CSH features prevention-first water management in its Tech Corner

The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) publishes a Tech Corner series on technology trends in supportive housing. Its August 2026 edition, What Supportive Housing Providers Can Learn from Preventive Water Management, looks at a problem every multifamily operator knows and few have solved: the running toilet.

For the piece, CSH's Katie Kitchin, Senior Advisor for Strategy and External Affairs, and Katrina VanValkenburgh, Managing Director for the Central Region, spoke with our founder and CEO, Laura Sardilli, about how prevention first water management works in practice. CSH is careful to say that it does not evaluate or endorse vendors and receives no compensation from the companies it writes about. We appreciate that, and we think the article is worth reading for its framing as much as for the examples.

Water is becoming a constraint, not just a cost

The article opens with the budget reality. Water and sewer rates are rising 5 to 8 percent a year across the country, with local spikes that can erase an already thin operating margin. Add aging plumbing and normal resident wear, and water stops behaving like a predictable line item.

"Water is rapidly shifting from a predictable utility expense into a material financial risk for property owners and operators."

That sentence is the heart of the piece. When water is a risk rather than a cost, it belongs in capital planning and portfolio strategy, not only in the monthly utility review. CSH also notes that in many regions the underlying water stress is quiet but significant: it does not look like a crisis until it shows up in a budget or in service reliability.

The running toilet is the leak that matters most

CSH describes the ProdigyLink toilet valve with an analogy we like: a motion detecting light switch, connected to the toilet's supply line. When the bathroom is empty and no motion is detected, the valve closes and water cannot flow into the toilet. When someone walks in, it opens and the toilet works normally. A worn flapper or a failing fill valve can no longer run for days between maintenance visits.

The article reports what we see across the portfolio: toilet leak prevention valves save more than $500 per unit per year and cut water costs by 48 percent on average, with a payback of less than a year from water and sewer savings alone. Our own figures are $512 per unit per year and a 10 month payback.

What the properties showed

Two properties anchor the article. At Bellwether Housing's Rose Street, CSH reports that daily water related expenses fell from $560 to $267, worth more than $106,000 a year, with a payback of about three months. At Victory Housing's Robeson at Spring Flats, a senior community in Washington, DC, the reduction was large enough that CSH calls it dramatic. Robeson is one of the properties in our Proven results section.

CSH adds a caveat that we share: results vary with property age, infrastructure, local rates, occupancy, and how well the rollout is run. That is why every engagement starts with a property by property review rather than a portfolio wide estimate.

Prevention first, then detection

The traditional approach to water management is detection. Find the leak after it starts, then send someone to fix it. Detection still matters, and we install meter monitors and flood sensors for exactly that reason. But an alert is only useful if someone acts on it, and the most common leak in a multifamily building does not need an alert at all. It needs to be prevented.

That is the lesson CSH draws for supportive housing providers, and it applies to every affordable housing operator. The most valuable innovations are often the ones that solve everyday problems before they become expensive ones. Every dollar that does not go down a running toilet stays available for resident services and property operations. That is what we mean when we say we protect the mission and math of affordable housing.

Read the article

The full piece is on CSH's site: Tech Corner: What Supportive Housing Providers Can Learn from Preventive Water Management. Our thanks to Katie Kitchin, Katrina VanValkenburgh, and the CSH team for the conversation.