Published in the International City/County Management Association’s PM Magazine, Mosaic founder Alec Chapa explores how cities and counties can strengthen housing stability programs through early intervention, shared investment, and collaboration across public and private sectors.
We’re Spending Too Much on the Aftermath
There’s a moment in almost every housing dispute when the problem is still manageable.
The rent is late, but the balance hasn’t become overwhelming.
A repair disagreement is frustrating, but the landlord and tenant are still communicating.
A housing provider wants to recover possession, but there’s still time to explore a workable agreement or orderly transition.
Then something changes.
The relationship deteriorates. Legal notices arrive. Fees accumulate. Positions harden.
What was once a problem to solve becomes a case to win.
And when that conflict eventually reaches a courtroom, or results in displacement (and often both), the costs can extend far beyond the people directly involved.
Landlords lose income. Tenants lose stability. Courts absorb more cases. Community organizations may face additional requests for assistance.
What if communities could intervene before so many of those costs accumulate? We already know it’s possible, but what might a scalable solution look like that can still adapt to the unique conditions of any particular community?
That question sits at the center of my article, Early Housing Dispute Resolution Improves Health, Safety, and Economic Growth, published August 31, 2026, in PM Magazine by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA).
The article makes a case for treating early housing dispute resolution not as an occasional service, but as a practical component of local civic infrastructure.
For me, it represents an important step in a journey from resolving individual housing disputes to designing systems that can help entire communities manage them.
Why Publish With ICMA?
I’ve spent years speaking with mediators, housing providers, attorneys, tenants, and dispute resolution professionals about the value of intervening earlier.
But for HousingShield to fulfill its potential, another audience needs to be part of that conversation.
The people responsible for managing communities.
City and county managers oversee budgets, housing initiatives, public services, community partnerships, and institutions affected by housing instability.
They experience consequences from housing disputes even when their governments aren’t directly involved.
Yet they must also balance competing responsibilities and limited resources.
A housing stability program that benefits residents but imposes unsustainable costs on providers is unlikely to succeed over time. A program that relieves court congestion but neglects access to legal assistance may leave important needs unmet.
Good public administration requires understanding the entire picture.
That’s why I was interested in publishing through ICMA.
Founded in 1914, ICMA supports local-government professionals worldwide through research, professional development, publications, and the exchange of practical management ideas.
Its audience extends beyond one professional specialty or housing constituency.
That distinction matters.
It’s one thing for a mediator to tell other mediators that mediation works.
It’s another to explain to government leaders why a thoughtfully designed dispute resolution system might help address several responsibilities they manage simultaneously.
Finding Common Ground Before
Choosing Sides
Housing is one of those issues where different stakeholders often arrive at the same conversation with different priorities.
Residents may emphasize affordability, housing security, and access to legal protections.
Property owners may emphasize reliable rental income, operating expenses, property rights, and the ability to manage difficult tenancies.
Public administrators must also consider community stability, the cost of public services, and responsible use of limited funding.
These interests aren’t always identical.
But they aren’t always incompatible, either.
In developing the ICMA publication, I deliberately began with a concern that nearly every stakeholder can recognize:
The economic cost of unnecessary conflict.
Eviction and turnover can be expensive for housing providers.
Housing displacement can be devastating for residents.
Court proceedings consume public and private resources.
And the consequences of homelessness can create additional demands on shelter, healthcare, and other community systems.
Different stakeholders experience different losses, but those losses can originate in the same unresolved conflict.
That’s an opportunity for collaboration.
Instead of beginning with who should absorb the consequences, we can first ask whether some of those consequences can be avoided.
The article then develops that shared economic argument through two additional areas of public concern: health and safety.
Regardless of which outcomes a particular community prioritizes, early intervention creates opportunities to address problems before the costs and constraints become more severe.
Not every disagreement can be resolved collaboratively.
But when an acceptable agreement exists, why make it harder to reach?
From Mediation Service to
Civic Infrastructure
One of the central ideas in the ICMA article is that mediation shouldn’t have to begin with a desperate phone call after an eviction notice arrives.
Ideally, people understand their options before a crisis, and see how options apply to their unique case early on.
Residents and housing providers know where to turn ahead of time.
Appropriate education and coaching have been pre-established for seamless access.
