HFCC Digitizes Business Processes to Support San Antonio’s Most Vulnerable Populations

The Housing First Community Coalition (HFCC) in the City of San Antonio is one organization pioneering permanent supportive housing – an approach that offers guaranteed housing along with support services such as healthcare, recovery treatment, and employment resources. This model is inherently more complex as it requires alignment with numerous partner organizations.

In 2022 HFCC partnered with Kinetech to leverage the Mendix platform to digitize operations in their growing permanent housing community. In 2023, they launched the Towne Twin Village System, which orchestrates service, case, and property management to provide unmatched support for their 64 residents.

A Foundation for Change

Permanent supportive housing is often established to assist the most vulnerable populations within a community. In San Antonio, these are individuals who have been unhoused for more than 12 months and are struggling with their physical or mental health. With an option for permanent housing these individuals no longer have to live in a transitional state.

“They are in a place they can call home,” said Edward Gonzales, the Executive Director at HFCC. “They get a one-year lease that is renewable and it comes with supportive services. This means case management, medical and dental coverage, and meals. Most individuals are suffering from mental health disorders or undiagnosed diabetes – and all of these things start getting addressed once they have a roof over their heads.”

Gonzales previously spent 20 years working for the City of San Antonio identifying strategies to address homelessness. “We had a scattered site model with many units across the city, and then one case manager trying to manage several units at a time,” said Gonzales.

“This is very difficult to do – to get ahold of all of these people and schedule appointments – so it is inherently more difficult to provide service in a scattered-site model.”

The Housing First Community Coalition was founded in 2017 and brought Gonzales on board in 2021, just after his retirement from the city. The organization has over 17 acres of land and $38 million of capital that they are using to build their community, Towne Twin Village. Today, the campus consists of 65 units, which will increase to 200 units by the end of 2024.

Gonzales’ early focus was establishing the infrastructure for HFCC’s human and physical capital, partner ecosystem, and digital technologies.

Agility in the Public Sector

To ensure that the quality of technology mirrored that of their services, Gonzales began evaluating options to develop a system that could manage operations for the Towne Twin Village.

He knew that any off-the-shelf options would be too rigid to meet the organization’s new and evolving business processes. Establishing a full-fledged development team would be too time and resource intensive. HFCC required a platform that was fast, flexible, and fully managed.

During his time with the City of San Antonio, Gonzales witnessed firsthand the power of low-code, especially in the hands of an expert partner like Kinetech to rapidly support citizens in times of need.

Based on his experience and trust in the technology, he knew Kinetech was the right partner to bring this vision to life. After evaluating technology partners and platforms HFCC ultimately selected the Kinetech GovCloud© built on the Mendix platform.

“In terms of digital infrastructure, I feel that the best in low-code development and the Agile approach in San Antonio is Kinetech,” he said.

HFCC and Kinetech met and began work on the Towne Twin Village System in late 2022. With just one developer from Kinetech, the system was composed when HFCC welcomed their residents in April of 2023.

“Operating a supportive housing community is complex, requiring substantial administration to intake and support clients, manage property, offer services that foster healthier and more independent lives, and comply with government protocols and reporting,” said Jon Lamb, Senior Manager at Kinetech.

“We’re thrilled to have provided HFCC with an application to ease this operational burden, allowing them to focus their valuable, stretched resources on their mission.”

Unified Community Management

The Towne Twin Village System is comprised of three work areas:

1. Case management: For HFCC employees to pre-screen incoming residents and track daily case notes.
2. Property management: For lease documents, maintenance requests, and rent payments.
3. Service delivery: Tracking the consumption of services such as meals or medical services administered by HFCC’s partner organizations.

Across these modules, the objective for HFCC has been to make life easier for their employees, residents, and partners.  Later composable modules were included for payment processing and inspections.

Leveraging an all-in-one platform like Mendix ensures that HFCC does not need to spend time and resources addressing deployment pipelines or system vulnerabilities. Enhancement or changes that would typically be complex in the nonprofit world – such as integrating partner systems or processes – can be accomplished with Mendix in days.

“We have partners that are very complex in terms of their own technology stacks – such as the hospitals we work with. They have security, access, intake – you name it. On the other end of the spectrum, we have some very grassroots nonprofits that we partner with where everything is paper based. They have great record-keeping, but it’s hard to aggregate,” said Gonzales.

“As a result, we have been able to fit into and around their partners, minimizing administrative overhead and helping to enable their mission on all fronts,” Kunzer added.

Automated notifications for upcoming tasks such as lease renewals or unit inspections further takes the administrative burden off HFCC’s team members, allowing them to focus on delivering the best level of service to their residents.

“The work we’ve done with Kinetech and with the system is meant to simplify, and that was something we emphasized from the start. I didn’t want our staff to need multiple logins just to find information,” said Gonzales.

HFCC has incorporated features like digital payments to collect rent from their residents, saving them from the multi-step process of collecting checks, recording payments, and making deposits. “We eliminate the need to have this massive audit trail, and that is a good example of something that has helped us tremendously,” said Gonzales.

Digitizing services and record keeping provides peace of mind for residents as well. “It can happen where a resident will lose their bank card or ID, but we have all of these items digitally on file. We can help them to apply to get new ones, and still make appointments in the meantime, so that’s been helpful,” he said.

Low-Code For Good

Based on the nature of their work, HFCC’s processes are constantly evolving. With low-code, Gonzales and the team have peace of mind that the technology supporting these processes can adapt as they learn and grow.

HFCC already has new ideas on the horizon to expand the Town Twin Village system, such as incorporating volunteer management and security access around campus.

“I am willing to change a business process on a regular basis – because you have to if you want things to improve. There is always change in organizations, and we need to be able to change the technology to meet those business processes, and that is what we can do with Mendix,” said Gonzales.

“The success of the Towne Twin Village System is a testament to our incredible team, our GovCloud solution, and the power of the Mendix platform. By partnering with HFCC, we delivered a tailored solution that integrates complex services and reduces administrative burdens, ultimately enabling HFCC to focus on their core mission of supporting San Antonio’s most vulnerable populations,” said Michael Guido, CEO at Kinetech.

Gonzales is hopeful that the work done with the Town Twin Village system will serve as a proof point for other nonprofits that prioritizing investments in technology will pay dividends. While non-essential systems can often be the first line items to be cut from a budget, Gonzales says that he sees their system as critical as any other service the organization provides.

“If we didn’t have this system, we would still be doing housing, but my staff would be miserable. They would be inundated with paperwork and stacks of files… All these quality measures that we’re taking wouldn’t be possible,” said Gonzales.

The partnership between Kinetech and HFCC demonstrates how low-code technology can be a powerful force for good — transforming lives and helping to create a future where everyone has a place to call home.