City of Charlotte launches landlord initiative

The City of Charlotte has launched a Charlotte-Mecklenburg landlord liaison consortium called housingCLT, which will create a unified, collaborative approach among landlords, service providers and homeless households to increase housing opportunities in Charlotte-Mecklenburg through education, outreach and coordination.

The housingCLT program will cultivate widespread awareness and collaboration among housing providers and human service agencies, which will increase affordable housing opportunities for people who are homeless and have diverse needs and barriers. It will be the first program of its kind in North Carolina, modeled after Seattle’s successful Landlord Liaison Project, and benefiting from access to the online housing location resources and national landlord recruitment experience of Charlotte-based Socialserve.com, a non-profit organization that provides call center services to government organizations and other non-profits.

This project was a recommendation from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force and will be one of the first projects implemented from their recommendations. The goals of the initiative include:

• Create a partnership between housing providers, human service agencies and homeless individuals and families.
• Develop a shared system for accessing housing/apartment resources for households experiencing homelessness.
• Develop a common language and criteria for engaging housing providers.
• Maintain housing provider-tenant laws.
• Encourage housing providers to use alternative screening criteria while respecting Fair Housing Law and to assist agencies in better understanding landlord-tenant laws that impact their clients.
• Ensure tenants have the skills and resources necessary for housing stability.
• Create incentives for participating housing providers.
• Create resources for housing providers to enable them to comply with costs associated with ADA accommodations.

The benefits of the partnerships include:

• A professional business relationship is created by all parties.
• Tenants trained to understand and abide by lease agreement.
• Providers understand the barriers faced by people experiencing homelessness.
• Human service agencies understand the business aspect of property management.
• Accountable renters.

If interested in participating, please contact Brian Huskey at Socialserve.com at [email protected] or at 704-323-5540.