Innovator Spotlight: Tyrone Poole - Creating Access to Housing in America

nexus live Jan 16, 2023

Addressing the affordable housing crisis will require a collaborative effort between governments and the private sector. InflectionPoint is committed to addressing the affordable housing crisis in collaborations with city and county stakeholders and supportive service agencies by introducing clients to innovative methods to tackle homelessness. This Innovator Spotlight on Tyrone Poole proves the importance of seeing the immense potential contributions of individuals struggling with homelessness and housing insecurity.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Tyrone Poole sought to be a firefighter until a catastrophic fall swiftly ended his career and left him with medical debt and no place to live. Watch Tyrone Poole's TEDx Talk as he walks you through his transformative idea that is changing the way all renters find homes at the touch of a button, regardless of their background.

Affordable Housing Crisis at a Glance

Government policies and housing advocates are coming together to provide a solution to accessing affordable housing. Policymakers look to reform the 'Low-income Housing Tax Credit' (LIHTC) program, incentivizing developers to make more units affordable while reducing the criteria for housing assistance. While the most recent appropriations bill for 2023 includes $26.2 billion to renew existing vouchers, housing advocates like Tyrone Poole can provide unique solutions that help families access housing benefits.

On the other side of this crisis, housing advocates are working diligently to connect those seeking housing assistance with programs designed to break the cycle of homelessness. Poole cited, despite housing agencies distributing housing vouchers that worked anywhere in the state, 50 percent of voucher users were denied.

Challenges to accessing affordable housing

Poole was sleeping on a broken cot in a shelter in Portland, Oregon, after losing everything in a firefighting training accident. He has lived through the problem he is trying to fix. Tyrone has seen the reality of the statistic that people with housing vouchers have applications turned down by landlords 40 percent of the time.

Poole's story of searching for housing through the voucher program is similar to the millions of families participating. Tyrone shares his struggles with a system that leaves thousands of low-income families stranded between shelters and homeless.

There are a variety of barriers to affordable housing, one of the most overt obstacles to housing would be application fees. An "application fee" is a nonrefundable cost to apply for an apartment due with your renter's application. The fee can cost anywhere from $30 to $50 per application, complicating searching for housing if looking at multiple units.

One major obstacle for families needing affordable housing is meeting the criteria to qualify for a home. On Tyrone's first day in a homeless shelter, he received an award letter to rent anywhere he wanted to live. But three months later, he was still denied everywhere he applied.

How do housing vouchers work?

Poole says one of the biggest frustrations was not knowing rental properties' screening criteria ahead of time, which led to him wasting time and application fees applying to apartments he didn't know he had no chance of getting.

Most Housing Choice Vouchers are "tenant-based," meaning people can use them to rent any private apartment that meets program guidelines. In contrast, project-based vouchers (PBV) are attached to a specific unit whose landlord contracts with the state or local public housing agency to rent the unit to low-income families and individuals.

PBVs, administered by state and local housing agencies, are distinct from Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA), a program through which property owners have contracted directly with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to rent units to families with low incomes.

According to a 2016 SmartMove survey, the top two concerns of landlords are payment problems and eviction history. Property managers qualifying a new applicant means putting them through a tenant screening process. During the tenant screening process, there are things property managers look for like:

Healthy credit history and resident score
Clean background check
Clean eviction history
Stable employment history
Sufficient income

Based on Tyrone's story, he experienced problems with at least three of these issues, like many others in his situation. Each criterion touches on the additional barriers for people looking to break the cycle of homelessness.

Often, individuals do not have a permanent address, have experienced long-term joblessness, and have accrued citations and infractions for misdemeanors such as loitering, sleeping on a sidewalk, or parking a car overnight.

How does OneApp help?

“There's little you know about how you fared on the screening criteria," Poole explained, because those criteria are often undisclosed. The problem with access to housing is the process property managers use to mitigate risk – software that can screen vulnerable applicants, then deny them access to housing.

Housing advocates like Tyrone Poole work to provide solutions for renters with challenges like income, less-than-perfect credit, or rental history hiccups.

Tyrone Poole founded a startup called OneApp. A platform that specializes in helping renters overcome rental barriers and qualify for housing by acting as the financial co-signer regardless of their income or past.

The idea for a service that would scan housing providers' screening criteria and show prospective renters matches based on their background information, such as credit history. The goal was to give people, especially those with low incomes or other barriers to housing access, a solution to the problems he faced in his housing search.

Conclusion

Over the long term, lawmakers should enact additional rental assistance expansions to make assistance more accessible. Policymakers at the federal, state and local levels can further address the crisis in housing affordability by making additional capital investments in housing and innovative solutions that address social equity and homelessness.

Tyrone is revolutionizing the houseless problem in America through innovative technology. Tackling homelessness requires a multi-prong approach that includes additional housing supply but also addresses the additional barriers that can be difficult for those experiencing homelessness to overcome. Through our mission, our comprehensive array of services aims to help low-income families overcome the obstacles of seeking shelter.

The InflectionPoint Approach

Every successful project begins with a clear vision for the project's desired outcomes. With a clarified vision, it's easier to match the proposed project budget requirements with potential public and private funding sources to help finance the project development and construction.

Gaining the necessary input and perspectives for successful supportive housing projects, requires a focus on the everyday issues that those struggling with affordable housing and homelessness face every day in life. InflectionPoint’s commitment to affordable housing is centered in our constituent-led approach to working directly with service providers and affected communities when developing our project pursuits.

Many funding opportunities are qualification-based grants which reward the most well-organized project proposals that can demonstrate a capable team and high probability of success and provide funding for qualified projects annually. Once the vision is established with potential funding sources in focus, we work on the property site selection and conceptual design phase to shape the overall project scope, budget, schedule, and management plan.