This L.A. company rents rooms, finds jobs and plays matchmaker.
Lu Zhao, a 22-year-old Chinese student, arrived in Los Angeles last August to prepare for her first semester at the University of Southern California. She opened multiple bank accounts and rushed from one leasing office to another in pursuit of a perfect place to live.
Then she found Tripalink, an LA-based rental company, and what sounded like a suitable apartment. By this point, she no longer minded paying $1,400 a month to share an apartment on West 24th Street with three people. She figured it would be like the girl's dorm in her undergrad days.
She moved in and found out two of her roommates were guys.
Lu Zhao in her apartment.
Photo/Keyu Huang
Tripalink markets itself as a co-living community that serves millennials living in the United States. The company throws parties for tenants so they can make friends, holds meetups for networking, and runs a scholarship program to reward good academic performance. The company also maintains a database of tenants' personal attributes, interests and career goals, which helps them pair roommates, and engage in match-making.
It didn't work out in Zhao's case. One of the guys moved in and filled a kitchen shelf with a dozen Chinese spices, telling Zhao, "just take whatever you need." But he never cooked, and all the bottles remain untouched. She said the other guy barely left his room, and later his girlfriend moved in with him.
Tripalink is a rising player in the rental market surrounding universities. With a marketing plan focusing on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, the company caters to the Chinese student market. In 2016, the company started with a single-family house in University Park and now accommodates 1,000 out of 5,000 USC Chinese students in its units.
Safety is a big selling point. USC made headlines in China after three Chinese students were killed near campus in 2012 and 2014. The company puts up high fences and 360-cameras, assuring anxious parents 7,000 miles away that security is guaranteed.
At the end of last year, the company became a developer itself and expanded to universities in nine other cities, said Donghao Li, chief executive officer and co-founder of Tripalink.
The company draws praise from Chinese business newspapers and venture capitalists. In the United States, not all the attention is positive. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says the company risks breaking housing discrimination laws by marketing exclusively to Chinese nationals.
For tenants, the seemingly exclusive practices are a plus -- even when the roommate arrangement doesn't work out.
"I think Tripalink does make it easier for international students to find a place to live," said Lu Zhao.
Selling his vision
Donghao Li arrived in Los Angeles in 2013 to pursue a master's degree in financial engineering at the University of Southern California. At the time, he lived with five guys in an old house, where they had to compete for bathroom time in the morning and argue about who should clean the kitchen at night.
After graduation, he decided to make a difference. He signed a long-term lease with a Chinese landlord, whose daughter was a USC student, and started to remodel the house. To head off conflicts facing renters, he built extra bathrooms and sent cleaning workers to the houses every week. The company also provides the furniture and pays the utility bills.
Beyond that, Tripalink tries to foster friendships in the house. Students who identify as video players would be put into the same house and ambitious coders would be matched together, Li said. In the early days of the business, Li saw six tenants in the same house extend their lease as they became three couples. So, beyond roommate-matching, he came up with the idea of match-making.
Next, he pitched his idea to the venture capitalists. The co-living business is a rising star in China. In the eyes of investors, the hotel-like services, bright roommates and tasteful decorations helps to ease the painful reality that young professionals can't even afford a single studio apartment. The Beijing-based property management company, Danke Apartment (Danke), founded in 2015, is now valued at $2 billion, according to Xinhua News Agency.
So, the investors knew what Li was talking about. But they hesitated when Li said he wanted to limit the size of his communities to less than 50 units. After all, Danke manages 500,000 apartments in 10 cities across China, according to its website. Fewer units would mean less profit.
Li explained that he is trying to replicate the best part of living in a frat house. "We want our tenants to know not just their neighbors, but everyone who lives in Tripalink houses in the area," he said. When the tenants move to another city after college, he hopes that they could bond with Tripalink members there. "Plus, fewer units means we get to build the apartments really quickly with low costs."
The frat house concept sold. Between August 2018 and February 2019, Tripalink won three rounds of funding, receiving funds from both Beijing and Silicon Valley totaling more than $11 million, according to JFZ.com, a Shenzhen-based private equity fund.
Investors are betting on the market's huge potential. Over 330,000 students left China to pursue a degree in the United States in 2018, accounting for one-third of all international students and contributing $12 billion to the U.S. economy, according to the Institute of International Education.
For these students, cost is not the main concern when it comes to housing. Feeling close to their homeland is a key factor in their search. It's as simple as wanting to be surrounded by people who speak the same language and eat the same food.
