Initiatives

RentSmart Prevention Toolkit

Prevention is shifting from focusing primarily on crisis responses to housing and homelessness and asking 'what can we do to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place'? It means understanding the big picture and the inflows into homelessness. It means working upstream to stop homelessness from occurring, providing early intervention support and quickly re-housing if housing instability looks inevitable. Prevention requires a big system response.

The RentSmart online prevention toolkit focuses on how communities and housing professionals can integrate upstream and preventative thinking into their current approach by highlighting 9 tools that are rooted in prevention. In addition, the toolkit includes a prevention assessment tool to help organizations and communities explore their role in prevention efforts. Explore the toolkit by clicking on the tools to learn more. Check back soon for the launch of this Toolkit.

Landlord Guarantee Funds

Landlord guarantee funds are a tool used to increase housing options for tenants who face challenges in applying for housing. Also referred to as risk mitigation funds, landlord guarantee funds provide financial assurances to landlords to address specific concerns such as potential property damage, non payment of rent or evictions costs. Currently these funds are used in connection with a range of housing programs predominantly in the United States, and a few Canadian examples.

With support from the Vancouver Foundation’s Fostering Change Initiative, Ready to Rent BC Association, in partnership with Aunt Leah’s Place, carried out a project to explore current use of landlord guarantee funds. In approaching this project, we wanted to understand how landlord guarantee funds could complement Ready to Rent’s RentSmart education model and, in the course of doing so, share what we learned with others through a toolkit.

We are pleased to share this learning in two parts:

• A webinar that provides an overview of the project and summary current practice

• A written report that guides those considering landlord guarantee funds as a strategy to increase housing options

• A small-scale pilot project that launched in October 2019 will cover 45 tenancies in the Lower Mainland and Victoria, BC.