Why can we easily find market-rate rentals through Zillow or Trulia but for affordable units, some families have to visit up to 24 different offices in-person? The Housing Navigator Massachusetts team is changing that. Hear how Jennifer Gilbert, Executive Director and founder, is bringing transparency, user experience design, and even beauty to the search for affordable housing.
Housing Navigator MA was a 2023 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability Finalist in Public Policy and Regulatory Reform.
Released in Partnership with the Builder's Daily
TRANSCRIPT
00:00
HANNAH: My name is Hannah, and this is the House Party podcast from Ivory Innovations. We bring you the top entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in the industry to shine a light on housing affordability solutions.
Intro Music
Today, we're going to chat with Jennifer Gilbert, the executive director and founder of Housing Navigator Minds. Massachusetts, a tech -flat platform that brings transparency to affordable housing. We'll hear about some of the unique challenges in founding a tech -for -good venture in the housing space. Looking for affordable housing is a complex process in the U .S. While you can check low -income or income -restricted filters on tools like Zillow and Trulia, very few buildings actually show up when you do so. For example, in 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, if a family wanted to find a affordable housing housing, they would have to go to 24 different offices. And that's just for a city of 115 ,000 people. This is what Housing Navigator wanted to change and has changed for low -income families in Massachusetts. Housing Navigator launched in 2021 with 160 ,000 rentals in 275 plus cities. Through the platform, you can access every type of income restricted housing. in Massachusetts and filter by a variety of criteria, most notably the availability, so whether it's lottery, waitlist open or waitlist closed, and the accessibility of those units. Just last week they added a new feature to show units with less than a six month wait. They are the first to do this. Housing Navigator was also one of our top 10 finalists for the Ivory Prize this last year. year. We believe the platform brings something really unique and innovative to this space, a one -stop shop for navigating the affordable housing market. We are so lucky to have Jennifer with us today. Jennifer, thank you for joining us.
01:59
JENNIFER: Well, thank you for having me, Hannah.
2:01
HANNAH:So this story we know starts back in 2018. And one of the first things you did was start a steering committee. Now, when I hear steering committee, I hear process and a lot of opinions, things that could really slow you down, especially right at the beginning. I'm guessing other tech platforms didn't start with a steering committee. So I'm curious, why was the steering committee such an important first step for you?
02:28
JENNIFER: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think it really goes to how do you get to the results that you just mentioned, which is being a one -stop shop. For us, it meant starting with a process that involved kind of every person with an interest or imaginable. And that's really what the steering committee was about. I too, I'm not a fan of steering committees. I don't raise my hand for a lot of process. I like to get a lot of things done, to be honest, and sometimes it's true you can get very slowed down. This was very much though about the idea that you know alone you go faster together you go farther and convening all the types of people groups that had an interest in creating this platform at the outset was really important to the strength of the launch and the strength of the launch. And the strength of the venture long term. And so that meant that the steering committee had owners of affordable housing on it, it had regulators, it had representatives of organizations that served people experiencing homelessness, it had people with lived experience of housing instability, all of those things that you want to speak to the important goals for an effort like this.
So I would also say for people who hear steering committee and sort of start to break out in a rash, you have to think about how you're going to use that input well. And the point all along was to really convene people, but to convene towards an end product. And so there were lots of methods used along the way to-- to get that feedback and get that robust engagement and buy -in and also make sure that everybody knew we are going to build something. And this is where you know the tech idea of you build something and then you adapt it also becomes part of the conversation. So we were going to build something and maybe it wouldn't have every problem or issue solved, but it would make progress towards having more. problems and more issues solved. So for us, again, really important first step and one that I think if it slowed us down at all, and I don't really think it did, but if it did, it was all for much stronger long -term results, and I believe also the longer sustainability of the effort.
05:06
HANNAH: Mhm, Mhm, Yeah I'm curious to understand like the role that the steering committee played in some of the big decisions that you made early on. I'm wondering if you feel like like without the the input and guidance of the steering committee there were points early on where you might have taken housing out beginner in a different direction.
