Two Lincoln students and a former student have launched a business which will benefit the homeless.
FreshRent helps find appropriate accommodation for students at universities across the country.
The group is made up of former advertising and marketing student and Operations Director, Matthew Meekins and two current Lincoln students marketing director Aaron Short, who studies business and marketing, and sales director Henry Debenham who studies international business.
The team met at university and discovered a shared interest in this type of business venture.
Aaron said: “The main goal is to get as many letting agencies and houses on there as possible for the students to choose from because we believe if you have more to choose from you’re most likely to choose the best house for you”.
The website now has a network of 50,000 properties across the country, despite only starting three weeks ago.
Henry said: “The first thing that we did was pick up the phone and cold call landlords and letting agencies to see if they were interested.
“We work on a no lets no fee basis so that’s how we were able to gather so many clients – we only get paid when we deliver results.”
As well as providing easier access for students, the team wanted to find a way to give back to the community, particularly by helping the homeless.
Aaron said: “I was walking through Lincoln and saw loads of homeless people and we were doing this project and we thought it would be really cool if we could help those in need as well.
“For every group of students we manage to get into accommodation we actually donate a tent to a homeless person. It’s not finding them a house but it’s giving them something better than sleeping on the streets.”
Even though its still in its first few weeks, the group are optimistic about FreshRent’s future.
Matthew said: “We hope that Fresh rent will be able to help lots of students find their perfect home because we don’t want them to have that nightmare experience with housing that we know a lot of students have.”
So far they have housed 150 students which means they have 37 tents to donate to homeless people.
Becky Lancashire will have more on this story later today.
