Fresno Housing
Hyasha Anderson
School of Business: Fresno Pacific University
BUS471 Policy & Strategy
Professor German
January 21, 2024
General Instructions for this Project Paper
1. DO NOT CHANGE THE TEMPLATE IN ANY WAY. YOU MUST HAVE GRAMMERLY ATTACHED TO WORD BEFORE YOU BEGIN THIS PAPER
2. You must use Times New Roman 12-point font. Keep the Heading provided but not the red parenthesis. All paragraphs must be indented, and all paragraphs must have at least 3 sentences. The paper should be written in narrative form (paragraphs) and not just answer bulleted questions.
3. Paper is to be written in Third-Person. Personal pronouns such as I, me, my, our should not be used when describing what you know about this organization. Keep in mind you are writing this paper as if you are a consultant or a researcher reporting about an organization as if you are outside the organization observing them. Exception: If the directive asks about your personal experience or reflection, this indicates the section would be written in first person.
Also, unless otherwise indicated in the Template Instructions, we are not asking for your opinion about what is going on in your organization or what you think best practices should be. This is an academic style paper and as a student researcher/observer, describe this organization discuss how they do or do not align with the course Text and the Expert Thought Leaders (who you will cite) experiences for best practices. Quote/cite the experts you have found and chosen to use in the citations required for each section and include these resources in your Reference Section.
4. Each section (except the Abstract section) should have no fewer than 2 references in addition to the textbook totaling 3 references per section.You may cite professional development videos or other authoritative articles. There should be not less than 8 different reference resources for the entire paper, in addition to the textbook (a minimum of 9 total). Refer to your 7th Edition APA Manual (Pp. 61-65) for examples of proper citations from various resources. Remember, your decisions must be based on research citing experts in the field not your personalopinion or understanding.
5. Reference Section (corresponding with each citation) should have no fewer than 9 sources, one can be the textbook. The reference section is required to be updated each submission. Refer to 7th Edition APA Manual for example of various types of reference resources (Pp 66-67). Make sure all internet links are live. If they are not BLUE, they are not LIVE.
6. SUBMIT THE ENTIRE PAPER TEMPLATE WITH ANY SECTIONS NOT COMPLETED.There should only be your work under each heading.Remove all black and red notes from all completed sections before submission. Sections not required for submission at that time can have the black and red descriptive content for your future reference.
7. This page is for your instruction only. Do not include this page with your submission.
How to write a paragraph (Paragraph writing format)
What three parts does every good paragraph have?/What elements are needed in a good paragraph? Use this model for each paragraph/section in this paper
A good paragraph has three parts (three elements), namely a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. To write a paragraph, you need to include the three elements below.
The topic sentence is the first sentence in the paragraph. It opens the paragraph. The topic sentence states the main idea of the paragraph. That is, paragraphs topic sentences generally show what the whole paragraph is about.
Supporting sentences are used to develop the topic sentence. In other words, they give more information about the topic sentence. Supporting sentences can give facts, statistics, details, or examples.
The concluding sentence is the last sentence in the paragraph. It usually restates the topic sentence in different words or summarizes the main points of the paragraph.
Go to: https://englishdotcom.net/how-to-write-a-good-para… for additional details, examples, and pointers
Abstract (week 6)
An abstract is a brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of this paper. A well-prepared abstract can be the most important paragraph in your paper. This section serves as the introduction for your paper and should address the importance of the paper, essay or research, and provide a clear idea of what your paper will cover. (See APA 7th ed., p.73, Section 3.3). You will do this last.
Company History, Development, and Growth (Week 2)
The Fresno Housing Authority (FHA) is a public agency dedicated to providing safe, quality, and affordable housing solutions for the communities of Fresno County. FHA administers several rental assistance programs such as Section 8, family self-sufficiency programs, and homeless programs, to name a few. FHA also develops and manages public housing units throughout the City and County of Fresno thatprovideincome-qualified individuals with access to decent homes at an affordable price. The goal of FHA is to ensure that the income-eligible residents of Fresno County have access to safe and affordable housing as well as to provide rental assistance in the private sector for voucher holders. My role at Fresno Housing is to manage the executive office and support the leadership team including the board of commissioners which includes 7 County Commissioners and 7 City Commissioners.