05:29
JENNIFER: - Yeah, there were several. One big one was early on, I think when you're just trying to envision what is this thing that we're gonna create? Because for a long time there had been talk in the sort of policy community in Massachusetts about we need a one -stop shop, we need a portal, but what does that mean? You know, that can mean a bunch of different things. And for a lot of people, particularly I would say and I think that's one of the things and I think that's one of the things that we're trying to do, and I think that's one of the things and I think that's one of the things the folks that were more on the policy side, they did think, oh, well, you can just build a database and people will go in and find some information. It'll be helpful. And the steering committee was really helpful in saying, we really need to build this with a mind towards how our renter user is going to use it, not researchers who want to find out how many units the affordable housing we have in the world. That is actually something that we also end up producing, but really how do we build in the user experience and the clarity for users that lets renters, service providers, really anyone use it to do housing search. So that was a really important part of the steering committee. There were a lot of other things, small and large decisions that I don't know where we might have ended up without it and it really was fundamental to thinking through what is the first iteration of this product look like.
Along the way somebody gave me a really good idea. I didn't come up with this idea so I can call it very wise but we did a product description that was a total lay person's description of of what we wanted the product to be. It had almost no tech terms in it at all. I don't know if it had any. I should go back and look at it. And that was really important to get everybody on the same page and say, this is what we want the tool to do, how we're going to judge the first release as a success. Yes. We actually, when we went out to look for software developers, we used that in the the RFP saying this is what we're going to want to build towards and It had none of the technical specs in it But the steering committee, you know all came together and blessed that and so we really did have everyone sort of we had everyone unified around a set of expectations for the platform that were extremely unified and and helpful.
One interesting thing is there was one member of the steering committee who we thought of as our technology person and he always he would always say oh I'm not really a technology person I think that's just because he wasn't a software engineer he's definitely a technology person and he suggested early on oh well you should have user personas as part of the product description and it's so funny to me looking back, that no one else on the steering committee even thought about that. But they actually were thinking about that exact concept. They wouldn't have called it user personas, but they would have called it, you know, building for the audience, building for, you know, interested parties, building for equity. The words that are more used by people in the nonprofit space or service provider space versus the words that are used in the technology space. And it's always been fun to see how those two fields are actually aiming off and towards the same things while using different language that they don't necessarily, they might not necessarily recognize they're saying the same things.
09:08
HANNAH: Yeah, and I would imagine that's probably also why it was so helpful to have that product description. in like really straightforward, plain, non -tech, techy language, just because you did have such a diverse group of folks as part of the steering committee, so to make sure everyone was aligned on just, you know, very straightforward, this is what we're building, this is who it's for, and not, you know, integrating too much jargon.
09:35
JENNIFER: Yeah, yeah, and very, very clear, this is who it's for, this is what it's for. it's got to do to just be the basic first release. And here are some things also that got parked that were sort of might be good to include this, but we may have to wait for later to figure out how to do it.
09:52
HANNAH: Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of want to follow up on that piece quickly. Like, how did you decide what would be part of that of your primary, you know, initial high priority? priority focus items for, you know, version one of the platform versus what did you kind of table for later?
10:10
JENNIFER: Yeah, in the steering committee process or later on because there are definitely some things that, you know, got tabled early and then there were some things that we realized we were gonna have to do some more work to actually accomplish along the way. Which one?
10:26
HANNAH: Yeah, maybe it's the ones that were kind of part of the steering committee was a part of.
10:31
JENNIFER: Yeah, so some of it was about once we brought on software engineers to do more of a feasibility study with some of their advice on some of the things that were just going to be mechanically harder to pull off and we're going to be expensive or there wasn't an obvious solution. So that's helpful. I mean people did understand we had the realities of needing to raise money. to do this. I mean, we started the process without any money at all and pretty quickly had a couple of foundations come in saying that they would support it. So people did understand that. And I think the other thing that was helpful was having a steering committee. I think reinforced everyone feeling like, okay, these may get parked, but there are a whole lot of people who are gonna come back and keep asking for them.
A big one early on was actually, languages. Because when we started in 2018, the widespread use of tools like Google Translate, it just wasn't there yet. And so people's experience with that was not good. And at the beginning, while we knew it was really important to have a tool that could be accessed in different languages, nobody knew how to solve it. that without literally every page having independent translations, something that seemed impossible for a site where every page is dynamic and every building listing is multiple pages. So that was one of the ones where we said we are going to have to wait and see how we solve this, very real concern, very important to figure out how to do it and then along the way you know technology got better at doing translation so that was really a good thing to see had we gone to what would have been the alternative in 2018 and translated each page page by page we got an early estimate that that was millions of dollars.
