The Housing Connections Initiative

The North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness (NCCEH), with funding from Healthy Blue, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, provided $1 million to four North Carolina community nonprofits to design and implement strategies that foster housing connections between people seeking housing and those with housing available to rent.

The Housing Connections Initiative (HCI) aims to develop partnerships that work as well for property owners as they do for people who need a place to live. It asks the question, what does the property management industry need to provide housing to prescreened, well-supported renters who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

These grants offered organizations the opportunity to experiment with what can work to move us beyond recruiting units for one household at a time.  How can we  scale up to secure a larger number of units, so the rehousing system can quickly connect more households to housing, like 

  • funding a full-time staffing focus for new landlord recruitment;
  • providing flexible funding to support innovative partnerships with landlords and property owners; and 
  • offering coaching for grantees to learn, grow, and develop strategies that work.

HCI provided financial incentives to North Carolina rental housing property owners and managers in Asheville/Buncombe County, Charlotte, Durham, Greenville, Jacksonville, New Bern, and Washington.

HCI