Newsletters

Dear Subscriber,

At Community Home Trust, we know it’s important to think creatively about innovative ways to provide more affordable housing opportunities for more people. One lesser-known strategy we use is called master leasing.  

In both of our master leasing programs, Community Home Trust leases rental units from private landlords, then subleases those units at reduced rates to tenants who might otherwise have a difficult time finding an affordable rental home. Master leasing programs have been described as “subletting with a social mission,” and programs like these can serve many purposes in a community.

The Town of Chapel Hill master leasing program was developed in 2018 in partnership with Justice United and with the support of the Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro. The goal was to provide opportunities for people sheltered at Inter-Faith Council for Social Service (IFC) Community House and HomeStart, Oxford houses, and the Caramore community to transition to stable, permanent housing. The program currently comprises eight units, which CHT leases at market rate and then subleases to individuals and families earning less than 30% of the area median income (AMI). Each tenant pays only 30% of their limited income to CHT, and we pay the difference using grant funding for the program.

The CHOOSE Chatham Master Lease program is expected to launch in July of this year. With rapid growth in Chatham County, Chatham County Schools projects a consistent need to recruit and retain a high-quality teaching workforce. At the same time, population growth has led to an increase in the cost of housing, which has outpaced the growth in teacher salaries in the County. This new three-year pilot program will comprise five units, which we will lease from private landlords at market rate. The educators subleasing from CHT will pay us 30% of their gross income towards the rent for their unit; through fundraising and grants, the school system and community partners will subsidize the remaining rental cost.

While the concept of master leasing isn’t new, I think it’s an underused strategy in tackling our nation’s affordable housing crisis. In fact, the National Alliance to End Homelessness has suggested that it could be “an absolute game-changer for how our nation addresses its housing shortage.” For our part, we can see the impact of our Chapel Hill master leasing program in the data. At the end of our first year administering the program (2020), we had five tenants participating (two families and three individuals), all of whom were experiencing homelessness or at imminent risk of homelessness at the time they joined the program. After a year, all were still housed with the program and current on their rent. And the program is cost-effective, too: while HUD estimates the monthly cost to support two families and three individuals experiencing homelessness to be around $12,000 per month, the master leasing program cost CHT an average of $4300 per month, a savings to the community of $7700 per month.

As with any problem as entrenched and complicated as the affordable housing crisis, it requires a toolbox filled with a variety of tools to solve it. Master leasing is and should continue to be one of the tools we use to solve this problem. If you want to learn more about master leasing, here are some resources that might be helpful:

• How Master Leasing Can Help the Affordable Housing Crisis, National Alliance to End Homelessness, May 17, 2022.
• Pursuing Housing Justice: Interventions for Impact, Urban Institute, May 24, 2023.
• Master Leasing: More Housing, Faster, Orange County Justice United, January 9, 2019.

Don’t hesitate to respond to this email or reach out if you have questions!

Kimberly Sanchez, Executive Director