Two Powerful Tools for Preventing Eviction
The Flagstone Team • September 26, 2023
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
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Earlier this month, The Flagstone Initiative's CEO and co-founder Shin Inoue was invited to present at the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC)'s 50th Anniversary Symposium in New York City, as part of their " Innovative Ideas for the Future of Housing " program. Shin made a presentation entitled "Improve Housing Stability for Rent-Burdened Families with Rent Splitting and Rent Loans," an idea that resonated with the assembled housing innovators, including academics, policymakers, advocates, and community leaders. The event featured an impressive collection of innovators working to tackle the most pressing housing challenges facing American communities, and we are honored for the opportunity to share what we've learned about the impact of upstream financial stability programs for preventing eviction. From Shin's presentation:
The Flagstone team is pleased to announce the Alabama Power Foundation will continue its generous support of our eviction prevention programs. Their support of these programs creates lasting impact for the Alabama renters we serve. Their contribution will help us create a sustainable fund for Rent Loans, our no-interest loan that helps residents stay current on rent through small-dollar financial shocks like car-repairs. Thank you to the Alabama Power Foundation, we are excited to continue our work together in the coming year!
We are excited to share that The Daniel Foundation will continue to support The Flagstone Initiative's work to provide upstream eviction prevention solutions to Alabama renters. Our team is thankful for their dedication to helping us provide housing stability to the Missing Middle. Their support includes a multi-year grant that will allow us to greatly expand the number of renters we can help in Alabama. We are grateful for the Daniel Foundation’s support, and look forward to growing our impact with their help.
The Flagstone Initiative News October 2024 Happy fall from your friends at Flagstone! Fall is a time of change, but one thing that isn’t changing is that millions of paycheck-to-paycheck renters need help. So we are changing, to help more people, more quickly. We are now offering standalone Rent Loans. Offering standalone Rent Loans (without Rent Splitting) means fast, easy implementation, with no changes for housing partners. Instead of waiting until renters need large grants to avoid eviction, smaller loans can be used to improve financial stability and keep people in their homes. The value of this type of upstream prevention continues to gain broader recognition. Just last week, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) published the first-ever Federal Homelessness Prevention Framework . No-fee, no-interest Rent Loans can be a cost-effective successor to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), and much less expensive than traditional grants, but they are not entirely without cost. Will you make a $150 donation today to help a struggling family stay in their home? Your $150 donation covers all of the costs for a Rent Loan, making them an evergreen replacement for expiring ERAP. Thank you! The Flagstone Team Chip, Grace, Gregor, Keith, and Shin p.s. In partnership with the Housing Solutions Lab and the NYU Furman Center, we’re working on a study understanding the impacts of greater rent payment flexibility . Exciting!
The Flagstone Initiative News June 2024 Summer greetings from your friends at Flagstone! While summer is often a relaxing time, it wasn’t very relaxing a few short years ago. The pandemic was taking a terrible toll, and many families faced financial crises. In 2021, Congress passed two Emergency Rental Assistance Programs (ERAP) to help those families stay in their homes. ERAP provided over $46 billion to protect vulnerable renters and helped to drastically reduce evictions and homelessness. But post-ERAP, underlying problems remain: More households are rent burdened than ever Eviction filings are above pre-pandemic levels Homelessness is at a record high Now that ERAP is over, state and local governments are scrambling to address these challenges without extra federal funding. In the absence of those federal dollars, we need to figure out more cost-effective prevention strategies to keep people in their homes. For example: Include eviction prevention planning at the development stage National Housing Trust is calling on State Housing Finance Agencies to include eviction prevention as part of their Qualified Allocation Plans (QAPs) for Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) funding— Balancing Eviction Prevention and Property Financial Health Develop win/win eviction prevention policies WinnCompanies has developed a Housing Stability Program that includes numerous elements throughout the lease cycle to help keep residents housed. Local governments should provide cost-effective upstream financial stability programs in addition to downstream interventions The United Way recently eloquently advocated for upstream prevention and rental assistance in the Seattle Times: Pandemic-era funds have expired but WA housing needs continue Of course, we are grateful for the foundations and corporations who make our upstream eviction prevention work possible. This quarter, we received generous support from Airbnb, the Gheens Foundation, the Michael & Gillian Goodrich Foundation, the Housing Affordability Trust, and continuing support from the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. If you would like to help us keep renters in their homes, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today . $100 enables us to make one Rent Loan and help a struggling household avoid falling behind on rent payments. Thank you! The Flagstone Team Chip, Grace, Gregor, Keith, and Shin p.s. You might also be interested in this story we wrote for LAA Access, a publication by the Louisville Apartment Association: Upstream Eviction Prevention—A Win for Everyone
We are happy to announce that the Housing Affordability Trust (HAT) is supporting Phase 2 of our upstream eviction prevention efforts in Greater Birmingham. Their support helps enable Flagstone's no-fee, no-interest Rent Loans for renters, and helps keep people in their homes. We are extremely grateful for the support of HAT and the many other generous foundations dedicated to helping Alabama renters. With their collective support, we are expanding our financial stability programs to cover over 2,500 low- to moderate-income renter households in Greater Birmingham.
We are honored to share that the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham continues to support The Flagstone Initiative's work to improve financial stability for renters in the region around Birmingham, Alabama, and prevent eviction upstream. Their support for Phase 2 of our work will help us grow in the Birmingham region to offer Rent Splitting and Rent Loans to 2,500 households, preventing eviction upstream and preventing people from falling into the persistent poverty trap. We are grateful for their ongoing support, and the opportunity to help even more Birmingham-area renters stay in their homes.
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.
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