Capacity Building
Doing more together.
By providing training, consulting, and resources, we help housing organizations—especially housing counseling agencies—better serve our communities in Illinois and throughout the nation.
We also advocate for the resources these nonprofits need to most effectively fulfill their missions.
Support & Resources for Housing Counseling Agencies
One of our priorities is supporting housing counselors, who help individuals and families find and keep good, affordable homes. Our experts facilitate regular workshops for counselors and offer one-on-one support and direct technical assistance to organizations. We want to make sure that agencies can keep up with changing trends, new technology, and complicated regulations. By helping housing counselors build their skills and capacity, we position them to better serve their communities.
Housing Action Training Center
We bring a robust lineup of trainings for nonprofit housing professionals, with a specific focus on educating housing counselors. In addition to trainings for established housing counselors, we prepare individuals interested in becoming housing counselors.
Housing Action Counseling Network
As a HUD-Approved Intermediary, we support a network of housing counseling agencies in the Midwest and beyond. We help these organizations by providing one-on-one guidance and securing resources.
Guide to Choosing a HUD-Approved CMS
Housing counseling agencies rely on Client Management Systems (CMSs) to track clients and outcomes. Choosing an appropriate CMS can be intimidating, especially since many agencies don’t have an IT department to evaluate or maintain a system. In 2023, Housing Action published a new edition of our Guide to HUD-Approved CMSs (version 3.0) for housing counseling agencies.
This digital resource is available for free online and aims to help users assess their options through an at-a-glance comparison chart and individual system profiles. View the guide »
Helping Clients Find Housing Counselors
We want to help housing counselors and potential counseling clients find each other more easily. That’s why we are launching My Path To Home, a platform currently in beta testing, which matches individuals who enter their information with local housing counseling agencies that offer the kind of assistance they need. This is different from other tools for finding a housing counselor because the potential client’s information goes to a participating agency that can then proactively reach out.
Want to learn more and join as a participating housing counseling agency? Contact us at info@mypathtohome.org.
Latest Capacity Building Updates
Giving Everyone the Opportunity to Work on Financial Wellness: Spotlight on La Casa de Esperanza
“Everyone deserves an opportunity to work on their financial wellness,” says Gina Sanchez, Director of Center for Financial Stability of La Casa de Esperanza. This belief is the foundation of La Casa De Esperanza’s people-centered approach in their financial education...
Launching Our First On-Demand Housing Counselor Training
Recognizing the need for housing counselors to have flexible and dynamic learning opportunities, Housing Action Illinois has collaborated with trainer Kim Drayton to introduce our first on-demand housing counselor training, Compliance Matters: The 2024 Definitive HUD...
A New Start as a Housing Counselor
Verdene Sims has always had a desire to help people, so after retiring from a career in telecommunications, she decided to start doing something entirely different and wanted to commit herself to doing something that would support others. She says, “I wasn’t sure...