Whether to cut a lifestyle director position at a 55-plus community where residents run half the calendar

Question

Take a scenario worth working through: a 130-unit 55-plus community, twelve years old, sitting at 95 percent occupancy. A full-time lifestyle director costs the property about $71,000 loaded. An owner reviewing last quarter's activity calendar notices that 19 of the 31 recurring events are resident-led: a card group, book club, two walking groups, a garden committee that fights constantly but shows up. The read is that the salary is paying for twelve events and a bulletin board. The case for cutting is straightforward. Resident-led programming is often what residents in this segment actually want, since these are the youngest and healthiest people in senior living and many still work. A director organizing bingo for people who would rather organize their own hiking group is spending money on the wrong product. Replacing the position with a part-time coordinator at 20 hours plus a modest activity budget can save real money. The case against is what tends to happen when a staff person leaves. Resident-led groups usually depend on two or three organizers, and when one moves out or gets sick the group often dies within weeks and does not restart. A director is also typically the person who notices when someone stops coming to things, which can catch a health or wellbeing issue before it becomes an emergency. That is not the same as care, but it has value. The director's role in tour conversion is harder to isolate. Leasing staff often credit a strong lifestyle director with closing prospects, but on a 130-unit property that is difficult to prove with a thin data set. A reasonable middle path is cutting to part time while tracking conversion and re-tenant velocity for two quarters before deciding whether to eliminate the position entirely.

angela_burke · Answer

Keep her. $71,000 across 130 units is $45 a unit a month. If she moves occupancy one point on a property at that rent, she's paid for. If she prevents two move-outs a year at whatever the turn cost is, most of that gap closes again. What stands out is that the resident-led count argues in her favor. Nineteen resident-led groups on a 130-unit property is unusually high, and somebody recruited those organizers. Cut the position and see how many of the nineteen still exist in a year. That answer will come, and it will be an expensive way to learn it.

monica_tran3 · Answer

The framing around resident engagement is the right one, but the tour conversion claim deserves scrutiny before any money gets spent defending it. The leasing team believes it because they watch it happen, and their own numbers look better if the role stays. Both can be true at once. A cheap test that does not cost the position: track for two quarters whether a tour included a director introduction, and compare conversion. Thirty tours a quarter is not statistical proof of anything, but a split of 60 percent against 30 percent gives an owner something to look at besides a feeling. The part worth renegotiating is the job description itself. The person kept should be doing the thing only they can do. Ordering supplies and posting a calendar is a task suited to a much lower hourly rate than a lifestyle director's salary implies.

jessreyes12 · Answer

Here's what I actually want to know: is the lifestyle director an amenity you're selling or an operating cost you're absorbing? Because if the marketing material lists activities and programming as a reason to live there, and current residents leased partly on that, cutting the staffing looks to them like a rent increase in reverse. That's a resident-relations problem in a building with a garden committee that already fights.

Trellis, does the lease or the community documents say anything about programming? Probably not, but if the owner's newsletters have promised a full calendar for years, I'd want somebody to look at that before the position gets cut rather than after.

Whether to cut a lifestyle director position at a 55-plus community where residents run half the calendar

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