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Building a Platform to Make Housing Navigation Easier

Project Status: Hack nights ongoing

Schedule: We will be working with this dataset on

• Tuesday, March 10, 6-9pm, Center for Civic Innovation

• Tuesday, March 17, 6-9pm, UVA School for Data Science, 3 Elliewood Ave.

• Tuesday, March 24, 6-9pm, Center for Civic Innovation

• Tuesday, March 31, 6-9pm, UVA School for Data Science, 3 Elliewood Ave.

• Tuesday, April 7, 6-9pm, Center for Civic Innovation

Introduction and Objective

Housing navigation is the process of helping people with limited incomes find places to live they can afford, possibly with the help of a housing voucher. Navigation also includes helping people with complex backgrounds find places that will accept them as tenants.

It is often difficult to find information about aspects of the landlord’s tenant screening process. For example, does the landlord accept vouchers? Does the landlord have a minimum income requirement for all tenants? Does the landlord work with tenants who have imperfect credit or rental records? What is their policy regarding accepting tenants with criminal backgrounds? All of these factors can present significant, and often hidden, barriers to people trying to find housing.

Many agencies and organizations in Charlottesville perform the work of navigation. This process is slow, however, because of a lack of reliable information regarding the complete list of available rentals and the various screening processes used by landlords.

The goal of this project is to develop software for the internal use of credentialed housing navigators that provides navigators with an up-to-date and comprehensive list of the available rentals in the Charlottesville area, along with the various screening policies employed by landlords.

Strategies: this work will involve the collective efforts of navigators, landlords, and volunteers through Code for Charlottesville.

• Navigators will continue to develop personal relationships with landlords in order to find out about rental availabilities, voucher accessibility, and other restrictions, entering new information into a shared database that is only viewable by credentialed navigators.

• Landlords will communicate with navigators through conversations and by filling out a private form to directly place information into the database.

• Code for Charlottesville volunteers will write web-scraping programs to collect information on rental websites such as BRAC, Craigslist, and Trulia, and will clean and input the data into the database. The idea is to match each listing to unique IDs for the rental property and landlord so that navigators can easily update records to include information on rental restrictions. If navigators are diligent in using this system, then over time it will become a more comprehensive and accurate list of all rentals that are accessible to renters who are subject to frequent screening restrictions.

Deliverables: A database that updates every day that shows the current rental listings, along with the contact information for the landlord, and the most recent information navigators have on the landlord’s screening restrictions. The system will require password credentials to access, making it an internal system for use by qualified personnel only. Code for Charlottesville volunteers will also design the infrastructure of the database, including the credentialing system and the forms for landlords and navigators.

Data Security and Ethical Considerations: No data will be collected on individuals seeking help finding housing, or on individuals who have vouchers or are enrolled in other housing assistance programs. The data are still sensitive, however, because landlords often do not wish to publicize the fact that they accept vouchers. Prior to launching the landlord side of the data collection mechanism, we will have to take care to ensure that the system is secure and only accessible to individuals with the proper credentials

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