“Would you consider renting to a tattooed, pierced-nose, party-hearty 17-year-old loaded with issues, attitudes and a sound system that will drive away the bats in your attic?”

Some landlords will appreciate honesty more than others, but this is probably not the best way to present an ILP to a prospective landlord. Many IL programs rent apartments from private landlords in order to give ILP youth a chance to learn what it takes to live independently from real-life experience. After a program has been running for a while, it can use previous landlords as references and build up a core group who understand the program and are willing to give a new youth (s) a try. But how do you convince that first one?

Here are some of the things landlords have told us over they years as to why they are willing to rent to us:

We guarantee rent-Landlords hate chasing after people to pay rent. They know that they will receive rent from us each month on time. They know where our office is and who is on our board of trustees. Or they know several numbers they can call if the rent is late. They also know that we will assist youth who take over the leases to their apartments after discharge from care.

We have tighter rules than landlords-Not allowing more than 2 visitors, not allowing any alcohol, pets, parties or 6 ft. sub-woofers, are things most landlords can’t enforce. Letting landlords and resident managers know the program rules up front gives the ILP extra (free!) help in keeping an eye on ILP tenants.

We’re on-call 24/7/365-Landlords and resident managers truly appreciate being able to call someone else at midnight to break up a party or chase away noisy friends. Landlords
love not having to get up on a cold winter night to let someone in who lost their key for the fifth time.

We cover any damages-Landlords often do not recover costs due to damages of irresponsible tenants. The same tenants who cause the damages often break the lease or drags the landlord through a lengthy eviction process. We cover damages immediately and then go after our client for re-payment.

We handle confrontations-Landlords and resident managers appreciate when they are able to call us to complain about a problem with one of our youth such as loud music or unruly visitors-and we take care of things.

We clean up messes-There’s nothing worse to a landlord than having to clean up a trashed, filthy place of someone who owes back rent and skipped out of the last 4 months of a lease. We hire unemployed ILP youth to clean up situations like this, usually paid with the savings (program generated) of the youth who left the mess.

We evict if necessary-We make it clear to new landlords that we are not looking for any trouble for them and do not want any negative publicity for us. Youth are told upon entering the program that this living arrangement is based on following ILP and landlord rules. Violations can lead to being removed from the current apartment to another location, such as a shelter or program run shared-home. Of course we will advocate for our youth if we feel they are being blamed for problems they are not causing.

We limit visitors-Landlords usually do not tell adult tenants to limit their visitors. We ask our youth to understand that this landlord would not rent to them without our backing and a promise to keep an eye out for typical adolescent shenanigans. We also try to assure that no one is in the apartment when our client is not present.

We have a steady flow of renters-An unexpected issue is that some landlords actually see us as good business partners who have a steady flow of renters. Some of our landlords are actually large companies with units throughout the city. These people go from not wanting to give us a try to faxing over lists of their open apartments.

We monitor & supervise clients-Just the fact that we have people coming by weekly to check on the condition of a place is more that what landlords can expect for the rest of their tenants.

Over the years, landlords have told us that our youth are not any different than the rest of their “adult” tenants. They have noise, drug, alcohol and damage problems with 55-year-old tenants-and they can’t call their mothers to complain! The difference is that they have us to deal with most of the unpleasant stuff and pay for any costly problems. Surely there are landlords who ask us to remove a youth and/or discontinue renting to us. But there are more who rent to us just as they would any other adult.