As Santa Barbara continues to deal with its ongoing housing crisis, two students have joined forces to develop an innovative app striving to tackle this issue for students.
Housing Helper is an app developed by UCSB student, CEO Damon Dvorson, alongside City College student and Chief Marketing Officer Mason Watters.
According to reporting by the Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara has faced housing challenges for more than 70 years, and many still consider it a real crisis.
The app’s main goal is to ensure no student will ever have to worry about housing, supplying users with resources to find living situations, roommates, or friends. According to Dvorson, Housing Helper has over 2,300 users, with around 500 active users per day located in Isla Vista.
Watters’ goal: Connecting the students
During summer 2023, Watters created an Instagram account aimed to connect City College students, called Sbshousing. Inspired by her challenges relocating from Texas, this platform allowed students to share photos and a bio, fostering a sense of community at City College.
This account quickly expanded beyond City College, including students attending UCSB, Westmont, and Antioch. As the platform grew, Watters faced new challenges, amassing over 1,000 followers within the first few months of the account.
With this in mind, Watters was eager for a more robust solution. She reached out to Dvorson to collaborate on Housing Helper, streamlining housing connections and overall alleviating the pressure she was facing.
“I wanted to be able to bring what I had on Instagram to an app — something even better because his idea was just so incredible, it was just everything that I could have dreamed of,” Watters said.
In summer of 2024, Watters transformed Sbshousing into a promotional page for Housing Helper, which she noted had resulted in a slight decrease in the follower count.
“It was not great timing for the account [Sbshousing] to turn into “Housing Helper” because I really needed it [Sbshousing],” Lauren Dean, a student currently looking for housing for spring 2025 said.
Watters acknowledged the amount of negativity she had received for this transition, however, she was confident that what she was doing was for the greater good.
“If Damon and I could convince every follower why we lost it [Instagram account] and why they should have the app, it would have been a different story,” Watters said.
The page continues to be used as a promotional tool for Housing Helper.
Dvorson’s experience with the crisis
Dvorson was 18 when he solo-signed three leases for his current fraternity, only to discover he had unknowingly acquired over $1 million in leases for 51 beds, all needing to be filled as soon as possible.
Dvorson explained that this entire process took a whole year. When going through all the different housing platforms, he encountered many difficulties, prompting his idea to create Housing Helper.
He noted that almost all platforms were filled with spam and scams aiming to steal money from students daily.
“I wanted to create a safe space that connects students and vacancies,” Dvorson said. “Every single year, there are students in need of housing who can’t find housing or roommates that match their needs.”
What the app offers
Launched in June 2024, Housing Helper includes many features and is exclusively available for users with .edu email accounts.
One element is Hera, an artificial intelligence element that allows users to look up any and every detail of a property they want. According to Dvorson, this is done through the app’s image recognition model which can identify key features of a home.
In addition, the app includes compatibility scores for roommates and a dedicated housing match page, enabling users to get to know their potential roommates—an offering that many housing platforms don’t offer.
This app also includes a “Group Payment Management System” that helps to address issues that often arise with group leases. Users can upload their payment ledger, and the app will then anonymously notify all housemates of their balances and when payments are due.
Dvorson and Watters are committed to getting the word out about their app and expanding to the community. As the two continue to revise the app daily, both remain hopeful about making a lasting impact in the community.
“We advertise that with our platform, nobody will ever have to worry about housing ever again,” Dvorson said. “That is not a goal, that is a promise.”