12:33
HANNAH: Yeah, well, thank goodness for that. (laughs)
12:39
JENNIFER: Of course, it's still not, it's, you know, far from perfect. It was interesting as well that after we kept talking about language, what everyone really realized is that a big part of the problem was clarifying all the affordable housing jargon in a user -centered way. starting with the English version of it.
13:03
HANNAH: Totally.
13:04
JENNIFER: What you might translate into. And so that was also where steering committee was really helpful. Are we talking about language access, meaning needs to be translated in different languages? Are we talking about how can this tool use words that anybody using it will understand? So I wanna search for the most deeply affordable housing. I want to search for units that have mobility features. You know, how do we translate that into more everyday terms?
13:38
HANNAH: Right. Another decision that I'm curious to learn about, and I'm not sure how much the steering committee waited on this, if at all, but you're structured as a non -profit. I imagine early on there were some conversations about, you know, for -profit, nonprofit, like where does this live? And there are definitely other tech for good ventures that have adopted a for -profit model. So I'm curious how you landed on that.
14:04
JENNIFER: Yeah, it's funny. This was not a steering committee conversation. And the funny part is, while I absolutely think someone could think - about what we do as a for -profit venture or within government, I actually do not remember a single conversation about doing Housing Navigator as a for -profit. And I think that was because of the kind of Massachusetts housing ecosystem that came out of it, the effort came out of, was kind of more used to doing something like this as a non -profit is building a coalition that includes a lot of non -profit and very quickly we were talking about raising philanthropic funds and the earliest seed funders were foundations that typically prefer philanthropy over social justice kind of investment, so in part it was about where we thought we could find the foundational money, but it wasn't really discussed at the steering committee level.
HANNAH: All right, so we've talked a lot about the steering committee and some of the decisions that you made early on with their help. I want to shift to talk about one of the values that you established early on as an organization. And the value is called focus. And you share that this value or how you describe this value. this value, we serve and value everyone who uses what we create believing in their resourcefulness. We strive to make everything produce as functional, understandable, reliable and beautiful as the equivalent product created by the for -profit market. So I want to just learn a bit more about this and kind of where this came from and how this informed how you thought about the tools user experience.
JENNIFER: Yeah. Yeah so I really love the set of phrases that you just went through because it's very much guided my thinking and I think the product team's thinking every time we had a difficult decision or whenever we're kind of trying to prioritize things and those words have ended up meaning a lot. They were very thoughtfully worked through by the board. and the steering committee morphed into our board. Most of our board members served on the steering committee. The word I love the most is beautiful because I think it's a word that describes something people do not expect from a technology platform that's primarily intended for low income people. And I love that we not only made that a goal, but we achieved it. And I know we achieved it because people have told us that they think the site is beautiful. I have told this story often about a meeting we had with advocates for people with disabilities early on. And we knew that there were some things about the site that weren't as good as we wanted them to be around serving people with mobility needs. So I didn't know what to expect from the meeting, but the very first thing that someone said was, when they uh -might, you know. your site is beautiful and I loved that I loved that that was their very first comment so achieving that ends up serving so many purposes I think it dignifies the process for people it respects them and it gives our users an incredible amount of I think kind of ownership allegiance, trust in the product. That's real, that's authentic. Another thing I'm very proud of is that we have these organizational news on what's up at Housing Navigator. We have subscribers that are a subset of our subscribers that also subscribe to our every other week. We do a listing of kind of active properties. And the open rate on our organization unions is very high. And our users, our renter users read about the organization. I think that's in part because they're having this experience of a platform that's beautiful and created for them, and it's a product that they, you know, trust and value. So really important word, there beautiful. Also, valuing the resources of our users, the whole idea of the product is that it gives people agency. And, you know, my own career history is I started working after college at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness, and then I worked in legal services with people who were losing their homes from eviction or foreclosure. And I found that the people I worked with were amazingly resourceful and amazingly energetic and problem solvers on a level that I'll never be, what they often didn't have was information. And the tool is very much about providing people information so they can make the best choices for them, so that they can, to affect comparison shop, all those things that I get to do as somebody with a lot more privilege and who, you know, the tech world is very interested in providing products for me. So those words, again, I think about that phrase all the time, you know, reliable, all those pieces are very much what underpins having a product that is useful and with any luck, you know, beloved and well used over time. time.
