Finding affordable housing has never been easy, but it's improving, thanks to the Internet and help from local governments and their nonprofit partners.

The woman was a victim of domestic violence.

She lived in upstate New York, but needed to move somewhere safe, hopefully far away, and she needed to move quickly. Normally, trying to find a new home can be a time-consuming affair, especially when you are poor. But with little time to spare, the woman decided to try a different approach and logged on to Socialserve.com, a Web-based affordable housing search service.

Within minutes, she was able to locate housing in Charlotte, North Carolina. The woman is now living safely in an apartment she can afford.

The service, offered by a nonprofit organization for the city and surrounding Mecklenburg County, is one of a new crop of Internet services aimed at helping low-income individuals and families find affordable housing. Although not everyone who uses these services is in such dire straits as the woman from New York. Most housing experts agree that searching for affordable housing can be extremely difficult. With a powerful, flexible tool, such as the Internet in their hands, low-income families have an opportunity to simplify the search for affordable housing in a select number of localities.

So far, these services consist primarily of searchable databases that list rental units that are privately owned and publicly subsidized. Though available for use by the public, many are heavily used by other government social service agencies and nonprofit organizations that assist the poor with housing needs. Eventually, these housing databases are expected to add features, such as online housing applications, even child care and job search databases.

Growing Housing Shortage

Housing needs have grown increasingly acute in recent years as the proportion of affordable housing available to low-income families continues to shrink. There are 5 million fewer apartments nationwide than are needed for people with the lowest incomes, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Where housing is available, most working-class people simple can't afford it and still pay for life's necessities. For example, the average janitor earns enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment in six of the nation's 60 largest cities, according to a report issued by the National Housing Conference.

One result of the affordable housing crisis is the upsurge in homelessness. Last year, homelessness jumped 13 percent nationwide, according to the Washington Post. In Washington, D.C. homelessness increased 32 percent. In Chicago, it rose percent and in San Francisco 22 percent. Many housing experts blame the lack of federal support for affordable housing. They point to the fact that federal housing vouchers that help poor families pay rent for private-sector apartments has barely risen in recent years. Other barriers have also impeded the development of affordable housing for those who are on the economy's bottom rung.

Federal housing subsidies, known as Section 8 vouchers, are provided by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (IIUD) agency to low-income families and help pay a percentage of their rent, based on income in a particular are-a. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the county for metropolitan Cleveland, low-income families can log on to the Section 8 Unit Locator and search for private rental units that accept Section 8 vouchers. The Web site allows apartment hunters to search by city and number of bedrooms per unit.

When the site was launched in the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority had little more than 200 units listed in the database, according to Cathy Pennington, director of the authority's Section 8 Program. But today, the database has expanded to more than 900 as word of the free service has spread among landlords. �The landlords like the service because of the heavy response they get when they list a unit," she explained. "Some landlords receive anywhere from 10 to 15 calls per day when a unit is posted."

A typical listing will provide information about the monthly rent, the number of bedrooms and details about amenities, such as appliances or off-street parking, and possible limitations, ranging from restrictions on pets to disability access. Apartment seekers also i1l find the apartment's address, name of landlord and phone number or e-mail address.

The service, which was launched at a cost of just over $10,000, was originally intended to replace a paper-based tracking system of available units. Housing staff used to take down information about the apartments over the phone, type them up, then add the listings to a report that was updated every few weeks. Today, the system is mostly self-service, allowing landlords to log on and add apartment listings themselves as they become available. "It costs them nothing and it's easy to do," explained Pennington. "The beauty of the system is that it automatically deletes any listing that's older than 6o days, so the information stars fresh."

Pennington emphasized that the Web site is strictly a clearinghouse of information. The authority doesn't inspect the units that are listed, nor does it claim responsibility for the accuracy of the information provided by the apartment owners.

Charlotte's Comprehensive Housing Service

While Cuyahoga's Section 8 Web site is clearly designed for simplicity and ease of use, the housing Web site is big on features. Apartment hunters can conduct quick or advanced searches, while landlords can list their properties themselves for free or have them listed by Socialserve.com for a fee. While the site might look familiar to someone who has ever checked out one of the commercial sites for apartment searching, it has some clear distinctions.

For example, it allows users to limit their searches by how far the apartment or house is from a bus stop. Whether or not the landlord accepts Section 8 vouchers or other forms of subsidized rent and whether or not the landlord conducts criminal background checks. The service also provides two maps: one showing where the unit is located and another generated by the Charlotte Police Department's crime report showing what criminal activity has recently taken place in the vicinity of the unit.

The service has been a big hit in the area. "We've had a tremendous response from the affordable housing community," said Van Gottel, director of Socialserve.com, which is paid by Charlotte to operate the searchable database. Like other Web housing services, Charlotte's is used by social service agencies and the public. Gottel believes the split is about 50/50. One reason the service isn't used more by the public is the fact that many don't have their own computer and have to visit a library or a community center to conduct their own search. Instead, many use the service indirectly, when they contact a public or nonprofit organization for housing help.

Since Socialserve.com went live about a year ago, the service has gone through one upgrade, and now has a searchable database containing agencies, programs and tools related to housing, a program eligibility screening service and online rental application forms. The service serves thousands of area residents each month, most of whom are single moms, according to Gottel.

In Washington, another nonprofit organization has stepped up to offer Web-based searches for affordable housing. Multifamily Affordable Properties was formed, in part, to provide low-income families in the state a more cohesive and timely way to find affordable housing, something the state has been unable to do, according to the organization. Among the site's special offerings are properties that landlords refuse to list with government agencies because of legal conflicts.

In Portland, Ore., the city's housing authority is launching its own Web site, known as Housing Connections, with funds from a federal grant. The agency is rolling out services in phases, starting with a searchable database containing listings of as many as 80,000 affordable housing units. In the near future, an agency service module containing resources for city staff and a case management system for electronic documents, including housing applications will be available, according to Program Coordinator Andy Miller.

Tight Market limits Impact

But in certain parts of the country, where housing is tight, Web databases have their limitations. That's the case in San Francisco, which has the highest housing costs in the nation. For the past year and a half, the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing has been operating the Affordable Housing Information System. The Web site contains information about eligibility, links to housing resources, such as other local, state and federal housing agencies, a helpful guide to finding an affordable home and a searchable database.

The one problem with the database is that nothing it lists is available. Essentially, it's a list of all privately owned apartment buildings that provide below-market, subsidized rental units. People can try to get on waiting lists, though most of the 300 listings are closed, according to Joe LaTorre, planning and marketing director for the Mayor's Office of Housing. As an example of just how bad the housing market is in San Francisco, LaTorre mentioned that a recently constructed apartment building with 58 units received 5,000 applications when it was listed as accepting Section 8 housing.

"Our problem is not having too many units to list, but attracting landlords to list in our database," he said. Landlords that have an unoccupied unit know they will be flooded with applications if they publicize it, according to LaTorre, so they don't bother to list.

To make the site more viable, LaTorre said the Mayor's Office is looking at partnering with nearby San Jose to create a more regional database that will have more features than the current system. But until San Francisco and other cities with tight housing markets comes up with ways to construct more affordable housing, Web-based housing databases will remain more virtual than real.