Housing Counseling Process Evaluation and Design of ... - HUD User

scholarships, but primarily to its affiliates, which is a disadvantage to rural organizations who
often need the training the most. As a result of these high costs, some organizations require
new employees to commit to 18 months on the job or repay them for the training so that they
do not lose out on the investment. This requirement may discourage good candidates for
counselor positions.” (National housing counseling organization)
“Another challenge is adequate training of every counselor. HUD needs to help with training
because small agencies cannot afford to travel far distances for training, and NeighborWorks
does not have as much money as it once did to provide funding for it.” (HUD-funded
housing counseling intermediary)
“NeighborWorks does good training, but it is hard for [counselors in our state] to access it
due to the rural population and the trainings are hard to get into due to demand. Training is
not held near [our state] and it costs too much for affiliates to send people. HUD could help
by providing more localized training options. If HUD requires certification, they need to
provide training on a more local level. Small affiliates can’t afford to go due to cost; they
need something they could drive to because of airfare and hotel costs.” (HUD-funded state
HFA)
These organizations recommended that HUD should either provide more funding for counselors to
attend the trainings offered by NeighborWorks® and other established training organizations or
should provide more local training itself.
Agency Concerns about Staffing
The counseling agency survey asked agencies to rate the importance to their agency of two staffrelated
issues: staff expertise and training and staff retention. Neither problem is highly significant
for a majority of agencies, but each problem is at least moderately significant to a substantial
minority. The remainder of this chapter discusses these two issues, exploring whether and how the
significance of the issue varies by agency size and type and reporting the comments of survey
respondents for whom the issues were important.
Staff Expertise and Training
The level of expertise or training of staff is something of a problem for about two-thirds of the
agencies surveyed, although it is only highly significant for about one-quarter of them. As shown in
Exhibit 8-11, 17 percent of agencies identify staff expertise of training as an extremely significant
problem, and an additional 22 percent report it as a moderately significant problem.
Chapter 8. Characteristics of Housing Counselors 133