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Private Rental Brokerage Programs (PRBPs) are a seemingly well-used and reasonably well-known housing assistance measure in the housing and homelessness sectors. The existence of such programs — which pull together a range of key financial and non-financial supports for eligible private renters to assist them with access to, and the sustainability of,private renting — is especially important at the current time given well documented supply pressures atthe lower end of the private rental market, more people renting for longer periods generally and ever lengthening waiting lists for social housing. Despite all of this the role of PRBPs as an assistance measure supporting some of the most vulnerable people in the community has been almost completely overlooked, particularly in the academic literatures around housing.The fact that there is no clear definition of PRBPs or consideration of what such programs look like and no uniform reporting frameworks around what they do and the outcomes they provide for those assisted has added to our lack of information about them.Accordingly, understandings of what‘brokerage’ assistance means for private renters varies considerably.