A not-for-profit Internet business and Web site launched by a group of social workers and teachers is making it easier for people to find affordable rental housing in Charlotte, Gastonia, and other cities.

Socialserve.com, a program of Charlotte-based Non-Profit Industries, Inc., is an online database designed to match people with properties owned by landlords who accept Section 8 vouchers.

While the Web site launched 18 months ago, as an outgrowth of an initiative by U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick's Task Force on Affordable Housing, it has expanded its property listings and services in recent months.

One of the chief goals of Myrick's group was to create a database of affordably priced housing in the Charlotte area.

"This is the database," says Jon Gauthier, director of Fannie Mae's North Carolina Partnership Office and chairman of the task force. "It's a huge boon to the landlord community as well as to families seeking rental housing."

The Socialserve.com site also includes properties with rental rates considered affordable by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In Charlotte, that rate is $800 or less per month for a two-bedroom apartment or $1,050 for a three-bedroom apartment, says Van Gottel, founder and executive director of Non-Profit Industries.

Gottel, a former social worker, and a group of teachers and others in his profession created a prototype for the Socialserve.com program after being repeatedly frustrated in trying to find affordable rental housing for the people they worked with.

"I woke up in the middle of the night with a dream, and I got up and built it," Gottel says.

After he connected with Myrick's task force, Fannie Mae provided his group with $25,000 in initial funding, and other sponsors followed, including the city of Charlotte, city of Gastonia, Bank of America Corp. and Foundation for the Carolinas.

This year, HUD awarded Socialserve.com and the Charlotte Housing Authority a $1 million grant to help improve the Section 8 program.

Both Charlotte and Gastonia have contracted with Socialserve.com to list their housing authority properties, and other cities, such as St. Louis, are also linking up with the online housing database. The city of Charlotte has paid $30,000 for access to the service and to help develop the Web site, which also includes resources related to housing needs, Gottel says.

With its number of contracts increasing, he expects Non-Profit Industries to be self-sustaining in five years. The venture employs four people full time and two part time.

he also anticipates a decline in the number of local Section 8 vouchers that go unused because people can't find housing.

"We're seeing Section 8 voucher use increase in Charlotte and Gastonia," Gottel says. "That problem of no longer being able to find rental housing no longer exists."

That translates into lower expenditures by the Housing Authority, Gauthier says.

"If you increase your utilization by having a housing stock, it lowers the costs throughout the Housing Authority," he says.