Topic: Who uses a CARES team on site?

Who uses a CARES team on site? Pros? Cons?

funny....the places that could use this most don't

My last community had a cares team and I loved it. Best way to bring the community and office together. A great cares team can save you from so many headaches. I wish I could have one again.

We used them on 3 sites- a Lease Up, a 55+ and a Stabilized community. The best results were at the Lease Up mainly because the on-site team and the CARES team built the resident retention program together from the ground up. It really depends on the level of commitment & communication from the CARES team at the community as well as the level of buy in from your on site team. You’ve got to get 100% buy in on the program for it to work!

At the risk of sounding dumb...what is a cares team?

We have used CARES for years. It is a great program and really effective for creating a sense of community. They are a true extension of your site team. I would say that the difference between success or failure is the quality of the team you select so spend the right amount of time really screening your CARES candidates.

I hear great things locally

Now that I have it, I would never want to go back. I don’t use Cares, but something similar. My only advice would be don’t let that be an excuse for your team not to attend resident functions. That’s what was happening here before. I love it mostly because my team and I are actually able to interact with our residents during the events because we aren’t setting up or cleaning up. It’s also been easier to have better events, because we don’t have to coordinate them. We just tell them the budget and what we want to do and they plan everything. They also have great ideas too!

I have them on multiple properties and they do amazing! Teams and residents love them!

Best Concept ever!

We have been able to verify that our turnover is lower than before CARES teams were present. For the question of what is a CARES team, it is through ApartmentLife.org, and for a monthly fee plus a 2BR apartment, a team lives on site, they plan and implement resident events, write the newsletter (or at least the calendar part - depends on the property), they do move-in visits with a survey (get better data than we do since they are neighbors and not staff) so we get a "do-over" if there's a problem, and do pre-renewal visits with a survey, which helps us respond better to potential deterrents to renewing. Overall a great and well executed concept.