There are clear pathways to mediation, legal assistance, and community resources.
And stakeholders have reason to trust the process before they’re asked to participate.
As I wrote in ICMA:
“The trust and legitimacy necessary for effective resolution processes should not be established after disputes erupt around the mediation table, but long before.”
This is the distinction between delivering an individual service and building civic infrastructure.
Infrastructure has to be designed, funded, maintained, understood, and accessible.
A housing stability system is no different.
That’s the underlying philosophy of HousingShield, Mosaic Collaborative Consulting’s framework for early housing dispute resolution, shared nationwide across dispute resolution professionals in the ABA.
HousingShield includes education, assessment, conflict coaching, negotiation assistance, mediation, and appropriate referrals rather than forcing every dispute through a single process.
Sometimes one person needs help preparing for a difficult conversation.
Sometimes both parties need neutral facilitation.
Sometimes the best contribution is helping people recognize that legal representation, rental assistance, or another service is essential.
And sometimes the appropriate outcome isn’t preserving a tenancy, but helping the parties negotiate an orderly transition with less harm.
→ Mediation creates room for agreement. EDR moves the opportunity earlier, when better outcomes are more likely.
→ Legal counsel helps ensure informed participation.
→ Financial assistance can make otherwise impossible agreements feasible.
→ HousingShield turns these disparate pieces into a system with multiple entry intervention points using both unilateral and multilateral processes, alongside triage so that cases get complementary support as needed
That is a far more complete proposition than offering mediation alone.
The Three Conditions That Make
Prevention Possible
Early mediation is powerful. But mediation alone cannot solve every housing crisis; it works best alongside complementary elements combined to form one cohesive dispute resolution system.
Consider a tenant who has fallen several thousand dollars behind on rent.
A mediator might help the tenant and landlord communicate, clarify priorities, explore repayment options, and consider a workable agreement.
But what happens when the tenant simply doesn’t have the money?
Or when the proposed agreement contains legal terms the tenant doesn’t fully understand?
Or when neither participant knows rental assistance might be available?
These problems require different professional capabilities.
That’s why I believe promising housing stability programs should bring together three complementary elements.
1. Early Dispute Resolution: Creating Opportunity Before Court
Education, conflict coaching, negotiation, and pre-filing mediation help people address disputes before litigation makes them more expensive and adversarial.
Importantly, early dispute resolution is broader than mediation alone.
Some issues can be resolved through a better-informed conversation without ever requiring a joint mediation session.
Others benefit from facilitated negotiation.
And when collaboration isn’t appropriate or effective, participants retain their legal rights and other available options.
The earlier a program becomes accessible, the more opportunities may remain for productive problem-solving.
2. Legal Counsel: Supporting Informed Participation
Mediators are not substitutes for attorneys.
They do not decide the parties’ rights, provide legal representation, or guarantee that participants have comparable resources or bargaining power.
Legal professionals serve a distinct and essential function.
They help people understand rights, obligations, enforceability, risks, and the legal consequences of proposed agreements.
For eligible residents, right-to-counsel programs can provide especially important safeguards.
And where full representation isn’t available before filing, earlier access to appropriate legal advice may still improve decision-making.
The objective isn’t to pretend the parties have identical circumstances or negotiating power.
It’s to provide meaningful opportunities for informed participation within those realities.
3. Financial Assistance: Making Agreements Feasible
Some housing disputes aren’t primarily communication problems.
They’re resource problems.
A tenant might reasonably agree to repay overdue rent but lack the income to make the proposed schedule realistic.
A landlord may be willing to preserve a tenancy but unable to absorb months of unpaid rent.
No amount of skillful mediation can create money that doesn’t exist.
But rental assistance and other appropriate stabilization resources can change the range of feasible agreements.
They may allow a tenant to remain housed, help a provider recover outstanding rent, or support a transition that would otherwise be financially difficult.
One Cohesive System,
Separate Professional Functions
These elements reinforce one another, while keeping complementary functions separate from mediation to preserve impartiality.
Financial assistance without effective communication may not resolve the broader dispute.
Mediation without sufficient financial resources may produce no feasible agreement.
And either intervention without appropriate legal guidance can leave significant rights or risks insufficiently understood.
