Q&A
Q&A: Deon Trotter:
Metro Homeless Impact Division
Finding landlords to work with people transitioning out of homelessness
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BY HANNAH HERNER t’s probably not news to hear that there is a lack of affordable housing in Nashville. Through Nashville’s Low Barrier Housing Collective, landlords are given an opportunity to address that head on. It’s Deon Trotter’s job to explain the benefits for landlords to offer units to those transitioning out of homelessness. He’s the housing security coordinator at Metro Homeless Impact Division. The collective offers funds to fall back on if tenants leave without warning, or if security deposits don’t cover damage, as well as case management for tenants adjusting to their new reality, and mediation for any conflicts that may arise between the tenants and landlords. A more recent addition is a signing bonus for landlords. It’s all meant to incentivize accepting tenants with difficult backgrounds. Many of these tenants will also be bringing a government housing choice voucher to the table, which will pay their rent up to a certain amount, which is typically less than market rate, especially in Nashville. Because of this, there’s a backlog of those with vouchers looking for a landlord to accept it, certainly in the hundreds, Trotter says. On top of that, the vouchers typically expire within 120 days if no lease is found.
PAGE 10 | January 5 - 19, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
Recruiting more landlords can help close these gaps — and Trotter and the Low Barrier Housing Collective seek to do that. What does low barrier mean in this context? It can range from a lot of different things. Lowered barriers, meaning lowering some of the housing criteria that a lot of landlords place on tenants, whether it's income guidelines or income restrictions, criminal background, credit reporting, or eviction history. So a lot of these barriers may limit the individuals to where there's nowhere that they would actually qualify. So in this context, it's mainly talking about previous evictions, the income and criminal history. Those are the three things we focus on the most. What types of members do you need more of in the collective? We're always in need of more landlords, especially the smaller landlords. Those are the ones that typically we'll get lowered barriers from them. They have more flexibility versus a larger complex that you may have to go to a corporate office or board or their compliance and legal team. They're not as lenient on changing some of those.
