Equitable Affordable Housing in the Digital Age: 8 Ingredients for Leveraging Technology to Enhance Access
Ivory Innovations, Exygy, and Housing Navigator Massachusetts collaborated to address the fragmented search process for subsidized housing and developed strategies for using technology to create user-friendly and equitable platforms for low-income renters.
Description
The current system for finding affordable housing in the U.S. is broken (and in many cases, doesn’t exist). For families and individuals that can afford market rent, platforms like Zillow and Trulia facilitate the housing search process. However, subsidized “capital A affordable” units are typically not included on these sites, meaning low income renters are left to navigate multiple government and property-specific websites. How can we use technology to enhance and streamline access to affordable housing?
This report – a collaboration between Ivory Innovations, Exygy, and Housing Navigator Massachusetts – details the lessons learned in building affordable housing search platforms. The report lays out eight “ingredients for success” for how government, technology, and nonprofit leaders can utilize technology to make the search for affordable housing easier and more transparent, with a focus on user experience, stakeholder engagement, racial equity, and data quality.