Q&A

Q&A: Deon Trotter: Metro Homeless Impact Division

Finding landlords to work with people transitioning out of homelessness

BY HANNAH HERNER

It’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.

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.

What is the incentive for landlords to join?

We have different kinds of incentives that we attempt to push like right now our office, along with some agencies, we pay for moving costs, which covers their first month's rent, prorated rent, utility deposits. We also have a fund for damages up to a certain amount over the security deposit up to $1,000 over the security deposit. It covers kind of a rent bridge if the tenant leaves and does not pay the rent. We also offer mediation where we can go out and make sure we can talk to different clients and the property managers.

What we try to do is utilize all the tools that we have in our office, which are the financial incentives. We know that we need a lot more financial incentives — that's kind of what we're asking for — because in order for a landlord to, in their mind, lower some of the barriers or take a chance on some of the clients, there's got to be some type of financial incentive that they can utilize.

How does the amount of money compare for landlords accepting a voucher versus market rate rent?

It's gonna depend on the area of town, but as you know, Nashville has one of the highest growth rates in rent. I think I saw a study that the average rent for Nashville was $1,500 or more. Section Eight [housing voucher] does not come close to a lot of the market rate rents that we're seeing so property owners, not only do they have to make sure they follow the housing quality standards and make sure all the repairs are made, but they also can get a larger amount by going through market rate. So it is a gap and then it depends on certain zip codes, it's going to be a larger gap. When you have a high growth city like Nashville with a lot of financial resources and individuals moving here, and it's not a lot of affordable housing, that gap is just growing more and more each year.

How much of a backlog do you have of people that are ready to go and still looking for a landlord?

There's a huge backlog. We constantly have to apply for extensions on the vouchers we need to reapply individuals but I would say there is a large backlog of A. people waiting to get the vouchers and B. once they do receive them those that are looking to lease. I would say it's well into the hundreds.

You talked a little bit about kind of like the head side things, like calculating the money benefits or the mediation benefits, but what do you say to kind of appeal to the heart side of things?

These are our neighbors. I mean, they're people too. So our goal is to house as many individuals as we can. So if you've got a lot of complaints of, well, there's an issue with homelessness in our city, we just say, help us with that issue. Help us to house people. You're still going to face the same risk but at least you have some support behind the people that we're bringing to you.