Now, instead of renting rooms from landlords, Tripalink designs and builds apartments by itself. Beyond USC, the company owns properties around 18 universities in five states, according to its WeChat public account.
The shortage of safe housing
Lan Yang, a 23-year-old student, lives with three Chinese students in a Tripalink apartment. The living room is crowded with a printer, sofas and envelope boxes. A musical keyboard sits in the center. "I bought this with two of my roommates here. All three of us played piano in China," he said.
The only non-piano-player roommate plays Dizi, the Chinese bamboo flute. Typically, Yang's Saturday starts with the Dizi version of Despacito.
Three steps away is the kitchen. You'll find Szechuan sauce, Zhenjiang vinegar and all types of Chinese spices. Yang's kitchen is a mini Ranch 99. "The house only had one refrigerator. Last year the guys that lived here before us picked up an abandoned refrigerator on the street," he said.
Yang's kitchen is a mini Ranch 99.
Photo/Keyu Huang
"My parents were very concerned knowing that I decided to come to USC," said Yang. He thought about living further from the campus, but he can't. "I have a Chinese driver's license, but I barely drove. So, I can't really drive upon arrival in LA. I have to live nearby campus, so the on-campus housing should be ideal."
But the priority for USC Housing is not placed on someone like Yang. In 2017, the university housed 40% of undergraduate students and 6% graduate-level students on and near campus, according to the data provided by Ron Mackovich from USC media relations.
Yet 76% of all USC international students are in grad schools. As a result, every April thousands of Chinese students set out to compete in LA's rental market soon after they receive admission decisions. Yang was one of them.
Yang didn't start to look for housing until July. "I only moved in Tripalink because I had very little options. There might be more available houses around, but we didn't have much information in China. We only knew Gateway, Lorenzo and Tripalink," Yang said.
The Great Fire Wall in China blocks Twitter, Facebook and many foreign websites. WeChat has become the major source of information for students searching for housing from China.
At Tripalink, everything is done on WeChat from maintenance requests to monthly bills, according to Li. On its WeChat public account, Tripalink posts not only events and promotions, but also self-produced news. It also publishes lifestyle-stories tailored for Chinese students in the United States, such as how to tip, how to fill out tax forms and where to find entertainment hot spots.
In 2019, WeChat reached more users than Twitter and Instagram combined, thanks to its dominance in the Chinese market, according to Statista. Even when the Chinese students are studying abroad, they tend to use WeChat more than other social media, such as Facebook. Their entire network is still on WeChat, according to Kecheng Fang, the doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in digital media, journalism, and political communication in the Chinese context.
"I think the social media market tends to produce monopoly or duopoly because people need to connect to each other on the same platforms. And of course, blocking FB helped WeChat a lot," Fang said. He added that in China there is a lack of diversity education. As a result, many Chinese students may not be aware of the risks associated with their marketing strategy.
Model of success
UnionApartment (Union), founded in 2016, targets the same group at Tripalink, but with pricier options. While Tripalink rents out rooms in houses around universities and put Xbox in the living rooms, Union manages studios in luxury condos and holds rooftop parties.
Hongfeng Tao moved into one of Union's two-bedrooms apartments, but he never bothered to find a roommate to share the $2,800 rent.
"The major reason why I was attracted by the promo is that they said the apartments mainly target Chinese students here," he said. "I want to network with people, so that I would be able to make something out of these connections after I go back to China."
One of the rooms remained vacant until he met Borui Yang, who comes from his hometown. Yang was living in a shabby house and dealing with a harsh landlord and wanted out. So he asked Tao for a room. Now they have Wuhan snacks piling up in the refrigerator and Chinese pop music playing aloud all day long in the apartment.
Hongfeng Tao (left) and Borui Yang (right) shared a two-bedroom-one-bathroom apartment in Koreatown.
Photo/Keyu Huang
Before Union became a property management company, it was a party planner for international student organizations. On its website, Union's motto reads, "From International Students, for International Students".
Ellson Chen, chief operating officer and co-founder of UnionApartment, was the president of the Chinese Student Association of University of California, San Diego. In 2016, Chen and his co-founders decided that they want their party guests to stay longer in the house and make deeper connections.
They started by leasing 15 units at Greenland, the $1 billion Chinese mega development in downtown Los Angeles. Now the company manages properties in Koreatown, Pasadena and Alhambra, according to its sales office.