The point isn’t that HousingShield should provide legal representation, administer rental assistance, or control every component.
Quite the opposite.
The opportunity is to connect specialized organizations so that residents and housing providers can access the right assistance at the right time, with clear professional and ethical boundaries.
The National Center for State Courts has likewise emphasized connecting eviction diversion efforts with legal assistance, mediation, rental assistance, and community partners.
The question is not whether one organization can do everything.
It’s whether the community can make its existing resources work better together.
A Different Way to Finance Prevention
There’s another important reason I developed HousingShield as a system rather than simply opening a traditional mediation practice.
Funding sustainability.
Many valuable housing stability and eviction prevention programs depend on public appropriations, philanthropic contributions, or grants.
Those resources can make tremendous things possible.
They can also change.
Budgets tighten. Grants expire. Leadership and priorities evolve. As Harvard Law professor Deanna Pantin Parish wrote in her ABA publication on eviction mediation, “eviction mediation programs live and die based on the whims of the Presiding Judge.”
I wanted HousingShield to be capable of serving people without relying exclusively on funding sources outside its control, enabling it to survive changes over time. If a program is funded directly by the people to serve the people, then it cannot be taken from the people with one stroke of a pen.
One model explored in the ICMA article is shared-cost participation: housing providers and residents contributing relatively modest, predictable amounts toward early education and accessible conflict-resolution services.
Instead of paying for professional assistance only after a crisis, stakeholders help establish access beforehand.
That has an important practical advantage.
The people experiencing financial strain during a dispute may be least able to purchase help precisely when early intervention would be most valuable.
A prepaid approach could help address that mismatch.
The economics still need to be tested across different markets and participant populations. A proposed sustainable model isn’t the same as one proven to work at scale.
But it opens another possibility.
Public support can enhance a stakeholder-funded system rather than serving as its only financial foundation.
A city might fund access for households that cannot afford participation.
A foundation might support outreach or evaluation.
Housing providers might incorporate early dispute resolution into ordinary property operations.
Community nonprofits might coordinate referrals to assistance programs.
These arrangements could help align different interests without requiring any one organization to abandon its responsibilities.
That’s one reason I see housing dispute resolution as a potential form of public-facing infrastructure, even when individual services are delivered by private or nonprofit professionals.
Learning Beyond San Francisco
A significant part of HousingShield’s development traces back to Mosaic’s work with the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Conflict Intervention Service.
Mosaic consultants supported more than 850 housing-related cases while helping strengthen the program’s operations, case management, and capacity.
That experience introduced important lessons about rapid response, conflict coaching, behavioral health, ombuds principles, and the value of making assistance available before people reach court.
But it also raised a question.
Could a comparable approach work somewhere very different from San Francisco?
San Francisco has a distinctive housing market, regulatory environment, funding landscape, and institutional culture.
Its experience provides valuable evidence, but those conditions aren’t universal.
A smaller Texas community may have different needs and resources from a major California city.
A municipality in Utah or Florida may face different legal procedures, organizational structures, and funding constraints.
As HousingShield began serving renters and housing providers across more markets—from places such as Morgantown, West Virginia, to Houston, Texas—those experiences broadened my understanding of the problems people bring to early dispute resolution.
They also reinforced the importance of distinguishing between the general framework and its local implementation.
A Texas-focused program can incorporate resources and processes suited to Texas housing law.
Expanding into another state requires adapting those legal information resources, referral pathways, court procedures, and professional relationships to that jurisdiction.
That takes work.
But the central design question travels well:
How can people access appropriate help while meaningful choices remain?
Cases across multiple markets don’t establish a controlled national evaluation or prove identical outcomes everywhere.
They do, however, provide practical insight into the diversity of housing conflicts and the conditions a scalable system would need to accommodate.
What Local Governments
Stand to Gain
The ICMA publication examines how early intervention could benefit several groups at once.
For courts, appropriate pre-filing dispute resolution may reduce avoidable case filings and preserve judicial resources for disputes that require formal adjudication.
For residents, earlier assistance may create more opportunities to negotiate, understand their options, preserve housing when feasible, and reduce harm when relocation becomes necessary.
For housing providers, productive early resolution can potentially reduce legal expenses, vacancy losses, unpaid balances, turnover, and operational uncertainty.
