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Finding Rental Housing for Fire Victims

Last week’s wildfires displaced thousands of Southern California residents. People are looking for long term rentals. Apartments.com has created a Southern California Wildfires Resource Center, to help people find housing and other resources.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is also helping fire victims find rental housing.

HUD News Release

Using housing information from various Internet and Government Data providers, such as SocialServ.Com, Apartment.Com, HomeSales.Gov, and Rent.Com, the NHL allows users to set a number of search criteria to locate available housing in a one-stop-shop forum. Search criteria include the desired location, by city, area code; price range; acceptance of housing vouchers; accessibility; assisted and elderly accommodations; and number of bedrooms. Once the criteria are set, a rapid search is conducted nationwide with designated partners, and the information about available housing is presented in a report format. In most cases, the housing photos and contact information are also provided.

National Housing Locator System Home Page

The NHL is a searchable, web-based clearinghouse of available rental housing nation-wide. It allows HUD and its business partners, in particular State Housing Authorities, Public Housing Authorities, and other critical First Responders, to deliver housing assistance by rapidly locating rental housing and available government-owned single family homes for sale during an emergency. The NHL uses a rental housing industry standard for requesting data, and collects available responses to a housing request from private and public housing locators across the country. A selected housing query through a web site sends the requester to the private or public housing locator providing the data. The original data provider provides the details on the rental, points of contact and other value added resources.

The system is available to states and public housing authorities, and other first responders at this time. It may be opened to the general public at a later date. (NHL link from Rentlinx)

Tags: HUD, fire victims find rental housing, National Housing Locator