Stronger communities.
About RST
Housing works better when the right people can find each other.
Rental Search Tool, or RST, brings housing opportunities, community support, and the people who provide housing together in one place.
Whether you are searching for a home, helping someone find one, or trying to fill an available unit, RST is designed to make the process easier, more connected, and more human.
What RST is
More than a place to search for rentals.
Finding housing involves more than finding an available unit. People need to understand requirements. Housing navigators need to find options that fit the people they support. Property managers need a simple way to share vacancies. Community organizations need better ways to coordinate the work happening in between.
RST brings those pieces together.
For people looking for housing
Search current rental opportunities, understand what each property requires, save promising options, and find additional support when you need it.
For community organizations
Give housing navigators and caseworkers better tools to search for clients, organize housing options, make referrals, and follow progress.
For property managers
Share available housing directly with people searching for a home and the community organizations helping them.
Our story
Housing search should not require searching everywhere.
RST grew out of a practical problem we kept seeing in housing work. Rental opportunities were scattered across property management websites, listing platforms, individual landlord pages, spreadsheets, community resources, and other sources.
For someone looking for housing, that meant checking site after site and trying to determine which information was still current. For housing navigators and caseworkers, it often meant repeating that process for every person they were helping. And for property managers, there was no simple way to make an available unit visible to the network of organizations actively helping people get housed.
So we started by bringing the search together.
The first idea behind RST was simple: make it easier to see available housing in one place. But as we worked alongside people doing this work every day, we realized the bigger opportunity was not just creating a better search engine. It was creating better connections between everyone involved.
How RST has grown
From a search tool to a connected housing resource.
- 01
Bring housing together
RST started by collecting rental opportunities that would otherwise require searching across many different sources.
- 02
Make the information useful
Listings became easier to search, compare, filter, and understand, helping people focus on housing that could actually fit their needs.
- 03
Build for the people helping
RST expanded to support community organizations, housing navigators, and caseworkers who search for housing on behalf of others every day.
- 04
Connect the housing providers
Property managers and landlords can participate directly, share vacancies, keep information current, and connect with people and organizations looking for housing.
- 05
Connect the entire journey
RST is becoming a shared place where housing seekers, community partners, and housing providers can work from the same information and move toward the same goal.
Our purpose
More people housed.
Stronger communities.
Technology should make housing easier to navigate, not add another barrier.
What guides us
RST is being built around a few simple ideas.
Open access matters
People should be able to search for housing without creating an account, paying a fee, or navigating unnecessary barriers.
Community organizations matter
Technology should support housing navigators and caseworkers, not replace the relationships and knowledge they bring to the people they serve.
Housing providers are part of the solution
Property managers and landlords should have an easy way to participate, share available housing, and connect with their communities.
Better information leads to better decisions
Housing information should be current, understandable, and useful, whether you are searching for yourself or helping someone else.
Local solutions can grow
RST is designed to work within individual communities while creating infrastructure that can eventually connect housing resources across regions.
The future of RST
A more connected way to find and provide housing.
We see RST becoming more than a rental search tool. The goal is to create a connected housing network where people looking for housing, organizations helping them, and housing providers can work together with less friction.
That means continuing to improve the search while building stronger connections around it.
More housing
Make it easier for property managers, landlords, and housing providers to contribute available units directly.
Better matching
Help people and housing navigators identify opportunities that fit household needs, affordability, eligibility, vouchers, location, and other important factors.
Stronger referrals
Give community organizations better ways to move someone from finding a potential home to connecting with the housing provider.
Better coordination
Help housing seekers, navigators, organizations, and property managers stay connected as someone moves through the housing process.
More communities
Bring the RST model to more communities while keeping the experience grounded in local housing providers, programs, organizations, and needs.
The bigger idea
Finding housing should feel connected.
A person searching for housing should not have to understand dozens of websites and systems. A housing navigator should not have to start the same search from scratch for every client. A property manager should not have to figure out how to reach every organization helping people find homes.
RST can become the place where those paths meet.
- People looking for homes.
- Organizations helping them.
- Property managers providing them.
All working from a more connected housing system.
Built by Range Lab
Building better systems for social good.
RST is a Range Lab initiative. Range Lab builds technology around essential needs and the organizations working to meet them. We believe thoughtfully designed tools can remove friction from complicated systems and give communities better ways to work together.
RST began with housing search, but its purpose has always been larger:
Make it easier for more people to find a place to call home.
Learn more about Range LabJoin us
Housing is stronger when we do it together.
Whether you're searching for housing, helping someone find it, or providing a place for someone to live, there is a place for you in RST.