Chen was born in Taiwan and educated in the U.S. "I was an international student. I came here. I'm pretty outgoing and I was willing to bond with the Americans. But then there are some days that I also miss being back home," he said.
Now he lives in an apartment managed by Union. Right outside the bedroom is his office, where the company's young team works on marketing plans, meets with investors and cooks for their tenants, or neighbors.
Chen occasionally runs into the typical awkward question raised by Chinese students: "Isn't Taiwan part of China?"
He never answers it. "Personally, I don't want to talk about politics. My father and my mother have different standpoints on politics too. So, I was taught when I was young that there is really no point to talk someone into something that they don't believe in," he said.
Good business, but illegal?
The founders of Tripalink and UnionApartment said they never explicitly rejected non-Chinese applicants. They acknowledge, however, that they only advertise on the Chinese social media platform WeChat and their own websites. Tripalink hires American workers for constructions and maintenance work. All members on its operation team at the downtown LA office are young Chinese just out of college, Li said. "Eighty percent of our staff graduated from the top 20 universities in the United States," the WeChat promo reads.
Chinese students around the United States gather at Tripalink's office to interview for internships and jobs at the company.
Photo/Keyu Huang
"I can't tell you for sure that they are illegal, but I would say that they are definitely running the risks of breaking the law," said Ed Cabrera, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The company's marketing practices naturally excluded people of other national background than Chinese, Cabrera explained.
"If someone, maybe a prospective student or local resident, were to complain to HUD that they felt discriminated against because they never knew about these units when they were looking for housing, then that would be something that HUD would have to look carefully to see if it violated the Fair Housing Act," he said.
Ellson Chen, COO of UnionApartment, said his company does not discriminate against anyone. "It's good from the business point to start in the niche market, because that's the market that you know. I could definitely see this going beyond just Chinese students," he said, in response to HUD's comments.
Donghao Li, founder and CEO of Tripalink, said they only targeted Chinese students in the first two years. As the company expanded, they are planning to broaden its customer base.
"This year we have 200 local applicants, who are actually more familiar with the co-living concept, because the communities we are trying to build are quite similar to the U.S. fraternities and sororities," he said. The final slots for this fall's applicants have not been decided, he said.
Tenant Lan Yang said he doesn't think Tripalink intended to exclude others while accepting Chinese students into its apartment. Instead, he believes they just lacked the cultural sensibility to promote diversity and says some companies run by foreigners in the United States should learn to "grow up".
"If I got to share an apartment with 10 people, I would love to live with people with diverse backgrounds," he said. "But if I only had two roommates, I would want the ones who speak the same language and eat the same food as I do."
Before he moved into the Tripalink house, Yang looked for other options. In one instance, the landlord chose to rent to members of a sorority rather than him. The sorority picked their own roommates and obviously he was not welcome. "Sometimes you can't blame the Chinese too much for not integrating," he said. "Local communities can be exclusive."
Tripalink's CEO Donghao Li envisions a bright future for his company. He said he believes in the value of connections between tenants.
"In the future, we will probably take out studying desks in the bedrooms, so that the renters would have to walk out of their rooms to interact with each other in the public space," he said.
Inspired by the co-working unicorn WeWork, Li and his team are planning on an "entrepreneur house," where they would match students with business ideas together, and even invest in renters' startups.
The "Chinese knot" on Lu Zhao's door. "I brought some Chinese knots when I came here as a gift for the Americans, but I ended up being surrounded by Chinese all the time, so I haven't given them away yet," she said.
Photo/Keyu Huang
Co-living -- inside an all-Chinese house
Lan Yang(in Chinese): He loves Chinese traditional music.
Host: Lan Yang, a 23-year-old Chinese student at the University of Southern California often starts his Saturday mornings with traditional Chinese music, like this piece his roommate plays on the flute as they get ready. At the other end of the hallway, a musical keyboard sits in the center of Yang's living room.
Yang(in Chinese): I bought this with two of my roommates here.
Host(in Chinese): All three of you played piano in China?
Host: Yang says he bought that keyboard with two of his roommates, whom he didn't know until he moved in. All three of them played piano in China. Their only non-piano-playing roommate plays the Dizi, the Chinese bamboo flute.
(Chattering sound)
Host: So, four music lovers moved into the same house on the same day, but this was NOT a coincidence. The house is managed by a real estate startup called Tripalink, which markets itself as a co-living community serving Chinese millennials in the US. It raised millions of dollars in both Beijing and Silicon Valley and now has properties near 18 universities in five states.
