Freshly 18 and a student at UC Santa Barbara, Damon Dvorson solo-signed three leases for his fraternity in 2022. Unfamiliar with legal documents, Dvorson was consumed with anxiety when he suddenly realized he’d signed onto leases worth a million dollars and now needed to fill 51 spots by himself.
“With over $1 million in leases solely under my name and the threat of being sent to collections looming over my head, I quickly realized that something had to be done. While I was eventually successful in filling all 51 spots, the stress took years off my life,” Dvorson said.
A data science student, Dvorson started coding, launching himself into a passion project that has become Housing Helper. The basic concept is to link those subleasing or filling a lease with anybody who is seeking accommodation.
“Nobody should have to worry about having a roof over their head. As housing becomes more scarce, we need a platform tailored to group housing,” said Dvorson, who spoke with an electric enthusiasm, brimming with ideas to improve Isla Vista’s housing scene. “Students can’t be expected to lay down a full deposit for a couple months of shelter, and they shouldn’t have to send months of rent down the drain just because they couldn’t find a subleaser. We bring students and vacancies together.”
When he was searching for apartments, he said there were no housing apps he could turn to, which really pushed him to create Housing Helper. “You go on Zillow and the only thing that it really does is connect you to an agent, which [starts] a week-long process, minimum. It doesn’t do anything and it charges you. You go on Facebook Marketplace and every single other post is from some bot account. I wanted to make a safe space,” he said.
After developing Housing Helper, Dvorson expanded his team, bringing in Alex Nicholas as Chief Operating Officer and Mason Watters as Chief Marketing Officer.
Watters had a similarly challenging time finding somewhere to live in Isla Vista as a new student at UCSB. Like Dvorson, she felt compelled to create a resource and built the social media account @sbshousing, which acted as a space for users to post housing and roommate ads.
“After about a year, the account grew to about 3,000 followers. Thousands of students from SBCC [Santa Barbara City College] and UCSB were connected and even housing companies were able to connect with tenants,” Watters explained. “I came across Housing Helper. Their Instagram was a new account, and I messaged them because I thought that it was such an incredible idea.”
This fundamental component of @sbshousing — personalizing the housing and roommate search so that users can find spaces and living partners that are compatible — is a key feature of Housing Helper.
“Housing Helper matches you with the people that suit you best, not just the place,” Dvorson said. “We realize that who you live with is just as important as where you live. We match students based on year, interest, and, most importantly, personal descriptions.”
Because Housing Helper was built by those who fully understand the sky-high rents, limited options, fierce competition, and exploitative property managers that make up Isla Vista’s real estate market, the app is full of features that only those in the know could imagine. For example, the app can keep track of who owes what, making the process of calculating individual rent and utilities much more straightforward.
Dvorson and his team also adapt Housing Helper, almost immediately, to client feedback. They received a comment suggesting that Housing Helper be exclusive to students in the area to prevent scammers from inundating the site. “And so I thought, ‘Okay, why don’t we just make it so that you need to have a .edu email in order to sign up,’” Dvorson recalled. He integrated that feature the same day.
Housing Helper recently launched and is now available at the Apple App Store. Check out the Housing Helper website to learn more: housinghelperiv.com/