Founded in 1949, it has been credited with creating jobs, spurring economic development, and revitalizing neighborhoods throughout Fresno County. The Fresno Housing Authority has about 4,400 units of public housing available to qualified applicants, and it also offers voucher programs that help low-income families with their rent. In addition to providing housing assistance, the Fresno Housing Authority is dedicated to strengthening families and communities through educational opportunities, job training, homeownership counseling, and other initiatives. The agency is committed to improving the quality of life in Fresno by empowering its residents to achieve self-sufficiency. By collaborating with public and private entities, the Fresno Housing Authority is making a positive impact on the city of Fresno and its citizens.
Their mission is to create strong, vibrant communities through housing opportunities that are safe, affordable, and accessible to families in need. The Fresno Housing Authority strives to create and sustain vibrant communities throughout the city and county of Fresno. Fresno Housing is committed to innovation and excellence in housing and services for low-income households throughout the city and county. Their vision is to provide a better quality of life for the people they serve, while simultaneously creating economic and social stability in the region. The Fresno Housing Authority is an asset to the community and the agency is committed to improving the quality of life in Fresno by empowering its residents to achieve self-sufficiency and ensuring its citizenshave access to safe, affordable housing.
Analyze the External Environment (week 2)
In analyzing the external environments facing Fresno Housing, it is important to consider various forces that can influence the company’s performance. These forces, derived from the Competitive Forces Model, help assess the attractiveness and potential profitability of the industry. Let’s examine each force and its impact on Fresno Housing:
1. Threat of New Entrants: The threat of new entrants in the housing industry is low due to significant barriers to entry. High initial investments, regulatory requirements, and established distribution networks make it challenging for new competitors to enter the market.
2. Bargaining Power of Buyers: The bargaining power of buyers in Fresno Housing is high. Buyers have abundant housing options and can negotiate favorable terms, putting pressure on prices and profitability. However, Fresno Housing can leverage its brand reputation and unique offerings to mitigate buyer power.
3. Bargaining Power of Suppliers: The bargaining power of suppliers in the housing industry is low. Suppliers have limited influence over prices due to fragmented markets and standardized components. Fresno Housing can exert bargaining power by selecting cost-effective suppliers and ensuring stable supply chains.
4. Threat of Substitutes: The threat of substitutes in the housing industry is moderate. While alternative forms of housing, such as condominiums or apartments, exist, they generally cater to different customer preferences. Fresno Housing can focus on differentiation and value-added services to mitigate the threat of substitutes.
5. Intensity of Competitive Rivalry: The intensity of competitive rivalry in Fresno Housing is high. Several established players and new entrants compete for market share, leading to intense price competition. Fresno Housing can gain a competitive edge by offering distinctive housing options, such as eco-friendly or affordable housing, and investing in customer satisfaction.
6. Economies of Scale: Economies of scale play a significant role in Fresno Housing’s industry. Large companies have greater purchasing power, streamlined operations, and economies of scale, enabling them to produce at a lower cost per unit. Fresno Housing can leverage its size to negotiate favorable terms with suppliers and maintain competitive pricing.
By analyzing these forces, we can gain insights into the external environments facing Fresno Housing. Understanding the competitive dynamics within the industry allows the company to make strategic decisions and adapt to changing market conditions.At the macro environment level, factors such as economic conditions, technological advancements, socio-cultural trends, legal and regulatory landscapes, and environmental sustainability play prominent roles in shaping external opportunities and threats.
By analyzing economic indicators, such as GDP growth, interest rates, and unemployment rates in Fresno, Fresno Housing can assess the current and future market conditions.Considering technological advancements in construction materials, energy efficiency, or smart home technologies allows Fresno Housing to identify opportunities to enhance its offerings and gain a competitive edge.
