Supercharging Re-Housing Opportunities to Reduce Homelessness

Originally posted in the Geek Estate Blog, Newsletter #251

Hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. experience homelessness every year. Many additional thousands of people are housing insecure, meaning they live in unstable housing situations. While the numbers fluctuate, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that 582,462 people experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2022. While this is a staggeringly large number, it represents only a small fraction of total homeless populations. In Denver, for example, a point-in-time count last year found 1,313 unsheltered people on one night, while the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Denver metro area was closer to 31,000 throughout the course of the year.

Helping those experiencing homelessness comes down to more than supplying an empty housing unit and the funds to pay for it. Many of those affected by housing instability may have some means to pay for housing, but other issues prevent them from being an A+ candidate to a landlord—maybe they were recently evicted, or don’t have stable employment. Or perhaps their case manager simply cannot surface hard-to-find, inclusionary zoning units in an expensive city.

Tech-based solutions offer a key avenue to better support individuals in cities across the U.S. Innovative companies are using data sharing and better identification of units to surface housing opportunities that people would not otherwise find or be able to live in. Identifying these kinds of creative approaches to challenging issues is our focus at Ivory Innovations, where we work across sectors to promote the most compelling ideas in housing affordability. 

DATA SHARING BREAKS BARRIERS
Incredibly, communication among relevant organizations and key stakeholders in a given city is one of the larger issues stymying progress on solving homelessness. Given the complexities of helping those impacted by housing instability, data sharing has risen to the top of the list of issues best resolved by tech-enabled services. Enhanced data sharing is allowing case managers to better access comprehensive support for the individuals they serve.

Organizations like Community Solutions—a 2022 Ivory Prize Finalist—have helped break silos between service providers. The organization uses technology for powerful data collection, enhanced analysis, and more fruitful discussions among city stakeholders. Its success with more than 30 existing cities illustrates the importance of understanding who you are helping and what services you have available to support people in complicated situations. With a recent $100 million McArthur Grant, Community Solutions will expand its consulting work to 100 additional cities to achieve net zero homelessness.

Outreach Grid supercharges that same concept with a tech platform that supports this type of collaboration across relevant agencies and nonprofits. Enabling data sharing in this space is like having a password manager on your various devices. For someone who may not have an ID or ability to get one, or is accessing many different social services, Outreach Grid’s technology is an essential element in providing meaningful support that helps someone successfully find and remain in housing.

REACHING SCALABLE IDENTIFICATION
While there has always been the ability to find units at the micro level for those working directly within key neighborhoods, reaching scale has been harder. Where are the income-restricted units across an entire city? Which areas are under- or over-supplied?

Tech has now enabled scalable identification of these units. 

With Housing Navigator Massachusetts’ Zillow-like search tool, the state has now uncovered more than 160K units that its Housing Agency previously did not have tracked on a systems-scale. Housing Navigator has 18,000 hits per month on its platform for this search feature alone. Equally as relevant, Housing Navigator’a data collection can be shared back with local governments and developers to help address the more macro trends—i.e, what neighborhoods are getting the most searches but have the fewest units. 

BROADENING INCLUSIVITY
Many landlords are wary of people with housing vouchers or people exiting homelessness. New proptech companies are simplifying the process of matching vacant housing units with people who might not otherwise qualify to rent them. 

Property owners and managers using Housing Connector can better meet baseline profit margins by finding vacancies and filling them with a customer segment that would otherwise be overlooked as prohibitively high-risk. For residents, the platform works with existing housing organizations to create new opportunities by mitigating risks related to income, criminal history, and housing history.

A partnership with Zillow has super-charged Housing Connector’s ability to scalably identify owners with active rental listings that are a good fit. This pivotal tech integration is what allows Housing Connector to have an outsized impact compared with case managers manually looking for these hard-to-find units. While only operating in three cities at present (Seattle, Denver, and Dallas), its partnership with Zillow illustrates a scalable model for helping organizations across the country more effectively identify units and qualify individuals for long-term housing.

INCREASING AWARENESS AND CONVERSATIONS
Since it’s impossible to meaningfully increase housing supply overnight, this issue will worsen before it improves. The many housing organizations working on homelessness issues in any given city often do not collaborate in effective, meaningful ways—case management is fragmented and challenging as providers try to do much with few resources. But innovative tech solutions can fill this important gap. And while new ground-up tech solutions like Outreach Grid are helping move the needle, as Housing Connector shows, there’s ample room to leverage powerful existing listing platforms like Zillow or even Airbnb. 

The rise of the sharing economy over the last decade set the stage for not only bringing more units online that can address the homelessness crisis, but also making them accessible for different use cases than originally intended. Even Airbnb dips its toe into this space as needs arise—the company helped temporarily house nurses during the pandemic, and Airbnb.org has provided housing during crisis to 250,000 people since 2012. That’s fantastic, but the organization hasn't gone as far as helping re-house those experiencing homelessness. Organizations like Housing Connector that can qualify potential tenants open up the possibility for even more platforms to assist with temporary housing while case managers search for more permanent solutions. The opportunity for partnerships like this will likely expand in the coming years as proptech players like Airbnb grow their reach and expand across verticals.

Housing for formerly un-housed people could be one new category tech platforms consider exploring as housing pressures across both major metropolitan areas and smaller cities continue to increase. While many organizations in this space are structured as nonprofits, a larger player could integrate a service like Housing Connector as a new revenue stream, charging nonprofits for the service. Given the scale of cities and state governments paying for effective solutions to bringing affordable housing inventory online, this space has powerful opportunities for greater tech integration and enablement.