Lan Yang sits in the kitchen area.
Photo/Keyu Huang
(Chattering sound)
Host: The recipe for this initial success, the company says, is to provide more than just the rooms. They offer renters: friends, jobs and even romantic partners.
Li(in Chinese): I went to the University of Southern California for a master's degree in Financial Engineering...
Host: Donghao Li is the founder of Tripalink. Born and raised in China, he came to the University of Southern California for a master's degree in financial engineering at the age of 22.
Li(Interpreper 1): "When I first came here, I lived in a house with five other guys, but there were just two bathrooms. We always had to fight over the bathroom time and argued about who should clean them. There were always tensions between us. At the end of the day I didn't even want to walk into the house."
Host: After graduation, Li decided things could be different. He signed a long-term lease with a Chinese landlord, whose daughter was a student at the University of Southern California, and started to remodel the house. He built more bathrooms and made the cleaning of public spaces the rental company's responsibility, so tenants could avoid some situations that can trigger conflict.
Li(in Chinese): In one of the houses that we built by ourselves, eighty percent of the tenants extended their lease for another year...
Host: In the early stage of the business, Li saw six tenants in the same house extend their lease as they became three couples. So, he thought of the idea of roommate matching, based on tenants' personalities, interests and career goals. As a result, Lan Yang, who we met earlier, was placed with two roommates willing to share a keyboard. Here he is again.
Li(in Chinese): Before you told me, I didn't know about the roommate-matching services at all...
Host: I asked Yang how he felt about the roommate-matching service. But he didn't know about the service at all.
Yang(Interpreter 2): I chose Tripalink only because I urgently needed a place to stay when I arrived here. I didn't care about the extra services. There might be many other available houses, but Tripalink was the only one left that can be found via the internet when I was in China.
Host: The Great Fire Wall in China blocks Twitter, Facebook and many foreign websites. WeChat is the major source of information Chinese students use when searching for housing. With a whole marketing team focusing on WeChat, Tripalink convinced 1,000 out of 5,000 Chinese students at USC to live in their properties. But not all of them are happy with their roommates in spite of the company's efforts. Lu Zhao is a 22-year-old electronic engineering student.
Lu Zhao opens the refrigrator to take out a rick cake.
Photo/Keyu Huang
Lu Zhao(Interprepter 3): When I moved in, I wanted them to get me three female roommates. They said they would, but they ended up matching me with guys. Maybe they think that students studying abroad tend to be more open about dating and relationships. But it is not my case. This just made my life really inconvenient. I get along well with my female roommate, but barely talk to the guys. The four of us never hang out together.
Host: Besides possible roommate tensions, there are also concerns about agencies like this that only offer housing to certain groups. Ed Cabrera, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said the company is definitely running the risks of breaking the law.
Ed Cabrera: A prospective student, maybe US residents, was looking for housing in the area and didn't know about it because of their marketing practices. They are marketing only on WeChat, which is probably more accessible to Chinese nationals that is coming here to study. They could claim the they were discriminated against because they were not Chinese.
Host: Donghao Li, founder and CEO of Tripalink, says they are working toward what he calls a "local strategy" that should help with this issue and broaden their customer base.
Li(interpreper 1): We targeted the Chinese student market in the first two years. Now we have an increasing number of American tenants, who are actually more familiar with the co-living concept, because the communities we are trying to build are quite similar to U.S. fraternities and sororities.
Host: Tenant Lan Yang doesn't think Tripalink intended to exclude others while accepting Chinese students into its apartment. Instead, he believes they just lacked the cultural sensibility to promote diversity and says some companies run by foreigners in the US should learn to "grow up".
Yang(interprepter 2): I understand that from a business perspective, Tripalink doesn't have to attract any more tenants than the current Chinese ones. This is a huge market that can easily satisfy their profit goal with low marketing costs. But I think that tenants would love to see people with more diverse backgrounds in the house. For me, studying overseas should be an in-depth traveling experience, so I would want to learn about the local culture.
Host: Chinese students account for one third of all international students in the US. From restaurants to supermarkets, businesses are finding ways to cash out the desire to feel close to their homeland. Yet when it comes to housing, the replica of an all Chinese home might not be the best way to address homesickness. For Annenberg Media, I am Coco Huang.