How a human-centric, data-driven approach overhauled San Francisco’s affordable housing services

At the BridgeSF 2018 Summit, Roshen Sethna of Exygy and Barry Roeder of the Mayor’s Office of Housing & Community Development (MOHCD) presented DAHLIA – a website that simplifies the San Francisco affordable housing search and application process.

The inspiration for DAHLIA comes from a key question – how can improved service delivery via digital products transform the entire system, from policymakers to agencies to the public?

Before the introduction of DAHLIA, short for the Database of Affordable Housing Listings Information and Application, the affordable housing process was arduous, inconsistent, and ultimately put undue burdens on applicants. There was no centralized resource for housing information, eligibility criteria were unclear, and the existing resources were difficult to navigate.

However, since DAHLIA has launched, the time necessary to apply for housing in San Francisco has been whittled down from several days to only fifteen minutes and more than 90% of applicants now apply online versus on paper. More than one hundred households are placed monthly into units.

DAHLIA’s success stems in large part to the feedback-driven agile framework that was used to build it . “Agile means releasing the best hypothesis of a solution early, learning from user and stakeholder feedback, and iterating on and growing the solution from there,” Roeder says, “It’s an incremental process that allows for development to pivot on the fly.” Ultimately, an Agile approach makes it easier to align policy and services to the needs of constituents.

As Sethna notes, “Our current, legacy government system operates on an approach where policy can be ‘pushed down’ to the public. A more modern, user-centered approach creates feedback loops that help government serve citizens better by seeing the impact of their policies and helps citizens build trust in their government.”

   

Using Feedback Loops to Improve Government Services

The feedback loop emphasized in an agile framework is ultimately about data.

The anonymized product data generated from the DAHLIA website gives policymakers and government agencies the power to see trends and make more informed decisions. Gone are the days of legislators and department leaders guessing what to build because “that’s what we’ve always done”. Instead, a new era of smart, data-driven decisions has been ushered in.

1. Increasing program effectiveness

San Francisco’s affordable housing units are leased up based on a lottery system, with certain applicants getting preference in the lottery. Through the analyzing DAHLIA’s data, MOHCD realized that only 40% of eligible applicants were claiming the Neighborhood Resident Housing Preference, a preference that prioritizes applicants who already live in the neighborhood where the listing is located. User research revealed that the language used to describe the preference was confusing to applicants.

With this information, Exygy proposed to implement design changes to the website including changing the preference description to “Live in Neighborhood” Preference. Working within the business constraints – Exygy still needed to retain the former name in the fine print – these simple design changes helped to more than double preference claim rates to 88%.

2. Improving business processes

Using feedback from the DAHLIA build process, MOHCD is rewriting their housing policy manual. This manual manages the affordable housing listing and lease up process from beginning to end. Changes are being made to the business processes around how buildings are listed, how the lease up process is managed, and how buildings report back to MOHCD.

For example, while DAHLIA was in development, it became evident that affordable housing buildings were relying on different calculations to decide minimum income eligibility requirements for applicants. MOHCD saw this as an opportunity to standardize eligibility rules and, in the process, create a more streamlined, equitable process.

3. Transforming housing policy

The data from DAHLIA gives insight into what populations are being served, what kind of units need to be built, and where to invest in affordable units. This, in turn, helps drive equitable housing policy. As stated by Maria Benjamin, Director of Housing and Below Market Rate programs, “We finally have real data to help us identify and remove barriers to housing placement for specific segments of our population.”

Applicants on DAHLIA span a wide demographic:

• Represent 10+ major bay area cities
• Are between 25 – 65+ years old
• Speak 89 languages
• Mostly (58%) mobile users

DAHLIA’s focus on creating a better user experience and treating users with the same level of dignity as market-rate housing seekers has resulted in more than 1,400,000 visits to the site.

While government can often associated with inefficiency, the successful partnership between Exygy and MOHCD proves that taking the strengths of a government legacy system – a focus on equity and a democratic process – and marrying it with the innovation of agile processes, allows for the creation of shorter, data-driven innovation cycles that ultimately benefit policymakers, agencies and citizens.

You can watch Roshen & Barry’s entire presentation here.