Prince William County Department of Social Services in Need of Landlords
The Prince William County Department of Social Services, or DSS, is looking to area landlords to help the county’s homeless population find housing through the Prince William Area Landlord Network program.
While landlords might be cautious about renting to the homeless, the department has funding from local, state and federal sources that can mitigate risk, ease landlords’ trepidation and take care of any issues that arise from renting to the homeless.
Working with area non-profits, the county has a hotline that landlords can call in case of disputes. Once a landlord calls the hotline, intermediaries will intervene with the renters. “The idea is that if there’s any issue, unpaid rent, neighbor issues or property damage, the landlord can call our staff or the non-profit staff and they’ll come out and do a home visit with the client,” said DSS Housing Developer Luke Taylor. “It’s on the non-profit or county staff to go in and try to solve the issue. If they don’t pay their rent, our staff would get involved.
Many homeless can pay the rent with help from social services. “Almost all clients have some income, either social security or employment,” Taylor said. “In addition, rent is supplemented by variety of local, state, federal funding that go as direct payments to landlords.”
Renting to the homeless is not necessarily a big risk for landlords. “If you take a regular market tenant, you’re going to make money. The idea is that if you rent to one of DSS’s clients, you’re matching that profit and getting the full rent. We’re not asking for rent reduction,” Taylor said.
In all, Taylor said, landlords can benefit from renting to the homeless. “We create all these things to differentiate our clients from market tenants. We want to put a distinction between market tenants versus we give a ton of support, and you’re helping to solve homelessness. Basically, a market tenant is going to pay the rent. Our clients can offer the rent, plus staff support, plus the additional funding. Anyone can get behind on their rent. Anyone can do damage. At least with us, you’ll have that additional support and funding.”
Others benefits of working with the Landlord Network include: instant access to several hundred tenants looking for housing on our exclusive Padmission platform, eligibility for a first-time landlord signing bonus and potential promotion of the County’s website for superstar landlords who have helped to end homelessness.
Visit pwcva.gov/landlord-network to learn more, or pwcva.padmission.com to enroll as a landlord, or email ltaylor@pwcgov.org