If you lead a faith community, a senior center, a parish nursing program, a neighborhood association, a primary care office, or any social service that touches Portland home providers, you have already had the conversation more times than you can count. Someone you know and trust mentions, often quietly, that they cannot afford to stay much longer. The taxes. The medications. The fuel bill. They love their home, they love their neighbors, they do not want to move, and they do not see another way.
You listen. You offer compassion. You may suggest a few resources. Then the conversation ends and you move on to the next person, knowing that you have not really solved the question. That gap, between the trust people give you and the practical answer you can hand them, is exactly what HomeShare Online closes.
What HomeShare Online does so you do not have to
HomeShare Online is a vetted, nonprofit home sharing platform owned and operated by HomeShare Oregon. The platform does the parts of the work that your team is not staffed to do at scale. It verifies identities, runs background checks, screens applicants, and curates matches based on values and not just availability. It provides a lease template tailored to home sharing and the structure to support a stable relationship between two adults who have chosen each other.
None of that comes out of your budget or your hours. We are funded by philanthropy and corporate sponsorship and, in Portland, by a partnership with the City. The people you refer are not asked to figure home sharing out alone. The platform standards, screening, and structure are already in place when they arrive.
A referral that respects your relationship
The hardest part of any referral is the worry that the person you trust will be treated worse than they are when they are with you. We hear that concern often. Our answer is to make the referral itself the easiest, most consistent possible step.
Referrals to HomeShare Online can be as simple as a printed card you keep at the front desk, a one line link in your weekly email, or a co-branded landing page the platform sets up for your organization. The platform handles the rest, with the same standards every applicant goes through. We protect your relationship by being good stewards of the trust you have already built.
What partnership looks like in practice
Partnership with HomeShare Oregon takes one form: the co-branded referral pathway. We set up a tracked landing page that carries your organization's name and ours together. When your members find us through that page, we know it. When they apply, we know it. When they make a match, we know it. When something works or does not, we can tell you specifically what happened for the people you sent us.
We chose a single pathway deliberately. It is the only way we can learn where home sharers are actually coming from, which referral sources produce the most stable matches, and which communities are best positioned to refer well. We are committed to running this work as a learning organization, and the data discipline that requires starts with the integration model itself. Goodwill is not a substitute for data.
What that looks like for your team:
- We co-design the landing page and the tracked URL with you. Setup takes a few hours of your communications staff's time.
- Your front line staff or volunteers get a referral link and a short primer they can use in conversations with members.
- We report back to you monthly on the people your organization referred: applications received, screenings completed, matches made, and outcomes at six months. Privacy protections fit your program's data agreements.
A note on partner discount codes
Through the co-branded referral pathway, your organization can offer members a discount code on the standard $125 platform fee. This is one of the simplest ways for a partner to lower the barrier for the people they serve. We set up the code with your tracked URL, so the same pathway that captures the referral also handles the discount, and we keep the redemption tracking on our side so it is not extra work for your team.
Why now
The City of Portland recognized that the success of its home sharing pilot depended on partnerships with the trusted organizations its residents already turn to. That is you. The pilot is open. The platform is built to be affordable. Every month a referral does not happen is a month a home provider you serve quietly carries the weight on their own.
National platforms have scale. You have trust. The combination of the two is what makes home sharing work for the people you care about.
Become a partner
Visit homeshareoregon.org/partner to learn more, or email info@homeshareoregon.org and we will set up a 30 minute conversation about what pathway fits your organization.