The DowntownDC BID’s Director of Homeless Services Deborah Bey, in conjunction with the Georgetown University Urban and Regional Planning Program, last week hosted a meeting at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies (640 Massachusetts Avenue NW) to facilitate a discussion about where technology and the makers of new applications can intersect with homeless service providers in D.C. The goal was to present potential tech solutions to address homelessness.
About 25 providers and technology experts discussed how technology and new applications may be able to streamline and assist homeless services in the District.
Bey said that currently, there are “wasted resources and wasted time” for homeless services providers in part because data related to individuals and services is difficult to obtain or combine. “A provider from one agency cannot see what services a client is getting from another agency or if they are even working with another group.”
But techies are out to change that.
Right now, “it’s hard to find information on services in D.C. It’s even harder to find correct data,” said Jennifer Stowe, who is working on an Open Referral Initiative sponsored by Code for DC to develop a website and mobile app that for the first time will house all community resource data for the District.
Through Stowe’s group’s relationship with Bread for the City and Google, technology experts are putting data online that will make Bread for the City’s community resource data available to the public. The goal is to create a database and next year to expand it, allowing users to enter their own to create a comprehensive, free source for the public.
Rose Broome, the 2014 winner of 1776’s Challenge Festival, at last week’s meeting introduced those in attendance to her HandUp organization, which uses a crowdfunding model to directly connect donors to homeless individuals. Homeless services providers create online profiles on the HandUp website for individuals indicating their specific needs and costs of those needs. Donors can then contribute to an individual’s campaign and 100 percent of donations will be directed by the provider to that individual.
HandUp currently operates in the San Francisco-area, but Broome said her organization would be expanding to D.C. in September.
Bey introduced providers to a digital mapping website “DC Kids Count,” which for the first time overlays community and demographic data with maps using a geographic mapping system (GIS). The website allows users to geographically “target their resources” in D.C., identifying where the most children are enrolled in Medicaid, where schools area located and other pertinent information. “It allows agencies to be more efficient with their financial and human resources,” Bey said.
Also, through Code for DC and various tech companies, technology experts have developed an online Advisory Neighborhood Commission directory, ANCFinder.org, which works to increase the visibility of these hyper-local D.C. government officials.
On the Section 8 housing front, coder Marcus Louie is working through Code for DC to address the time-consuming process of applying for Section 8 rental housing assistance in the District. Currently, each property has its own paper application, requiring applicants to fill these out by hand. Louie, in a partnership with Bread for the City, has scanned many of the applications into an online system and developed a way for Bread for the City to help applicants fill out multiple applications online in an efficient manner.
Ultimately, Louie’s group hopes the Section 8 system will one day be electronic and that there will be a common application available to the public.
“We would like to see everything we’re doing become obsolete,” he said.
The last technology introduced to providers at this week’s meeting was Benevolent, a website which allows homeless individuals to create online profiles through a validating partner. The website organizes a donation campaigns for their requests and if 95 percent of their goal is not met, funds are kicked over to a similar need. The 501(c)3 holds on to 10.25 percent of donations to assist their efforts.
Providers walked away from the meeting with new knowledge about the potential advantages of open data and about how technology can improve their efforts.
Bey plans to schedule follow up meetings to create opportunities to work more closely with technology companies and start-ups in D.C.