For communities, avoiding unnecessary displacement may help limit downstream demands on publicly supported services while strengthening neighborhood stability.
These aren’t guarantees.
Not every case is appropriate for mediation.
Not every tenancy should or can continue.
Not every intervention generates a net saving.
And some disputes absolutely require legal enforcement, judicial decisions, or other protective measures.
The most important opportunity is identifying where collaborative intervention can improve outcomes without undermining those necessary protections.
There are already useful examples to learn from.
San Francisco’s Conflict Intervention Service demonstrated how proactive conflict assistance could be organized outside the traditional courthouse model.
The National Center for State Courts has documented eviction diversion programs incorporating mediation, legal aid, and community services, including initiatives in Colorado Springs and Houston.
Other communities have developed approaches combining rental assistance, legal resources, and pre-filing mediation.
These examples are not identical to HousingShield, nor do they prove its particular design.
They demonstrate that different communities are finding ways to address housing conflict through combinations of early intervention and complementary resources.
For local leaders considering new eviction prevention programs, that creates an important starting point: learn what has been tried, identify local gaps, and test approaches suited to their own conditions.
Why This Matters in San Antonio —
And Beyond
San Antonio offers a particularly interesting environment for exploring these questions.
My experience includes volunteering with Dispute Resolution Centers across Bexar county and others across the state, working with Texas landlords and tenants, supporting Opportunity Home San Antonio with housing dispute resolution matters, and participating in conversations across the housing sector.
Each offers a different view of the same larger system.
→ A mediator may see a disagreement that could have been resolved earlier.
→ A housing provider may see costs accumulating over several months.
→ A nonprofit may see a resident who needs resources.
→ A court may see another filing, and a growing docket with fixed hours in a day.
→ A city may see broader consequences for housing stability and community services.
Each perspective contains useful information, but no single one explains the entire problem.
More recently, HousingShield joined Close to Home’s Alliance to House Everyone Advisory Board, bringing another opportunity to participate in cross-sector discussions involving nonprofits, housing providers, advocates, and public agencies.
These experiences have made one thing increasingly clear to me.
A community doesn’t necessarily need to invent entirely new institutions to improve housing stability; sometimes it needs to make its existing institutions easier to access, more coordinated, and better equipped to act before a crisis.
For HousingShield, that means identifying where impartial early dispute resolution can complement existing services—not replace them.
San Antonio is an important place to examine these possibilities; if HousingShield can work in this environment with limited resources and consumer discretionary budgets, alongside a population with limited existing awareness of mediation, it can likely work in any region with comparable or more favorable conditions. That’s a critical insight, because the framework was never intended to end at the Texas border.
Other communities may benefit from different combinations of partnerships, funding arrangements, legal support, outreach, and program administration.
The opportunity lies in adapting the approach while preserving the principles that make it work.
From Practitioner Experience to a
National Conversation
Publishing with ICMA represents another step in a professional journey that has gradually moved from individual cases toward broader system design.
The American Bar Association provided opportunities to contribute research and present HousingShield’s pre-filing mediation framework to legal and dispute resolution professionals.
That included a publication with Dr. Chinwe Egbunike-Umegbolu examining how early housing mediation could become more sustainable, as well as a presentation to the ABA’s Court ADR Committee.
My service with the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service further strengthened my experience working with public institutions, complex stakeholder relationships, community dialogue, and collaborative processes.
The ICMA publication brings those experiences to another audience: professionals responsible for public administration, local-government programs, budgets, and community outcomes.
And HousingShield’s participation in the Alliance to House Everyone creates an opportunity to engage with the broader ecosystem in which those ideas might eventually be applied.
The progression is important.
From practicing early dispute resolution, to researching and explaining it, to exploring how it can be integrated into larger public systems.
Following publication, ICMA Senior Managing Editor Kerry McKinnon Hansen invited me to consider future contributions.
That invitation was an encouraging signal that the conversation could continue as HousingShield’s development progresses.
I’ve also seen growing interest in related work among public, nonprofit, academic, and housing-sector professionals, including conversations extending from San Antonio to Fort Lauderdale.
I can’t attribute all of that interest to this one article. But it shows that HousingShield is in good company with other local government leaders in exploring housing stability solutions, especially from the vantage point of supporting all constituents and stakeholders, rather than only select groups.
