Cross-Departmental Operations

Operations is foundational in its support of all the department’s work. The Operations Division provides the services needed to achieve HOST’s goals of providing housing opportunity, housing stability and homelessness resolution by:

• ensuring HOST services and projects are informed by and equitably serve those in need in our community;

• utilizing data, evaluation, and engagement to drive decision-making, public policy an accountability;

• providing strong stewardship of public and private resources to achieve long-term outcomes;

• proactively communicating and engaging with residents and stakeholders to ensure they are informed and empowered as partners; and

• fostering a collaborative and connected work environment.

Through our work in the Operations team, HOST will ensure Denver residents know what our Department does, how it makes a difference, and where to go when they need help. We will engage our community – especially those with lived expertise – so that our residents feel heard and see their feedback reflected in our approach.

As a data-informed organization, HOST will have the tools and data to support progress on our goals and to ensure we do not have racially-disparate outcomes.

We will be a regional leader in policy and a strong advocate for housing and homelessness plans and investment in the Denver metro region and throughout the state.

HOST will improve contract timelines to help partners provide strong services to the community more quickly, and be known as timely and transparent with public information. Denver’s Pay for Performance approach works, and HOST will continue to focus on outcomes rather than outputs in our contracts whenever possible.

Deputy Director of Operations Laura Brudzynski

• Communications & Community Engagement  (Director Sabrina Allie)
• Finance (Director Ami Webb)
• Contracts & Procurement (Director Ebony Santucci)
• Data, Policy, and Strategy (Director Jennifer Biess)

By 2026, HOST and its partners will: 

1. Improve communications channels, align them with community need, measure their effectiveness, and increase positive response regarding communications and engagement based on a baseline survey in 2022.

2. Reduce average length of time from conditional approval of credit or award letter under a procurement process to fully executed contract to under 60 days for program contracts under $500K, under 75 days for program contracts above $500K and under 90 days for development contracts.

3. Reduce procurement decision time from average of 47 days to 30 days from date of submission by 2026.

4. Reduce average invoice processing time from 21 days to 7 days.

5. Increase percentage of respondents to community and stakeholder feedback survey reporting satisfaction with the usability and transparency of HOST reporting tools, including the creation of publicly available finance and performance dashboards, based on a baseline survey in 2022.