal for each policy or program in your strategy will help your locality determine whether each program is contributing as expected toward achievement of its high-level goals.

3. Milestones

These are generally procedural targets that reflect the completion of a particular project, such as the implementation of a new down payment assistance program or passage of a general obligation bond issue to raise local funds for affordable housing.

Local Housing Solutions recommends that localities identify at least one high-level goal to support each of the policy objectives motivating their local housing strategy. When developing the initial strategy – or afterward, in formulating an implementation plan – localities should also identify programmatic goals that describe what each of their policies and programs expect to achieve. Localities should also identify milestones that describe important procedural achievements necessary to implement the strategy and achieve its high-level goals. Localities should identify which goals can be achieved immediately and which ones will take longer to accomplish and/or may be dependent on the completion of other goals.

Goals should be SMART to help the locality determine whether and to what extent it is making progress in achieving its policy objectives. It’s a best practice for goals – in a local housing strategy or elsewhere – to be SMART, which means they are:

SPECIFIC + MEASURABLE + ACTION-ORIENTED + REALISTIC + TIMEBOUND

Examples of Goals

1. High Level Goal

"The City will produce at least 3,000 units of dedicated affordable rental housing over the five-year period from 2023-2027." This goal measures progress toward the policy objective of increasing the affordability of rental housing.

2. Programmatic Goal

"In the five-year period from 2023-2027, the City's Housing Trust Fund will finance the creation and preservation of 250 dedicated affordable housing units for households with incomes at or below 80 percent of AMI in resource-rich areas." This goal measures progress toward the policy objective of expanding affordable housing in resource-rich neighborhoods.

3. Milestone

"By the end of 2024, the city will have established a dedicated funding source for the City's Housing Trust Fund estimated to generate at least $1 million per year to be used to facilitate the purchase of shared equity homes." This goal measures progress toward the policy objective of increasing access to sustainable homeownership.

Monitoring Progress

Once a local housing strategy has been adopted, it is useful to establish a monitoring process, which provides a systematic means of measuring progress over time against high-level goals, programmatic goals, and milestones:

A robust monitoring process enables a locality to regularly keep tabs on which parts of the strategy meet, exceed, or fail to meet expectations. It can reveal policies or programs that are overperforming or underperforming relative to expectations, allowing the locality to make necessary adjustments like reassessing initial goals or dedicating more resources.
Regular monitoring also enables a jurisdiction to flag unexpected results, analyze why certain policies or programs are or are not working well, and change course as needed.

This Establishing Goals and Monitoring Progress brief provides more information.

Local Housing Strategy Implementation

In addition to setting up a process to monitor progress toward goals, it is helpful to develop an implementation plan outlining which specific government agencies, departments, and partners are leading and supporting each of the policies and programs included in a local housing strategy. Implementation plans generally also specify which person or entity is responsible for overseeing the overall implementation process and coordination across agencies needed to successfully implement the local housing strategy. When it comes time to implement programs, localities can work with nonprofits and other outside partners. For example, localities can directly fund nonprofits to carry out housing program activities, such as housing development or service provision. They can also work with partner organizations to coordinate activities in a geographic target area by financially supporting a nonprofit’s activities or carrying out separate but complementary activities. As part of their obligation to ensure the effective use of public funds, localities will want to monitor their partners’ performance during implementation. One way of doing this is by requiring the partner to complete regular progress reports. Two HUD tools designed for recipients of HUD Community Development Block Grant funding, Evaluating Subrecipients to Optimize Performance and Using Reports to Assess Progress and Inform Planning, from the Maximizing Investments Toolkit, provide guidance to localities on how they can use progress reports and the overall management process to inform program design and improve program performance. This brief on Engaging Nonprofit Organizations in the Development and Implementation of Local Housing Programs provides information on engaging nonprofit organizations in implementing local housing programs.

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