Understanding socio-cultural trends, demographic shifts, and changing consumer preferences can help align Fresno Housing’s product offerings with the needs and desires of target customers.Awareness of legal and regulatory factors related to zoning laws, building codes, rental regulations, and fair housing laws enables Fresno Housing to ensure compliance and avoid legal risks.Finally, recognizing the importance of environmental sustainability and implementing eco-friendly practices can position Fresno Housing as an environmentally responsible and attractive choice for environmentally conscious customers.
It is essential for Fresno Housing to conduct thorough research, collect industry-specific data, and consult reliable sources to perform a comprehensive analysis of the external environment and identify both opportunities and threats specific to its operations in Fresno.
Internal Strengths and Weaknesses (week 2)
Fresno Housing, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing affordable housing solutions, has several internal strengths and weaknesses that can impact its operations and success. In this document, we will review the internal resources, capabilities, and competencies within the organization and apply the three-step process for internal analysis.
1. Internal Resources:
Fresno Housing possesses several internal resources that can contribute to its strengths:
– Human Resources: The organization has a dedicated team of professionals with expertise in various areas, such as property management, finance, and development. The expertise and skills of these employees can contribute to the efficient and effective operation of the organization.
– Physical Assets: Fresno Housing owns and manages various properties, including affordable housing units, community centers, and office spaces. These assets provide a stable foundation for the organization’s operations and can be leveraged for future growth.
– Financial Resources: The organization has a stable financial base, including funds from grants, donations, and rental income. This financial stability enables Fresno Housing to invest in new projects, maintain existing properties, and provide services to those in need.
– Network and Partnerships: Fresno Housing has established strong relationships with local government agencies, community organizations, and stakeholders. These partnerships provide a platform for collaboration and resource sharing, enabling the organization to have a greater impact.
2. Capabilities:
Fresno Housing possesses several capabilities that enable it to effectively carry out its mission:
– Development: The organization has expertise in developing affordable housing units, utilizing various funding sources and innovative designs. This capability allows Fresno Housing to meet the diverse housing needs of its residents.
– Property Management: Fresno Housing has a team of experienced property managers who are responsible for the day-to-day maintenance, operations, and tenant services. This capability ensures that properties are maintained to a high standard and that tenants receive adequate support.
– Community Engagement: Fresno Housing actively engages with the community it serves, conducting outreach activities, organizing events, and providing resources to those in need. This capability fosters a sense of community and strengthens the organization’s connection with the community.
3. Competencies:
Fresno Housing demonstrates certain competencies that set it apart from its competitors:
– Excellence in Affordable Housing: The organization has a deep understanding of the affordable housing landscape and is committed to providing well-designed, well-maintained, and inclusive housing options for residents. This competency sets Fresno Housing apart and allows it to provide innovative solutions to housing challenges.
– Effective Communication: Fresno Housing has strong communication skills, both internally within the organization and externally with stakeholders. This competency ensures that messages are effectively conveyed, challenges are addressed, and collaborations are fostered.
– Transparency and Accountability: Fresno Housing is committed to transparency in its operations and holds itself accountable for delivering on its promises. This competency fosters trust among stakeholders and strengthens the organization’s reputation.
By reviewing the internal resources, capabilities, and competencies of Fresno Housing, it is evident that the organization has a strong foundation of strengths. However, it also faces various weaknesses that need to be addressed:
– Limited Scale: Fresno Housing operates within a specific geographic area, which limits its ability to serve a broader population or expand geographically.
– Resource Constraints: The organization faces constraints in terms of financial resources, staffing capacity, and technological advancements. Overcoming these limitations may require strategic initiatives and innovation.
– Inefficiencies: Fresno Housing’s operations may be affected by inefficiencies in areas such as administrative processes, data management, or service delivery. Streamlining operations can lead to cost savings and improve overall performance.
