Amid COVID-19 Shutdown, Thinking of Multifamily Maintenance Workers

One of the really great parts of my job as CEO of ServusConnect is traveling around the country meeting with multifamily operators (executives & technicians alike) and having discussions about their successes & challenges with maintenance operations. Needless to say, I’m not traveling any longer, but the week before the NBA suspended play and the NCAA conference tournaments were shut down, I was on one of these trips in New Jersey & Eastern Pennsylvania.
At that time, there were already several confirmed COVID-19 cases in NYC.
During a meeting in NJ (about 20 minutes outside the city) with an operations exec at an owner-operator for several thousand units in the region, it was mentioned that a maintenance employee had called into the corporate office earlier that day to ask the question:
 
“What if we’re scared to come to work because of how close we might be to residents under quarantine for coronavirus?”
 
This is a question that you may have fielded several times by now. That day, it was ground zero; completely new territory for everyone. This was exactly the point where the weight & risk of a potential COVID-19 outbreak and impact to the health & safety of property teams, specifically maintenance team members, started to press on me.
 
 
Maintenance Teams Are First Responders
We all know how important our maintenance teams are to property operations.  We also know that, often times, they are first responders at the properties they serve. More than a few times we’ve seen resident……