Landlord Recruitment and Retention

In any fiscal climate, building and maintaining relationships with landlords is one of the most important, but challenging components of housing clients. In Connecticut especially, the scarcity of affordable rent means case managers and housing specialists must work extra hard to identify housing for their clients. Building good relationships with landlords can ease the burden of identifying new affordable units.

Resources

• A Business Approach to Landlord Engagement Presentation (2018 CCEH)
• Recruitment Letter Template for Landlords (2018 CT Reaching Home Campaign) 
  A recruitment letter template for landlords as a part of the Governor’s Challenge on Family Homelessness.
• Understand the Eviction Process (CT 211)
• Housing identification activities for new rapid re-housing providers (NAEH blog post)
• Housing Identification (NAEH webinar)
• Working with Landlords in Housing First/Rapid Re-Housing (Beyond Shelter Presentation)
• Landlord Recruitment & Retention Program and Marketing Campaign (2017 Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust)
• Rapid Re-Housing Lease Example 
• Leases in Plain Language Presentation | Handouts (2017 Crane W. Cesario and Chris Robinson)
• Making Rapid Re-housing Work: Providers give Insights on Landlord Recruitment
  Rapid Re-housing relies on being able to recruit landlords to take on tenants that are often considered to be of higher risk because of their background. This is an overview of some of the best practices for recruitment and maintaining those landlords.
• Landlord Engagement & Recruitment Resources (2015 HUD)
• Rights and Responsibilities of Landlords and Tenants in Connecticut (Connecticut Judicial Branch.)
• Your Right to Equal Opportunity Housing Brochure (CT Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities)
• Rapid Re-housing Landlords Benefits Checklist
  This checklist is a tool to advertise your program to potential landlords. The benefits listed are just examples of services provided by housing search agencies based on interviews with providers around the country.
• Perfecting Your Pitch, Recruiting new Landlords within the Rapid Re-housing Program
  This presentation, made by practitioner Samantha Stewart, goes over how to recruit more landlords to be part of your rapid re-housing program as a case worker and client advocate.
• Be the Perfect Tenant: Guidelines on how to be the Best Tenant you can be
  This helpful two pager put together by Joel Rivera focuses on empowering your clients to be the best tenants they can be, which not only improves their experience as tenants, but increases their likelihood of maintaining their housing as well as your likelihood of maintaining a relationship with that landlord.
• Using Incentives to Engage Landlords: Risk Mitigation Funds
  A mitigation fund is essentially an added protection for landlords who are willing to reduce screening criteria to rent to someone with limited income, a poor rental history, or a criminal history. If there are excessive damages to the unit, lost rent, or legal fees beyond the security deposit, landlords can be reimbursed for damages up to a specified amount. The availability of risk mitigation funds can be a game changer in a community’s ability to engage new landlords.
• Landlord Brainstorming
  Group discussion on the barriers to accessing landlords and increasing housing stock for people experiencing homelessness. There were four themes that emerged: Accessibility/Affordability, Economics/Funding, Perception, and Process/Policies.
• Core Components of Centralized Landlord Engagement Programs and Community Landlord Engagement Initiatives
  This piece describes the key components of centralized and community landlord engagement programs and initiatives.
• Sexual Harassment by Landlords – DOJ Flyer
• DOJ’s Initiative to Combat Sexual Harassment in Housing – DOJ
• CT Law Help – www.ctlawhelp.org