The Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania is encouraging agencies that help homeless households find rentals to consider including financial incentives for landlords as part of a broader engagement effort.
Doing so can dramatically reduce the time it takes for families to secure housing, it says. The evidence? A pilot program conducted in Lancaster and two other communities.
Using funds provided by Truist Financial, the alliance provided grants of $25,000 apiece in late 2022 to Lancaster-based nonprofit Tenfold, the Lehigh Valley Regional Homeless Advisory Board (RHAB) in Bethlehem and Bell Socialization Services in York. All three were asked to use the money to create or enhance incentive programs.
The goal was to see if they would increase landlords’ willingness to rent to tenants served by homeless assistance systems. Such clients can often be hard to place: They may have an eviction in their background, or a criminal conviction, or limited income, all of which are potential deal-breakers for many landlords.
The results were dramatic. In Lancaster, Tenfold used the funds to provide sign-on bonuses of $500. It reduced housing search times by 42%, from 112 days to 65 days. Tenfold was able to place 49 households by midsummer this year, said Ann Linkey, Tenfold’s director of supportive housing.
Bethlehem and York saw similar results:
- Lehigh Valley RHAB provided sign-on bonuses of $1,000 for the first unit, $500 for the second and $250 thereafter, plus up to $2,500 for move-in repairs or to repair any damage caused by participating tenants. It reduced housing search times by 38%, from 63 days to 39 days.
- Bell Socialization Services provided one-time sign-on bonuses of $2,000 for newly participating landlords and $1,000 for landlords that gave Bell the right of first refusal when units became available. It reduced housing search times by 17%, from 46 days to 38 days.
The effectiveness of the experiment matters because agencies have been facing increasing difficulties in placing clients. Statewide, rents are rising, vacancies are scarce and units that tenants can comfortably afford are even scarcer.
It’s been really challenging post-pandemic,” Linkey said.
Incentives are just one possible strategy, according to the alliance, which has been making a broad effort to understand and respond to landlords’ concerns.
As part of its research, it surveyed more than 600 landlords and property across Pennsylvania. Many said they are willing to be flexible about their tenant criteria, but only up to a point. Only 20% said they would rent to someone with an eviction, and less than 30% said they would consider someone with a criminal conviction for a violent crime.
Encouragingly, a majority, 58%, said they are willing to lease to homelessness agencies’ clients if case management and rental assistance are part of the package.
Smaller landlords in particular said they are struggling to cope with higher costs, including higher prices for maintenance and repairs. Many cited tenant management issues. A full 40% of landlords with fewer than 20 units said they’d like to exit the rental business altogether.
By identifying landlords’ concerns and their businesses’ cost drivers, and tailoring their approach accordingly, agencies can maximize their effectiveness, the alliance said. To that end, it has posted an extensive “toolkit” of resources for service providers on its website.
Fundamentally, “landlords, tenants, and nonprofit assistance organizations all want the same thing: stable and lasting tenancy for renters,” Phyllis Chamberlain, the alliance’s executive director, said in a statement.
Besides advising agencies on specific strategies, the alliance advocates for policies it believes will increase the supply of affordable housing, such as increasing state funding for construction of affordable projects and reforming zoning laws to allow more low-cost and dense housing.
It’s that fundamental issue — the increasing unaffordability of housing — that has to be addressed, said Shelby Nauman, Tenfold’s executive director. Incentives are a useful way to build relationships with landlords and property managers, and Tenfold is happy that the pilot program helped some of its clients, but “it’s not the silver bullet,” she said.
