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The Trick to
Getting Your Tenants to Pay Rent Every Month
By Brian Rome, Program Director, Catholic Charities, Diocese
of Toledo
Guest Column
Catholic Charities Diocese of Toledo’s new pilot program:
The Tenant Readiness Program, now in its second year, has
taken out all of the “tricks” to help make sure families
acquire exactly what they need to be able to pay rent every
month.
The key, as oppose to a “trick,” is expecting from new
renters the same standards you would expect for yourself
when leasing or purchasing a new home. Unfortunately, we
see many cases where unprepared renters slip through the
cracks and are approved for leases, when it was clear that
they were not ready. It is a red flag to our program, when a
renter is relying on agency services to support their move.
To us it is translated- they are trying to move before they
are legitimately ready.
The Tenant Readiness Program, in its first year, served 50
families in search of housing. One of the objectives of the
program is to work with renters before they sign a lease, by
accessing their vulnerability in six identified core areas.
These six areas, we believe are essential to be able to
overcome the minor setbacks that prevent them from paying
their rent on time. At year end, 90 percent of the
participants obtained one or more needed resources than they
had before their Stability Assessment.
But just as important, our objective is to help renters
avoid signing a lease if they realistically are not in a
position to afford the financial responsibilities of their
desired home. We were able to encourage 41 percent of the
participants to delay their search to complete a plan to
either improve their financial situation or to find more
affordable housing.
The big picture of our success is that the program is
potentially preventing those same renters from putting
themselves in a position where they would need eviction
assistance in the near future. By taking a proactive
approach, this would save approximately $23,700 from our
eviction assistance budget.
Encouraging our clients to be “Legitimately ready” before
signing a lease is a standard we encourage landlords or
property managers to promote also. The questions we
encourage you to answer for yourself are: 1) Do they
actually have enough income to afford all of the household
expense? There are currently more families on fixed
incomes, than I have seen in over 10 plus years of service.
This means, after paying their rent, there is very little
left over to handle setbacks. Guess what expense gets
neglected first?
2) Do they have a plan for potential setbacks? Trust and
believe one is certain to occur. This is probably one of the
most important questions a landlord could ask. Receiving
your rent every month will be determined by their answer.
Unfortunately, many of our renters are willing to allow the
landlord to assume they would be able to pay the rent every
month. Their only focus is being approved and hoping your
mercy will prevail in the case of a setback. Talk about
trick!
What’s even more vital to this housing problem, is the need
to work together with both landlords and tenants. There
cannot be a better deal than having a third party working
closely with you and your tenants to help assure that they
maintain the resources needed to pay their rent on time
every month.
Whether you call it a trick or just simply a strategy, it is
Catholic Charities’ mission to impact not only the need, but
also the root cause of their problem. If you are a property
manager or landlord facing difficulties receiving your rent
each month, we would like to partner with you. Refer your
new tenants or the ones you had to reject due to financial
vulnerability.
A referral from you could save you the hassle of chasing
them down for rent each month or elevating the standard for
new renters. The cycle of rent avoidance tricks will
continue if the expectations never changes. Contact us at
brome@toledodiocese.org for more information. |