HANNAH: Yeah, yeah, well, I think it's also, I was also struck by the word beautiful as part of that description. I think so many other aspects of applying for affordable housing and finding affordable housing are very much not beautiful and are quite complicated and very much not user centric. And so,
JENNIFER: Yeah
HANNAH: I would imagine it's refreshing and yeah, it's wonderful to have this be the platform that they're using to find housing.
JENNIFER: Well, it's funny, one of the board members who, you know, refers to herself all the time as a bureaucrat. And she's an amazing bureaucrat. She really gets a lot done. When we had that discussion, she objected to the word beautiful, she said, I think it should be taken out. Because I don't know what it means. And why do we need to make this beautiful? We just need to make it work. And I think, at the time, I was a little bit worried that I had been kind of too sharp in my rebuttal, because I was only recently had become the ED of this fledgling thing. And I was like, Oh, what if I made her mad at me? And I said, no, no, no, it has to be beautiful. And I think I might have literally said, like, if it's not beautiful, I'm not doing it. I'm like, I was so adamant about it. And she always jokes now about how she was wrong. Just last week, she told me, I'm so glad you made it beautiful. I would have settled for just it works. Yeah, but it's so important that it's beautiful.
HANNAH: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to ask about one of the bumps, perhaps the biggest bump in this journey in building the back end. end database. And that was when you realized that information on ADA units was simply not collected. So if you wanted to share with users that a building had mobility units that matched their needs, you would have to get that information through each owner. I imagine this was a huge surprise and required you to pivot in a lot of ways. So. So what did you do?
HANNAH: Yeah, yeah, so, you know, back to the original steering committee in the discussion, everyone knew clearly a priority was trying to identify where opportunities were, where the, in effect, the affordable housing system was creating units with all kinds of mobility adaptations, but they weren't visible. So those who needed them couldn't find them. And, And I thought, and I think most of us thought that that was collected, that the organizations that fund the buildings, you know, primarily our state office, collected the information and we just needed to get it from them. And we had very early on data sharing agreements where they did offer us, you know, a lot of information to help us build the initial database. And then in a very early stage, we just needed to get it from them. And we just needed to get it from them. early Zoom with them, which I remember vividly, they said, "Oh, no, we can't give you the information "about where the ADA units are "because our database doesn't have a field for it." So, you know, every building's required to have them, so they knew they were there, but they couldn't tell us, is it a two -bedroom? Is it a three -bedroom? They didn't know.
HANNAH:Wow.
JENNIFER: And we were shocked. So it was so important, we knew we had to come up with a very, very energetic plan B. And the main thing was we're gonna have to go to owners. And we're gonna have to ask them, literally, like, okay, you own this building. We know that there are accessible apartments in that. Are there two bedrooms? Are there three bedrooms? bedrooms? Tell us more. And so that meant that we both had to build out our input tool to make that an important category. We've done a bunch of other things as well. I mean, we do spend time, I think, really talking to owners about why it's important. And I really give a lot of credit to the team because it does take effort. The person entering the information doesn't always know. They may have to call a site. And we also tried to do whatever we can so that when we get new buildings listed, we collect that information from the beginning. It's actually now part of the financing closing process that buildings have to kind of declare what they're going to designate for ADA units. So now going forward, it should be much simpler, but it was a bunch of interventions both I would say, you know, our technology, the tool, educating and spreading the word and you know, really engaging owners who mostly want to do it, they want those to be transparent. They're not trying to hide it. It's just they built the building 15 years ago, and they may have to do some work to find out exactly what the array is. And then also that piece of some system change, of less change the system, so we're at least going forward collecting it.
HANNAH: Yeah. So now I'm moving forward for every new project in the state of Massachusetts that's inputted into the platform.
JENNIFER: Not only that, it's actually in the recorded use restriction. So if Housing Navigator went away, somebody will be able to find it.
HANNAH: That's great.
JENNIFER:By doing a public record search.
