When Orlando reached his landlord on the phone this Monday, he wanted to review the list of townhouses in his rental community in Alexandria, Virginia, that his wife, who owns a home cleaning business, had on her schedule. But the landlord, Jerome King, had something else to discuss.
He told Orlando, who requested his last name not be divulged due to a health-related matter, not to worry about May’s rent. It had been picked up by Piñata, a lease management and rent-payment rewards company marking its industry debut with a COVID-19 rent relief program.
The roughly $1,500 payment had been a concern for Orlando and his wife due to the dent the coronavirus has already hollowed in their income.
Since mid-March, the coronavirus outbreak has pushed 22 million Americans to seek unemployment benefits, straining both renters and landlords around the country to reconcile reduced – or wiped-out – incomes and unpaid bills.
“People’s homes are very literally their safe havens right now,” says Piñata CEO Lily Liu, who has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneurs list for cofounding PublicStuff, an online platform that lets citizens report problems to local governments.
A screenshot of a Piñata dashboard that assists landlords manage their properties and track rent … [+]
Piñata
Serving as the link between landlords and tenants, Piñata is assisting both amid the coronavirus pandemic by asking the former to nominate financially burdened residents to benefit from its rent relief campaign.
In doing so, “we can really make an impact by listening to the stories that are coming out and finding ways to help not just renters stay in their home, but also landlords who want to do good,” says Liu.
When King, who has been working with Piñata to adopt its lease management application, heard that proposition, he immediately thought of Orlando, whom he had known for some 14 years.
Jerome King
Alexis Federoff
“I knew that Orlando was the man,” says King, who leads King Homes Inc., a company his grandfather and father had started. “Pinata [has] the idea of [helping] somebody who’s going through some stuff, but also at the same time, Orlando has a heart for people.”
Orlando and his family moved into a King Homes property after the Great Recession cost them the house they used to own for 15 years. In the decade since, the landlord and the renter nourished a friendship.
“He has become more of a family,” says King. “After 14 years, we’ve been through a lot, have shared a lot of knowledge and have been able to lean on one another.”
Soon after they settled in, Orlando’s wife secured part-time employment cleaning rental units for King, a job that eventually mushroomed into her own company. In 2015, Orlando tumbled from a ladder at work, which hurled him into a disability-benefits program and made his wife the couple’s breadwinner.
Orlando and his wife.
Orlando’s personal archive
Since the virus outbreak, “my wife’s job has been kind of slow,” Orlando says. “She’s still doing the cleanup for [the King Homes company] but there is not the same number of houses she usually cleans because right now people don’t want to move or don’t want others in their homes.”
As a result, the couple fell behind on their rent payments. Having suspended late fees, King worked with them – as well as with other struggling tenants – to alleviate the coronavirus-induced economic stress.
When King broke the news that Piñata is footing the rent next month, surprise and gratitude overwhelmed Orlando.
“We’re very excited about it,” he says. “It is beautiful. At this moment, we need people just like [the Piñata’s team] to come up with this kind of programs. I really appreciate [it]. It’s amazing.”
How Piñata’s rent relief program works
Piñata is funding its rent relief program through a mixture of internal resources and private tax-deductible contributions. The initiative boasts broad parameters to achieve maximum impact, says Liu, the company CEO.
For instance, landlords do not have to switch or even commit to Piñata’s software in order to nominate renters on the startup’s website. They do not have to limit nominations to a single tenant, either. There are no geographic restrictions; no caps on the monthly rent amount Piñata would shoulder.
“We don’t have any set criteria or limits,” says Liu. “Some months we may see more [submissions] than others but it’s really about finding the right stories where people truly are in need.”