This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.
In London, there are thousands of young people looking for a room in a shared apartment, and thousands of Londoners who offer accommodation in exchange for work: why not put them in contact?
This was the idea of Stephanie Ronaldo, 23 years old, with which she won the Innovative UK Ideas Mean Business award (Innovative ideas in the UK are business), according to the British newspaper Evening Standard.
Ronaldo came up with the idea of developing an application that would unite landlords and tenants who offered accommodation in exchange for work when she herself was looking for an apartment in London and found an online advertisement that said: "I offer a free room or a limited salary for taking care of my child."
The young woman thought that many could object to such a job without a formal contract, so she created Room for Help, an app which helps resolve this issue.
This way, students or young people who find high rents in the British capital difficult to pay, could reduce them just by making a deal with their landlords, taking care of their pets or helping with the household chores.
For now, Room for Help has managed to accommodate young people in the Hampstead and Maida Vale areas for monthly rents of 250 pounds, when the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in London is 1,250 pounds (which is 45%) of the wage of the lessors, of average).
How does it work?
The system devised by Ronaldo is already a web and mobile application in which both people looking for accommodation and owners who offer a room in exchange for work can register.
Afterwards, in Room for Help they are in charge of visiting the properties and talking with the tenants to make sure that the room is in habitable conditions, and, in the same way, they interview each candidate to know what type of work is convenient for them.
Once they have managed to unite the two parties, they organize all the paperwork, they carry the documentation and an official agreement is signed between them.
The last step is to do monthly monitoring of the tenant and the landlord, to ensure during the first three months that both parties are satisfied with their relationship.
The application charges a fee of 250 pounds for its service. For the rest, as advertised on its website, only requires the payment of a deposit or deposit of the same amount, which is returned at the end of the lease if the signed contract has not been breached.
This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.
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