Padmission’s Unlocked series documents what changes when a community builds a structured, coordinated approach to housing access. These are accounts of operational change — what the system looked like before, what was built, and what became possible when the structure held. This entry covers how centralized landlord engagement took shape in Albuquerque, New Mexico, through the work of the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness (NMCEH).
Unlocked covers what changes when housing assistance programs are built on a consistent operational standard — not what communities intend, but what the work actually looks like once the structure is in place. Each piece describes a real implementation: initial condition, what was broken, what changed, and how the work shifted as a result.
For our […]
A Note on Continuity
In the previous article, Why Administering Housing Programs Has Become So Difficult — and What Needs to Change, I examined the growing complexity of rental assistance administration at the program level. Fragmented infrastructure, workforce strain, policy volatility, and unsupported complexity have turned one of the most effective homelessness interventions into one of the hardest to operate sustainably.
Those challenges are real inside individual agencies—but they […]
Author’s Note: This article is written from my personal perspective as someone who has spent more than three decades administering housing programs and building systems to support them. My views expressed here reflect my experience and my conviction that the infrastructure supporting housing assistance programs must evolve.
This is not a product announcement. It is an invitation to examine how we organize and sustain this work.
In our Unlocked series, we highlight communities that have rethought how housing systems operate—moving away […]
In communities across the country, decentralized landlord engagement has long created bottlenecks: duplicated cold calls, missed unit opportunities, siloed relationships, and clients stuck with too few options. The alternative — centralized landlord engagement at the CoC level — requires a structural commitment and a shared system that all providers can trust and use. Cincinnati and Hamilton County decided to build exactly that.
In this second installment of Unlocked, our […]
In communities across the country, Padmission Connect is helping housing programs put choice back into the hands of the people they serve. With interactive housing search tools, participants and their case managers can work together—within one secure system—to identify housing that truly fits a participant’s needs, supports, and daily life.
This isn’t simply about locating an available unit. It is about helping people find the right home in the right […]
In most communities, landlord engagement starts and ends with whoever picked up the phone last. Housing navigators build small, personal networks. Staff turnover erases those relationships. And when a new client needs housing, the search starts from scratch. Partnership Home — the collaborative applicant, HMIS lead, and coordinated entry lead for the TX-601 Continuum of Care in Tarrant County, Texas — recognized this as a system design problem. Their answer […]
We’re seeing some amazing work around the country by leaders in homeless services systems around landlord engagement in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Fortunately, HUD Notice CPD-20-08, Waivers and Alternative Requirements for the Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) Program Under the CARES Act, provides the field with alternative requirements and flexibilities under the CARES Act, including for landlord incentives. Incentivizing landlords to participate in housing programs, and […]
Editor’s note — March 2026: This post was written in May 2020, shortly after HUD issued guidance encouraging Continuums of Care to develop proactive, affirmative landlord engagement systems at the community level. The concepts introduced here — centralization, shared landlord databases, coordinated housing search — have only grown more relevant in the years since. For a deeper treatment of what centralized landlord engagement looks like in practice today, including how […]
