Landlord Connect

Landlord Connect is a RENT resource, piloted in 2006/07 to further reduce homelessness through the on-line connection of landlords with affordable units, who are willing to work with housing workers with clients looking for housing, who will work to maintain tenancies and prevent eviction. In addition, the website is a centre of information, providing support to partnerships between landlords and housing help services. The aim of Landlord Connect is to have more units of housing in the private rental market found and kept by the clients served in the housing help sector.

What does Landlord Connect do for landlords?

For landlords, Landlord Connect provides free rental advertising, a connection to housing workers, assistance with arranging housing follow-up services, and a forum to register issues and successes they have when working with community agencies.

What does Landlord Connect do for housing workers?

Housing workers use independent processes to find landlords and develop relationships with landlords. While effective, these approaches can result in duplicated efforts, missed landlords that may be willing to rent to homeless or at-risk clients, or inadvertently inundate landlords in certain neighbourhoods with frequent inquiries from multiple housing workers.

To alleviate this, Landlord Connect compiles and maintains up-to-date information on housing available for their clients, introduces relationships with new and existing landlords, provides housing vacancy information, and a forum to register issues and successes they have when working with private landlords.

What does Landlord Connect do for Tenants?

Housing help services are a critical link between people precariously housed and affordable housing units. They help people at risk of losing their housing by mediating relationships with landlords, ensuring that tenants make connections with income supports, specialty funds, and/or the community services they require to keep their housing.

The Bottom Line

Landlord Connect is a coordinated resource that does not replace individual or localized efforts currently made by housing workers, but links and augments the work of housing help agencies. Its goal is to support frontline work by providing more housing options to all housing services across the city, which, in turn, will give workers more time to devote to supporting and providing follow-up services with their clients.

Linking landlords and housing workers is a crucial tool to increase access to housing, and to stabilize housing and prevention of eviction.