The work ahead isn’t simply to convince people that mediation is valuable. It’s to determine what makes earlier, more accessible dispute resolution possible across different communities — and what evidence is needed to justify investment.
That’s where we need to hear from stakeholders directly, which is exactly why we’ve been performing focus group interviews with tenants who’ve used the services, interviewing landlords on what conditions and approaches would support them alongside Alliance to Home Everyone partners, and carrying insights back and forth across sectors and stakeholders.
The Next Step:
Test, Measure, Improve
There’s a difference between a promising framework and a proven public program.
That distinction matters.
HousingShield draws from practical experience, research, and lessons learned through established programs.
But its own operating model still needs to demonstrate results under real conditions, especially as it grows beyond Texas.
That requires looking beyond the number of agreements reached.
We need to know when participants seek assistance, what types of support they use, when formal mediation is necessary, and when less intensive interventions are sufficient.
We need to know whether repayment plans remain workable, whether housing is preserved when appropriate, and whether negotiated transitions reduce harm.
We need to understand whether any benefits exceed the costs of delivering the program.
And we need to understand the cases where intervention doesn’t produce the hoped-for result.
→ Which participants couldn’t be reached?
→ Which cases needed legal intervention?
→ Which disputes were too far entrenched?
→ Which disputes re-emerged post-agreement?
Those questions are essential to improving the system.
If HousingShield eventually operates across multiple communities using consistent definitions and comparable outcome measures, the differences themselves could become an extraordinary source of learning.
→ Why does one location achieve better participation than another?
→ How does access to rental assistance affect agreement feasibility?
→ What changes when legal advice becomes available earlier?
→ Which approaches are effective in different housing markets?
The long-term opportunity isn’t merely replicating the same service in more cities.
It’s developing a framework that can learn from its results and adapt to each community’s needs.
Building Stability Before It’s Needed
I began this work as a mediator helping people resolve difficult problems.
Over time, I became increasingly interested in the conditions that determine whether those problems need to become formal disputes at all.
That experience has changed the questions I ask.
Instead of only asking how to resolve a case, I ask how the system could have made earlier resolution easier.
Instead of only asking whether mediation saves money, I ask who benefits, who pays, and how access can be sustained.
Instead of asking how to help one landlord or tenant, I ask how a community can create conditions that allow both to participate productively.
The ICMA publication is my effort to bring those questions into the everyday work of public administration.
Housing stability programs need not choose between protecting residents and recognizing housing providers’ legitimate interests.
Nor must communities choose between legal protections, financial assistance, and collaborative dispute resolution.
They can design systems that recognize the distinct purposes of each—and connect them where those functions reinforce one another.
The result won’t be the prevention of every eviction.
It shouldn’t be measured by a predetermined agreement or outcome, either.
Sometimes success means preserving a tenancy.
Sometimes it means reaching a sustainable repayment agreement.
Sometimes it means an orderly transition, preserving legal rights, avoiding unnecessary expenses, or helping people make informed decisions under difficult circumstances.
The common denominator is acting while meaningful choices remain.
Housing stability isn’t built only when a crisis arrives. It’s also built through the relationships, resources, and trusted processes established long before anyone needs them.
That’s the future HousingShield is working toward.
And it’s a conversation I’m grateful to bring to ICMA’s community of public leaders.
Continue Exploring
Read the ICMA publication: Early Housing Dispute Resolution Improves Health, Safety, and Economic Growth
Explore HousingShield’s model for public agencies and partners: Housing Stability & Eviction Prevention Partnerships
See the early experience that inspired HousingShield: San Francisco’s CIS program
Explore HousingShield’s cross-sector work in San Antonio: HousingShield Joins the Alliance to House Everyone
Could Early Housing Dispute Resolution Work in Your Community?
Every community has different housing challenges, resources, and institutional constraints.
HousingShield works with public and private stakeholders to explore how earlier conflict resolution could complement existing legal assistance, rental assistance, and housing stability programs.
Explore HousingShield’s Model for Public Agencies and Partners
Already exploring an eviction prevention initiative? Connect with Mosaic to discuss your community’s existing resources, opportunities, and gaps.
