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Tower Grove Neighborhoods Community Development Corporation (TGNCDC) has over a decade of tenant screening service experience and has completed over 12,000 applications since 2014. HomeScreen™, TGNCDC’s non-discriminatory, Fair Housing-compliant tenant screening service, quickly delivers objective and thorough information to landlords looking to find and maintain good tenants. HomeScreen was specifically designed to reframe the traditional tenant screening model and to fill vacancies in an equitable way. 

We know that, for decades, systemic injustice has disproportionately affected low-income renters and people of color as they search for affordable housing. In St. Louis alone, an estimated 38% of all households could not afford the median rent before the Covid 19 pandemic hit. Unfortunately, this year, the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn, have further accelerated the affordable housing crisis. As unemployment spiked and additional federal unemployment benefits expired, many renters fell behind on their rent.  Although the City currently has an eviction moratorium in place until November 6th, we are working now to create tools to curb a wave of evictions expected when the moratorium does expire. 

Nonprofits all over the region, including our partners at Employment Connection, have the very difficult task of finding landlords who are willing to rent their properties to people with recent evictions, who are unemployed or are low income, or have past criminal convictions. Employment Connection (EC) is a 501(c)3 founded in 1977 with a vision to break down barriers to self-sufficiency and create a safer and more inclusive community. EC helps clients with job training and has helped over 4,000 individuals find gainful employment, but they also focus on housing. Each year, EC helps 120 homeless individuals and their families find affordable housing through homeless prevention programs, rapid rehousing, and permanent supportive housing. 

HomeScreen was uniquely positioned to partner with Employment Connection as they applied for CARES Act Funding to help those at risk of losing their homes this year. HomeScreen has an existing database of over 1,000 landlords who believe in supporting our mission. Together with EC, we will make updates to our software so that HomeScreen acts as a central database of landlords interested in working with non-profit social service providers to rent to their clients most in need of housing. 

Landlords using HomeScreen will have the opportunity to list their available rental units exclusively to non-profit social service providers (SSPs) at no cost. Landlords will build a profile within their HomeScreen account so that they can fill their vacancies quickly, with an applicant and program that meets their predetermined requirements. 

SSPs will log in to their own HomeScreen accounts, browse listed apartments, review the landlord’s requirements, and reach out to schedule showings or ask additional questions. The HomeScreen database will give SSPs a modern, easy to use system to submit and to securely store apartment applications for their clients. HomeScreen will only charge the SSP for one screening per month, resulting in savings for the SSPs overtime. By tapping into our large network of existing landlords and leveraging the technology we have in place, we expect this tool to be available to use by January 2021.

Revenue generated through HomeScreen is used to support community development activities and is directly invested back into the City of Saint Louis. TGNCDC is a real estate-focused community development corporation that has facilitated 100s of redevelopment projects with a focus on eliminating blight, created 78 affordable rental units (owned and managed) in the last 6 years, supported infrastructure projects, delivered landlord/rehabber training seminars and advocated for energy efficiency programs for low-income renters. 

For more information, please contact Ella Gross, Tenant Screening Manager at ella@towergrovecdc.org

Artists can see beauty in peril - so we can move beyond the grip of a problem like Plastic Pollution. Artist Jenny Kettler shows a way through in her photo exhibition Reclaiming Gaia, and this Earthworms conversation.

She shows plastic bags caught in bushes fluttering like tattered veils, a pregnant women shaded by a single-use bottle, and cyanotype sun-developed patterns made by rain. A hand-made book alternates pages of organza fabric with rice paper, inviting the viewer to explore the delicate "spaces between" perceptions. One print that Kettler buried in Forest Park for a year as a kind of archeological quest, motivated a change from gloss to matte photo paper when she realized the glossy stuff is laminated to plastic!

Jenny Kettler fuses vision, awareness, and urgency as keys to unlock barriers of our thinking, to open our hearts.

View Reclaiming Gaia at Stone Spiral Gallery, 2506 Sutton in Maplewood, next door to Stone Spiral Coffee. Opening reception by reservation to stay COVID-safe, October 24. Closing reception November 22, reservations accepted via Facebook.

Jenny Kettler recently earned her MFA from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. She is an Adjunct Professor of art at Lindenwood University, and teaches at Laumeier Sculpture Park.

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms greenly conscious engineer, with support from Jon Valley and Andy Coco.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Live without Plastic? Jay Sinha says YES! (Jan 2018)
Chalk Art, Street Art, Woman-Powered Art RIOT (May 2018)
Artist Takes on Plastic and Invasive Bush Honeysuckle (May 2018)