Fresno Housing possesses several internal strengths, including dedicated employees, physical assets, financial stability, and partnerships. These strengths enable the organization to effectively carry out its mission and develop affordable housing solutions. However, the organization also faces limitations and weaknesses that require attention. By conducting a thorough internal analysis using the three-step process, Fresno Housing can identify areas for improvement and capitalize on its strengths to enhance its overall performance.
The Fresno Housing Authority (FHA) is primarily focused on providing rental housing assistance to low-income families, seniors, and individuals with disabilities in Fresno County. As such, the primary competitors of FHA are private landlords and other public or nonprofit organizations offering similar services in the area. The competitive landscape for rental housing assistance is highly dynamic, as many factors, such as population growth, economic conditions, and availability of housing stock, can affect demand.
FHA faces numerous competitors in the Fresno rental assistance market. These include local nonprofits such as Fresno Fair Housing Center, Catholic Charities, and private landlords offering subsidized housing. Each competitor offers different services and may be more or less competitive depending on the specific needs of a given customer. Additionally, FHA must contend with rising home prices and rents in Fresno, as well as a limited supply of affordable housing stock, both of which can make it difficult for lower-income families to access rental assistance.Furthermore, FHAs target market consists of low-income families, seniors, and individuals with disabilities who are likely to have limited resources and be more diverse than the broader Fresno County population. To successfully compete in this environment, FHA must be able to effectively identify and target its customers needs, while also addressing the challenges posed by rising home prices and limited affordable housing stock. By doing so, it can differentiate itself from competitors and ensure that its services are meeting the needs of its target market.
SWOT Analysis Evaluation (Week 4)
Using the information from the Internal and External Environments and your competitive analysis, and in put the information in the SWOT graphic below. The SWOT analysis is especially important at this point if the industry analysis, particularly Porters model, has revealed threats to the company from the environment. To evaluate the potential of a companys business-level strategy, you must first perform a thorough SWOT analysis that captures the essence of its problems.
Below the graphic consider what your findings mean. You need to balance strengths and weaknesses against opportunities and threats. Answer the following questions in this section:
Is the company in an overall strong competitive position? Can it continue to pursue its current business- or corporate-level strategy profitably? What can the company do to turn weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities? Can it develop new functional, business, or corporate strategies to accomplish this change? Support your decisions with citations from the text and other resources.
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Corporate-level Strategy Analysis (Week 4)
In this section, you need to identify if your selected organization does or does not have multiple lines of business, whether it has subsidiaries or has it made any acquisitions as part of its growth strategy in the past. (You may need to interview a manager or CEO to obtain this information). It is important to analyze the relationship among the companys businesses if they do exist. Discuss the following: Do they trade or exchange resources? Are there gains to be achieved from synergy?
Alternatively, is the company just running a portfolio of investments? This analysis should enable you to define in this section the corporate strategy that the company is pursuing (for example, related or unrelated diversification, or a combination of both) and to conclude whether the company operates in just one core business. Use information from the text and other resources to support your conclusion about the corporate strategy you see.
Summarize if the strategy you have identified is appropriate based on the environment the company is in. Could a change in corporate strategy provide the company with new opportunities or transform a weakness into a strength? For example, should the company diversify from its core business into new businesses?
[FYI: Other issues you may consider include: How and why has the companys strategy changed over time? What is the claimed rationale for any changes? Often, it is a good idea to analyze the companys businesses or products to assess its situation and identify which divisions contribute the most to or detract from its competitive advantage. It is also useful to explore how the company has built its portfolio over time. Did it acquire new businesses, or did it internally venture its own? All these factors provide clues about the company and indicate ways of improving its future performance.]
Business-level Strategy Analysis (week 4)
Once you know the companys corporate-level strategy and have done the SWOT analysis, the next step is to identify the companys business-level strategy. If the company is a single-business company, its business-level strategy is identical to its corporate-level strategy, which you will need to state. If the company is one of many businesses under the corporation, each business will have its own business-level strategy.
