Reno tech start up addresses temporary worker housing shortage

Finding housing for traveling workers is a growing challenge for companies. The labor shortage is forcing companies to relocate workers for several months to work on projects all around the nation. However, motels and hotels are not ideal for longer stays and don’t provide great accommodators for visiting families. Plus, staying at a motel for months is tough on employee moral!

Yeves Perez has a solution: a tech platform that connects professionally managed rental homes with traveling workers.

“The lack of housing for traveling employees is a growing challenge and it is negatively impacting job satisfaction,” says Perez. “Our technology is solving a problem for businesses, helping improve employee morale, and reducing job quits.”

Founding a technology company was not what Perez expected to do when he moved to Reno.

Back in 2017, Perez’s mom, Pam Loveless, the CEO of PKL Homes, had a great reputation managing vacation rentals in Reno. In 2019, an international staffing firm called to see if she could find housing for 65 people who were coming to Reno on the J1 work visa program. The challenge is the visa program is for 3 months, which often means companies find accommodations in people’s basements and spare rooms.

Loveless took a different approach and reached out to vacation rental homeowners to create a housing pool. By 2019, the rental business was getting so big she asked Perez to move to Reno to help her manage it.

It took Perez just a few months to recognize that there was a growing demand for providing housing to traveling workers, as he saw that over 65 percent of their bookings were business and not vacation renters. However, it was a call from Ames Construction that totally shifted his focus.

Ames is the contractor on the freeway expansion project in Reno. They called asking for multiple homes for several months; homes that could accommodate senior managers with visiting families as well as multiple workers who could share a home.

As Perez and his mom helped Ames solve their housing need in Reno, the company explained how they had this issue in all the towns where they operate; and they aren’t the only company facing that challenge.

That’s when Perez got the idea to create a network of like-minded homeowners and rental home managers to accommodate traveling workers across the nation and connect them via a tech platform. In April 2021, Perez founded Workbnb, and business took off.

“We had companies calling to order houses like pizza: ‘We need seven three-bedrooms and two one-bedrooms in three weeks. Can you do that?’ We had set up a warehouse so we could furnish rentals within a day,” said Perez.

He recruited UNR graduate Daj’Anique Staples to join as President and they created a private Facebook page called the Workbnb App Coalition group. The duo developed the framework for an app to make it fast and easy for companies to safely secure housing for multiple workers in different cities.

Today, Perez has 491 hosts offering 3,100 properties across the U.S., and it is growing daily. They have hired software engineers to improve the app that is being tested by 20 workforce rental operators managing over 300 properties across four states.

Creating a workforce rental housing app was not something Yeves planned to do, but now he is considered a workforce rental thought leader who is influencing real estate investment across the country.

While Perez is busy finding homes and companies who need housing, Staples and a team of engineers are working to scale up the app to meet demand.

Currently about 3 million construction workers travel to work on projects for months at a time. Perez says the passage of the federal infrastructure bill will only add to the demand for their app. Over the next decade, as federal infrastructure funds are allocated to improve roads, bridges, and electrical projects around the country, millions more workers will be hitting the road.

In addition to the construction sector, there are traveling nurses, doctors, electrical engineers, and a myriad of other workers who need temporary housing, The market is huge and growing!
 
“In one day, over 200 companies signed up to Beta test the application,” says Perez. “We are ramping up to meet that demand, and it’s really exciting to see this small tech company grow!

The Reno-based company is 100% minority owned, and 50% of the owners are women, making it a hot prospect for venture capital firms who are looking for the companies that are more diverse.

Perez is excited about the future of his technology company, as he sees it as a key link that is helping companies provide great housing for valued employees.

“Our value proposition is simple for vacation rental owners who’ve had bad experiences. We’re giving them an opportunity to pivot toward a steadier revenue stream and a renter who will take better care of their home,” says Perez.