Flagstone News & Insights

We are pleased to announce that The Gheens Foundation is supporting Phase 2 of our upstream eviction prevention efforts in Louisville, KY. The Gheens Foundation has a long history of improving the quality of life for the residents of Metropolitan Louisville, and their partnership will help us expand to improve financial stability for 2,500 lower-income "Missing Middle" households in Louisville with Rent Splitting and Rent Loans. We are grateful for their support for our upstream prevention approach, a strong complement to Louisville’s leadership in delivering relief downstream. We’re excited to be part of the broader strategy to support renters. Together, we can demonstrate how to effectively address the challenges of eviction and homelessness in the post-pandemic environment.

We are delighted to announce support from the Mike & Gillian Goodrich Foundation for phase 2 of our upstream eviction prevention programs in Birmingham, AL. The Mike & Gillian Goodrich Foundation invests in transformative and sustainable programs that create vibrant communities and promote equity and economic opportunity in Birmingham, the Black Belt, and the State of Alabama. With their help we are expanding our services to reach thousands more lower-income households in Greater Birmingham, building on the results we have seen in phase 1. We are grateful for their support for our mission to improve financial stability upstream and prevent devastating downstream outcomes like eviction and homelessness.

Millions of households in America live paycheck-to-paycheck, and face significant challenges to pay rent. The Flagstone Initiative is dedicated to improving financial stability for renters, to keep them in their homes. Today, Airbnb announced their support for our upstream eviction prevention efforts. The donation is part of their broader effort to give cost-burdened renters the option to use short-term rentals as a way to supplement their income and improve financial stability. The Airbnb press release: Our support for sensible, short-term rental policies for renters “Millions of renters live paycheck to paycheck and need help making ends meet. Airbnb’s donation will help provide creative upstream solutions to improve their financial stability and keep them in their homes.” —Shin Inoue, CEO of the Flagstone Initiative We are grateful to Airbnb and our many other partners for their support. Together, we can continue to shift eviction and homelessness prevention efforts upstream and avoid the devastating downstream consequences for families and communities.

We would like to thank Daniel Foundation of Alabama for their support of our upstream eviction prevention efforts in Alabama. Their support was instrumental in Phase 1 of preventing eviction with financial stability programs in Alabama. With their help, we were able to provide Rent Splitting and Rent Loans to lower-income renters in Bessemer, AL, significantly reducing the number of residents who were behind on rent. ( see this recent post for more details. ). We applaud The Daniel Foundation of Alabama's commitment to strengthening communities within Alabama and improving the quality of life for citizens from all regions of Alabama. We greatly appreciate their help in shifting eviction prevention efforts upstream in Greater Birmingham and beyond.

The Flagstone Initiative News, March 2024 “Nothing ever seems impossible in spring, you know.” ― L.M. Montgomery Here at The Flagstone Initiative, we are really excited about the possibilities for upstream prevention of eviction and homelessness. We’re continuing to see compelling evidence that it’s a win for everyone—less harm for residents, less hassle for housing providers, and less expensive for communities. In our last newsletter, we shared some results from very similar properties in Bessemer, Alabama, two with our services and two without:

"Birmingham’s middle class is struggling to pay the rent; here’s how one group wants to help" by Heather Gann

"What if your rent payment wasn't due all at once? A Louisville company is trying it out" by Bailey Loosemore

The Flagstone Initiative News, September 2023 Seasons greetings from your friends at The Flagstone Initiative! We’ve had a busy year helping prevent eviction with financial stability programs for paycheck-to-paycheck renters. 2023 was a big year for us. We added housing partners in Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, and New York, and now reach 2,500 residents in five states. We received generous support from multiple foundations, and formed a partnership with NYU’s Furman Center to validate our current programs and test new ones. This year also produced more compelling data showing how our combination of Rent Splitting and Rent Loans helps lower delinquency rates. Here is a recent comparison of very similar properties with and without our services:

The Flagstone Initiative News, September 2023 Greetings from your nonprofit Flagstone friends! For those of you just tuning in, The Flagstone Initiative is a nonprofit working to prevent eviction and homelessness. We focus on prevention because we believe that it’s way better to help people upstream rather than waiting until problems have piled up. We do this by improving financial stability for low- to moderate-income renters who are living paycheck to paycheck. Over the past year, we’ve seen very encouraging results from our ongoing demonstration projects with Rent Splitting and Rent Loans. Residents and housing owners/operators alike have recognized the benefits. Rent Splitting helps with tight cash flow. Most people get paid weekly or bi-weekly, and rent is by far their biggest expense. In recent surveys, over 80% of residents reported that most or all of their first check of the month goes to rent—”Rent eats first.” “Do I want to pay my rent, or do I want food in the house?” —J.S., Kentucky With Rent Splitting, residents can pay rent in two installments, which smooths cash flow and enables people to keep food on the table and stay current on their other bills. “I feel like if I didn't have rent split and I had to literally pay the whole thing and then pay bills, it would be a struggle to eat.” —S.G., Oklahoma Rent Loans help when life happens. We all experience small financial shocks from time to time—things like car repairs or missed hours due to illness. These common shocks can lead to bigger problems if you don’t have savings. Unfortunately, 60% of the residents we serve report having zero savings. “It can be the smallest thing. It can go from $200 today to the start of a real bad downfall.” -—E.M., Kentucky To help residents absorb these shocks, we offer $500 Rent Loans with no fees and no interest. Residents repay with automatic $20 weekly transfers for 25 weeks, spreading out the impact of the shock. The money is applied directly to rent, which helps avoid delinquency, late fees, and the specter of eviction. “I appreciate the loan, you know. It helped my family extremely. We wasn’t put outside for it, so it did good.” —J.S., Kentucky Rent Splitting and Rent Loans are more powerful together. For 60% of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck, tight cash flow and lack of savings to handle life’s little shocks are common problems. Rent Splitting and Rent Loans each do a good job of addressing one of these common problems. Rent Splitting helps with tight cash flow. Rent Loans help handle life’s little financial shocks. These two solutions complement each other and are a powerful combination for preventing people from falling behind on rent and other bills. “It’s juggling, sweetheart… I’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it’s been working until last month… I could handle things, but then the unexpected things came up.” —A.S., Chicago Together, the combination of Rent Splitting plus Rent Loans prevents small problems from becoming big problems like eviction and homelessness. We currently reach 2,500 residents of workforce/LIHTC housing in five states (AL, IL, KY, OK, and NY), and we’re adding more partners to extend our service to more struggling renters. Eventually, we want to offer these solutions nationwide, and change the way that Americans pay rent. How you can help: Please connect us with anyone who can help us scale our impact -- especially foundations and landlords. We are keen to grow and provide more help to more people! As always, we are sincerely grateful for the help and support we receive from our incredible network of partners and friends. We couldn’t do this without your help. Thank you for your support! The Flagstone Team Chip, Grace, Gregor, Keith, Shashank, and Shin