ReHome Marketplace

Championing housing stability for newly resettled neighbors in Lancaster County, ReHome Marketplace is a technology organization taking an innovative approach to community building.

While in high school, ReHome’s founder, Joe Landis, spent evenings learning Arabic at the kitchen table of a resettled Iraqi neighbor in Lancaster City. In 2011, as he was preparing to graduate, the Syrian Civil War triggered a refugee crisis that seeped into national headlines. Compelled by the gravity and scale of this ongoing refugee crisis, he dedicated the next decade of his life to finding local solutions to the global issues challenging his community.

The Mutombo family in the backyard of their rental home in Lancaster County. (photo credit: Photole)

After attending college, Joe spent several years honing his Arabic in Jordan. Upon returning to the states, Joe pursued a master’s degree in city planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) while working with Church World Service (CWS) as a housing specialist in the organization’s resettlement program. During this time, Joe witnessed the pain refugees experienced as they struggled to find housing. He wanted to do more.

Joe discovered there was a startup support program available at MIT and got to work, using these resources to address the gap he observed between resettled refugees and the housing market.

“Once I had opened that door to the startup world at MIT, it was like a huge wave of resources, support, and mentorship,” Joe said.

ReHome was the result.

Joe recruited Zach Moring, ReHome’s software developer and co-founder, to launch the organization’s marketplace platform in 2023, establishing an automated rental system allowing resettled families to find an affordable, comfortable, and secure living environment. Ultimately, the marketplace platform created a network between tenants, landlords, and the many sources of support available in the community. This allows refugee families to spend less time in hotels or temporary spaces, and more time settling into their new life.

When Christian and Sarah Hinojosa purchased their first home in Lancaster, they wanted to share extra space with recently resettled families struggling to access affordable housing. Joining ReHome’s network connected the Hinojosas with prospective tenants, social workers, County services, interpretation resources, and even household items to welcome tenants upon their arrival.

“ReHome gave us the confidence and resources we needed to draft our first lease agreement and get over the mental hurdles of providing housing to a stranger,” Christian said. “We don’t think of ourselves as landlords so much as people with enough privilege to own a home, and a desire to share that home with others.”

In 2025, as resettlement agencies faced major funding cuts, ReHome grappled with a fundamental question: How would a new organization dedicated to refugee care sustain its mission as budgets were slashed?

“At the beginning of 2025, our best pathway toward sustainable funding as an organization was tied to the National Resettlement Agency networks, but that all fell apart overnight in January,” Joe recalled. “Within a couple of months, the Lancaster County Community Foundation had come through with a $2,500 grant enabling us to continue working full-time on this. The generosity of the Foundation was matched by individual donors.”

Several months later, ReHome participated in ExtraGive, raising over $15,000 through the generous support of 57 local donors, and a donor advised fundholder at the Community Foundation who aligned with the organization’s mission and values.

“It’s the combination of an established philanthropy group, like the Community Foundation, leading the way so that smaller actors in our community, people who we’re interacting with on a daily basis, can follow suit and have their smaller acts of generosity multiplied,” Joe said.

ReHome honors Lancaster County’s rich, welcoming heritage by making it possible for more neighbors to call this special place home.

“It’s disheartening to see just how difficult it has become for refugee and asylum seeker neighbors, but I can testify that the willpower and direct effort community members are willing to put into helping improve the situations for new neighbors has not diminished at all,” Joe shared. “If anything, it’s only increased over the last few years.