How To Foster Community Among Your Residents

By Madison White on September 11, 2016

To many property managers, keeping residents is the most important thing on the list. While some factors for resident moves, be it job changes or life changes, cannot be changed by your own actions, some of their decisions for leaving or staying are directly influenced by you.

Image via Life of Pix

The community they live in is extremely important to building safety, trust and friendship with the people around them. If your residents bond with each other, they’ll be far less likely to leave your complex than if they have no ties at all.

However, setting up and fostering a community in a continuously changing ecosystem isn’t easy. It takes the right amount of skill, time and knowledge to create a lasting place for your residents to call home. These four steps will help you foster community among your residents.

1. Set up interesting events.

A tried and true way for people to ignore your gathering requests is to create a boring event. It isn’t always a bad thing to go for the classic pool party or barbecue grill out, but it isn’t necessarily exciting either. If you want to promote real connectedness throughout your community,  you’re going to have to make it interesting, otherwise people won’t put in the effort to show.

Before scheduling anything, try and get a good handle on what people like to do in general. If you have a large community of gardeners, set up a gardening day or plant giveaway. If you have video game enthusiasts, try organizing a tournament for your tenants. If you show that you’re going out of your way to really cater to their specific interests, they’ll be way more likely to involve themselves in your community.

2. Promote connectedness.

Another reason residents may miss out on opportunities to know their neighbors may just be their awareness of it. Sometimes events or gatherings aren’t properly distributed and only reach a certain number of people. It may be beneficial to put flyers in mailboxes, but they can easily be mistaken for junk mail and thrown away.

You may want to go to the trouble of leaving them on doors or by posting them in as many public areas as possible. If you have a public website or broadcast email list, you may want to post the information there. Also, don’t forget to send reminders closer to the date because people may have intentions of going but let it slip their mind!

3. Use rewards.

While an interesting event may be a surefire way to get some people involved, it may be that others need even more of a push. If you really need to gather some steam around your events, you may need to set up some incentives for them to show up. It may be valuable to you to set up a rewards system where they can gain points by showing up to events, marketing the events, and bringing friends to said events.

Or you could make some rewards only applicable if they come to the events. Have a raffle to win gift cards or rent discounts that can only be won by residents there in person. Just by showing up and chatting around with the other residents, they may find more things in common with them than they previously thought!

4. Be involved.

As the old saying goes, lead by example. If you and your immediate staff don’t seem at all interested in getting to know the residents, they won’t feel it necessary to get to know each other. Also, if you don’t know them, you will be inadequate at preparing successful events. You should take it upon yourself to really pay attention to your residents.

You can also play a bit of neighbor matchmaker. If you notice that some of your residents have the same interests, mention this to them and they might go out of their way to stop by and talk to that person. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every single resident will become the friendliest and most community oriented person, but it could make a lasting and sizable effect on some just by seeing friendliness in action.

Whether your complex has a sizable amount of long-term residents or a continuous flux of new residents, an easy way to lose community is to forget about the new residents. If new residents feel that the community is already established, they may not want to invade on the status quo. Plus, moving somewhere new can be a stressful and nerve-wracking experience all around. They may not feel confident enough to go bother their neighbors about something when they don’t know them yet.

If you’re showing your new residents around or setting them up with a new place, make sure to introduce them to old residents and let them know to be especially welcoming. Without the genuine interest of others, new residents will likely become self sufficient and fail to really be involved in the community.

Regardless of who moves in or away, fostering and creating that strong and stable community will result in something that will last throughout the years.

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Get Student Housing News Monthly

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format