In this section you will need to identify the companys generic competitive strategydifferentiation, low-cost, or focusand its investment strategy, given its relative competitive position and the stage of the life cycle (all of these items should be noted in your narrative to support your understanding of how these tools are used in the strategic planning process). You do not need to create a life-cycle analysis for the paper but should work through the process to address it adequately in the narrative.
The company also may market different products using different business-level strategies. For example, it may offer a low-cost product range and a line of differentiated products. Be sure to give a full account of a companys business-level strategy to show how it competes in the market.Identify the functional strategies that your company pursues to build competitive advantage through superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and customer responsiveness and to achieve its business-level strategy.
The SWOT analysis will have provided you with information on the companys functional competencies. You should investigate its production, marketing, or research and development strategy further to gain a picture of where the company is going. For example, pursuing a low-cost or a differentiation strategy successfully requires very different sets of competencies. Has the company developed the right ones? If it has, how can it exploit them further? Can it pursue both a low-cost and a differentiation strategy simultaneously?
Structure and Control Systems Analysis (Week 6)
This analysis aims to identify what structure and control systems the company is using to implement its strategy and to evaluate whether that structure is the appropriate one for the company.
Different corporate and business strategies require different structures. You need to determine and write about the degree of fit between the companys strategy and structure based on what you have learned from the text. For example, does the company have the right level of vertical differentiation (e.g., does it have the appropriate number of levels in the hierarchy or decentralized control?) or horizontal differentiation (does it use a functional structure when it should be using a product structure?).
Similarly, is the company using the right integration or control systems to manage its operations? Are managers being appropriately rewarded? Are the right rewards in place for encouraging cooperation among divisions? These are all issues to consider and address in this section as applicable to your organization.
In some cases, there will be little information on these issues, whereas in others there will be a lot. In analyzing your organization, you should gear the analysis toward its most salient issues. For example, organizational conflict, power, and politics will be important issues for some companies. Try to analyze why problems in these areas are occurring. Do they occur because of bad strategy formulation or because of bad strategy implementation?
Organizational change is an issue in many cases because companies are attempting to alter their strategies or structures to solve strategic problems. Thus, as part of the analysis, you might suggest an action plan that the company in question could use to achieve its goals. For example, you might list in a logical sequence the steps the company would need to follow to alter its business-level strategy from differentiation to focus.
Recommendations (Week 6)
The recommendations section of any report is important because it calls people to action based on the evidence that has been gathered and analyzed in the report. It needs to be actionable, specific and make sense as a solution to the problems detailed in the report.
In this section, think of yourself as a project manager who is putting forth a recommendation and complete step by step implementation plan.
The quality of your recommendations is a direct result of the thoroughness with which you prepared the case analysis in this paper. Recommendations are directed at solving whatever strategic problem the company is facing and increasing its future profitability. Your recommendations should be in line with your analysis; that is, they should follow logically from the previous discussion.
For example, your recommendation generally will center on the specific ways of changing functional, business, and corporate strategies and organizational structure and control to improve business performance. The set of recommendations will be specific to each organization, and so it is difficult to discuss these recommendations here. Such recommendations might include an increase in spending on specific research and development projects, the divesting of certain businesses, a change from a strategy of unrelated to related diversification, an increase in the level of integration among divisions by using task forces and teams, or a move to a different kind of structure to implement a new business-level strategy.
Make sure your recommendations are mutually consistent and written in the form of an action plan. The plan might contain a timetable that sequences the actions for changing the companys strategy and a of how changes at the corporate level will necessitate changes at the business level and subsequently at the functional level. This must be a robust section that lays out a plan of action.
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References
Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Fresno Housing Authority, https://www.fresnohousing
Anderson, H. (2022). MKT320 World of Marketing (unpublished paper). School of Business: Fresno Pacific University
Petty, R., & Cacioppo, J. (1996). Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contemporary Approaches. Westview Press.
