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

Summary
This chapter discussed the characteristics of HUD-approved counseling agencies, highlighting the
diversity among them. The counseling agency survey asked agencies to identify their primary
organizational mission. Based on these responses, we grouped agencies into five primary mission
types: housing counseling (27 percent of agencies), housing/neighborhood development (36 percent
of agencies), social service (28 percent of agencies), consumer credit counseling (6 percent of
agencies) and legal assistance (4 percent of agencies).
We also used the information on clients served reported by agencies to HUD (HUD 9902 data) to
create a typology of agencies by counseling specialization. About two-thirds of agencies specialize in
some type of homeownership counseling (meaning that either pre-purchase alone or pre- and postpurchase
clients account for 80 percent of more of the agency’s total clients), while just under 10
percent serve primarily rental or homeless clients, and about one-quarter do not specialize in any one
counseling type (i.e., they serve a mix of pre-purchase, post-purchase, and rental/homeless counseling
clients). We found that the extent to which agencies specialize in one or another type of housing
counseling is related in part to their organizational mission, in the sense that agencies with a primary
mission of housing counseling are most likely to specialize in pre-purchase counseling, while
agencies with a social service or legal assistance mission are most likely either to specialize in serving
rental or homeless clients or not to specialize.
In addition to housing counseling, HUD-approved agencies typically offer a wide range of services.
Three services are offered by a majority of agencies overall: financial literacy education or
counseling; referrals to other social service programs; and credit counseling. Agencies whose
primary mission is housing counseling or housing/neighborhood development also tend to offer
homeownership-related services, such as down payment and closing cost assistance for
homeownership.
Counseling agencies vary substantially in terms of age. Social service, consumer credit, and legal
assistance agencies, tend to be older, with a majority founded before 1980, while a large share of
agencies whose primary mission is housing counseling were founded in the 1990s or more recently.
The growth in agencies specializing in counseling over the past two decades reflects in part the
national policy focus on increasing low-income and minority homeownership, for which housing
counseling is seen as an important tool.
Most housing counseling agencies are relatively small organizations—most have 15 or fewer
employees and serve fewer than 500 clients per year. However, while large agencies (those serving
1,000 or more clients per year) account for only 24 percent of agencies, they serve a large majority of
all counseling clients (77 percent). Agencies whose primary mission is housing counseling are
typically the smallest in terms of total employees: nearly half of those surveyed had five or fewer fulltime
equivalent employees. However, given their specialization in housing counseling, these
agencies had the second highest average client volumes per year, trailing only consumer credit
counseling agencies in average volume.
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Chapter 3. Characteristics of Counseling Agencies