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CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Envolve Communities
Envolve Communities is a vertically integrated affordable housing owner and operator managing approximately 40,000 units across the United States, with a mission to provide quality housing and community enrichment for residents.
We’ve been using the online waitlist for about five years. Residents call in, we send them to the website, they click on the applicant link, all the questions get asked and they move over to the waitlist. When they get to the top, we send them a link and they do their move-in certification online. It really facilitates the process and speeds it up.
Jennifer Van Arcken
SVP of Information Systems, Envolve Communities
RentCafe improves the resident experience by leveraging their expectations of doing things online. With a click on a link, RentCafe walks residents through a process that asks them questions and follow-ups based on their answers. It’s easier and they can do it all in the comfort of their home.
Jennifer Van Arcken
SVP of Information Systems, Envolve Communities
Products featured
The benefits
Envolve Communities eliminated paper-based waitlist and certification processes, reduced office traffic, cut error correction cycles and gave site staff more time for what matters most: their residents.
The company
Envolve Communities is one of the nation’s leading affordable housing owner-operators, with a portfolio of approximately 40,000 multifamily units spanning tax credit properties, HAP contracts and senior communities. Roughly 90% of those units are affordable, managed with a mission centered on resident well-being and community engagement. Envolve has taken steps to make the living experience at its properties as frictionless as possible for residents and site staff alike.
The challenge
Reimagining paper-dependent processes
Applying for affordable housing is complicated with documentations required for income verification, household composition, certification forms and more. Qualifying for an affordable unit historically relied on in-person office visits, paper forms and manual review. For Envolve, managing a portfolio of nearly 40,000 units across predominantly affordable properties, the inefficiency had the potential to become a constraint on how well the organization could serve its residents and scale its operations.
The solution
RentCafe Affordable Housing
RentCafe Affordable Housing is Yardi’s resident-facing digital platform for affordable housing operators, enabling online applications, waitlist management, and move-in certifications through a guided, web-based interface. Prospective residents access the platform through a property website, complete an intake questionnaire that dynamically adjusts questions based on their answers, and are placed on a waitlist. When a unit becomes available and a resident reaches the top of the waitlist, the platform sends a link to initiate the move-in certification process online. The certification workflow walks residents through the required documentation step by step, allows them to save progress and return, and routes completed submissions to compliance staff for review.
The story
A new way to waitlist
With RentCafe Affordable Housing, Envolve Communities has transformed its waiting list process into an efficient and intuitive digital experience for its team and prospective residents.
Envolve began running its waitlists with RentCafe in 2021. With this solution, Envlove can simply direct prospects to a website to begin the process, and then RentCafe takes it from there. The intake questionnaire asks the questions staff would otherwise ask in person, adapts based on the answers and places the applicant on the waitlist automatically.
RentCafe provides expanded access to Envolve prospects and residents who cannot easily get to an office during business hours, or who live in areas where transportation is a barrier. Completing the application from home on their own time and on their own device makes a huge difference.
From waitlist to move-in certification without a paper form in sight
Because RentCafe is an integrated component of the Yardi Affordable Housing Suite, there is valuable continuity between the waitlist and the move-in certification process. When a resident reaches the top of Envolve’s waitlist, there is a natural progression to the next step in intiatign the move-in certification.
With RentCafe, Envolve’s team members can send a link to the top-listed prospect to begin the certification process. They see guided questions, dynamic follow-ups based on individual circumstances and the ability to pause and return without losing progress.
Envolve Senior Vice President of Information Technology Jennifer Van Arcken is direct about why this matters. “Certifying households for affordable housing residency is complicated. We need to be precise and frictionless as we gather the required information correctly. Having a well-designed digital workflow that asks the right questions in the right order, without the ability to move forward until they are answered, produces more complete, more accurate submissions than a paper form ever reliably could,” said Van Arcken.
Fewer errors, fewer office visits, fewer interruptions
With less errors and more complete applications, Envolve sees reduced time spent on the correction cycle that once consumed staff time under the paper-based model. When an error or missing piece of documentation appears in a digital submission, the resolution happens inside the system: compliance staff flag the issue, the resident receives a notification, logs back in and corrects it. No phone call to schedule a return visit. No interruption at the front desk. No paper shuffling.
Senior Vice President of Compliance Maggie Murtaugh explains how saving time in compliance benefits the organization as a whole, “The time saved by digitizing waiting lists and other compliance workflows can go back to site staff and be spent on the work they are actually there to do, engaging with residents and building the kind of communities that reflect Envolve’s mission.”
A foundation for what comes next
Envolve’s extensive history with RentCafe Affordable Housing also shaped how the organization approached its next step in the resident journey Voyager 8 with Compliance Manager.
Because staff were already fluent in the RentCafe workflow and residents were already accustomed to completing processes online, the transition to Compliance Manager’s dashboard-driven certification process was smoother than it might otherwise have been. The team’s experience and success with online waitlists and digital certifications simplified its transition to Compliance Manager’s enhanced dashboard and user interface.