HANNAH: Yeah, very cool. I wanna, so for maybe folks that are listening to this that are inspired by what you've done in Massachusetts and are wanting to do something similar in their region or state, I feel like there might be some questions coming up or some voices in their head that are sort of like, well, how really would this work or why didn't you do it this way? So I have two questions, kind of voices in your head questions. So first question, isn't this building data just public information?
JENNIFER: Yes, it is. The thing that I learned though, and even when we had highly cooperative partners, which, you know, we got to actually fairly quickly, the way that data is collected or what data is collected, may not be the data that you need. So a big learning is that, you know, people collect data for the purposes that they need the data for. And by and large, the people who had the full data on the buildings were those who had financed it or those who permitted it. Well, they don't need to know the same things that a renter needs to know about a building. So great example, photographs. They don't necessarily have photographs of a building they gave tax credits to in 1996, but somebody who is thinking about living there would love to see a photograph. They also might not have detailed information on some of the things we've talked about, like accessible units, like the exact income restrictions. They collect what they need. So while it is, public information is all about a public resource, it doesn't mean I always give this knowledge. You can't just pull up to the data store and plug in your hose and have data come flowing out that fits exactly what you need to have a tool like this. That said, I think in other states, it may be far simpler. It may be arranged better. Massachusetts is very creative about doing affordable housing at the local level, at the state level. That means that not everybody is dealing with the same buildings all the time and you have to go to some places one by one, sometimes at the city level. So that could be unique to us or to only a few states, other places that could be far simpler to get that than it was for us. And I also want to say, 'cause I think sometimes people are very daunted by the data task, and I do believe it was something identified from the beginning, our data needs to be really good. That's where reliable comes from. And even if people think that beautiful is that the user interface works well, beautiful is really that the data's very good enough to date. So it is super, super, super important. important. And a lot of things that are very important, especially things that are important to equity and social justice aren't easy. So it definitely takes some effort, especially at the beginning. Now that we've built it, you know, the level of effort is reduced to maintain it. But it was, it was quite a bit of time. And I can completely misjudged the amount of resources and money it would take by actually by a factor of 10, but we got there.
HANNAH: My second question, you kind of got out a little bit with the like hose and, you know, data store analogy, but why didn't you just use an API?
JENNIFER: It was that reason. The data wasn't collected in the form that we needed and about the things that we needed information on. We're always exploring that though. So just so people know, well, I didn't know at the beginning of this journey what in the world an API was. Now I understand. We've explored it a bunch of different ways. I think we'll, and we'll always keep exploring it because ideally there would be more automation. So we're very open to finding that works well for us. We have not found at this point that there is too much that's kind of already collected that can easily flow into our tool. But we're going to keep trying on it. And every time somebody suggests something, while I'm more realistic, at the beginning I would just talk to anyone and jump at any interview with anyone who maybe could give us data automatically. Now I know a little bit more. but we are always open to trying to figure out if that's possible, because we know it would simpler will give you higher quality information.
HANNAH: Right. So I want to shift to talk about the future of Housing Navigator. So I know there's, you know, we've talked about the interest in replicating, you know, Housing Navigator elsewhere in the U .S. There are a couple other states that have similar platforms. And there's also some discussion around expanding the functionality of Housing Navigator within Massachusetts to continue to support the affordable housing application process. So from your perspective, what's the vision? Where's Housing Navigator going next?
JENNIFER: Yeah, so I think our biggest goal is that we serve as an example to others about what we're trying to accomplish. So my vision is that there should be some source that is a one -stop stop for renters looking for affordable housing in every state. And it should take them from the place of being able to do the initial search to being able to apply. apply. And if that vision sounds grand, well, actually that's exactly what I get. As a person with far more resources and far more privilege, I can do that, I can do that. That's collected for me, that's available for me. And I know speaking for our team and also for our board, that's really what we would love to see. It doesn't have to be exactly like us because part of innovation is knowing that different places may do it in different ways. But that goal, and you really have to question, why isn't this available? Why doesn't this exist? Surely what we did took some effort, but again, a lot of things take effort. And the value of this one place, everywhere, can go to find reliable high quality information is what I expect. You know, I just think that's there for me and it is there for me. But it absolutely, I think as part of having a healthy affordable housing ecosystem nationally, needs to be there for everyone. And, you know, we say this all the time, but it's so obvious. People cannot choose to live in a place that they can't find. And it is that bad. In addition, the amount of time people waste, the burden on them looking is incredible. We get this comment all the time from people. I mean, people will call Housing Navigator things like life changing. That's just hours and hours of their time that they no longer have to live. spend desperately trying to figure out what are all the options for me in, you know, name your town, local Massachusetts. Instead, they can go on the site and see them all there and pick out ones they want to explore further and do that. And that's the kind of, you know, agency that we want to make happen and that I think the vision is that that is possible for everyone everywhere.
HANNAH: Absolutely. Yeah, it's hard to imagine going through an apartment search and not having a tool like Zillow to help you do so.
JENNIFER: Right. Early on, that was one of the things that I did. When I gave a presentation on Housing Navigator, I'd ask, okay, raise your hand if you've moved in the last two years. And then I'd ask, what tools did you use to start looking for a home, whether you were trying to rent or buy? And of course, everybody said the first thing they did was, pick up their phone and start searching you know all the sites that we all know, ZIllow, apartments.com and then you know ask like if you were a person a low -income person a person more moderate means what would you do and people did almost didn't realize that the same thing didn't already exist but at that time in particular I would go do the searches in my own neighborhood because I know you know a lot of what's the developments are local to me, and I would say they just didn't show up anywhere.
HANNAH: I want to, as we come to the end here, I want to touch on something that you've mentioned to me a few times. You never thought that you would be founding a tech nonprofit at 50 years old, and you said you've said that it's been challenging to call yourself and identify yourself as. a tech entrepreneur. Tell me more about that and what advice would you have to others that maybe are feeling a similar kind of, you know, like they don't look like the traditional tech entrepreneur and therefore shouldn't be starting something like this.
JENNIFER: Yeah, so of course, I would encourage people to give it a try, which is funny for me to say because it was very hard for me to get the idea in my head that that it was something I could do. And so back to why that was the case, I don't look like a tech entrepreneur. I'm a woman. I am, you know, well into middle age. I was, though, someone who cared about the issue really, really desperately and passionately. And I think that's definitely where, you know, people stay from. entrepreneurs, you should be in love with the problem and wanting to solve the problem. And I knew from my own experience, and I'm not somebody who's had lived experience with housing instability, but those things that I mentioned from, you know, my earliest career, working at a homeless shelter, working in legal services, I had this very direct experience with people who had, as I said, amazing resourcefulness, amazing talents, and they were thwarted by a lack of information. And so what I realized is that while I don't know, and I still don't know a whole lot about technology, I brought to it my subject matter expertise because I had worked in affordable housing for 25 years. I developed affordable housing. I understood what all these programs were. I understood that actually it's pretty simple when you boil them down, they're not all that different. And I also brought my network, which by that stage in my career was pretty vast and that helped found the effort and launch the site. And so I do think people should kind of get in the mindset of, well, what could I bring to this? What do I care about? And even if you don't bring technology expertise and you feel reluctant to-- the first few times I even used the term API, I wanted to laugh at myself. And I felt like, oh, everybody knows. Jennifer, you don't know what you're talking about. (both laugh) I just said that anyway. And you'll learn all those things. Or you'll bring along other people who know them. You don't have to know everything. But you'll bring your expertise, your lived experience, your problem -solving skills, your connections, all those things. And I would really encourage people to do it. And particularly encourage people who do not look like your average technology entrepreneur.
If you look at what is being done in the world of technology today, most of it doesn't address social justice issues. Many, much of it makes them worse. So having people who look different, who come from different perspectives, who are at different stages in their life, I think would only benefit what we can use this very powerful tool to do.
HANNAH: - Definitely. Well, I think that is a great place to end. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Excited to see where Housing Navigator goes next and hope to see 50 Housing Navigators pop up around the US.
JENNIFER: That sounds great to me. Thanks Hannah.
HANNAHThank you.
Outro Music
HANNAH: Next week we'll learn about an innovative model bringing cooperative financing to urban housing. These two co -founders are hoping to answer a pretty thorny question. Can we introduce the benefits of density to urban America without displacing the people who live there? Tune in next week to learn more. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to House Party with Ivory Innovations.