Affordable Housing Waitlist Experience
Affordable Housing Waitlist Experience
The Problem.
It is estimated that there is only enough affordable housing for one in four eligible American families, resulting in unavoidable heartbreak. The organization wanted to address waitlist issues to improve the affordable system now and in the future when housing supply is increased. Specifically, our team was tasked with helping the organization evaluate its role in the waitlist ecosystem to improve the equity, efficiency, accountability, accessibility, quality, and consistency of its services.
The Process.
To understand the waitlist ecosystem and the role this organization has within it, I led a four-person team in pursuit of knowledge and insight through a multi-layered human-centered design and systems-thinking approach that included extensive secondary research and various forms of primary research with the organization’s customers and service providers. Our team spoke with 112 individuals, including those using the organization’s services, the organization’s employees, and the organization’s partners, and synthesized the resulting data using Excel and MURAL into an ecosystem map and insights report. We presented these findings to the Deputy Secretary, who agreed with our proposal to focus on the process of finding and applying to affordable housing for developing solutions. Our team then developed low-fidelity prototypes that we tested with stakeholders and affordable housing applicants. Ultimately, our team proposed three prioritized solution concepts for the organization to pursue for refinement and implementation: a resource locator, updated handbooks and guidance, and standardized applications and application methods. The organization voiced concerns around their partners having potentially negative opinions and reactions to possible changes within the space. However, following the human-centered design process allowed my team to approach this topic with care and empathy, while ensuring that voices from all stakeholder groups were heard. By highlighting voices of customers and stakeholders, our team was able to gain additional organizational leadership support and show the positive reception the team had when speaking with customers. This project continued to solidify the CX team within the organization.
The Solution.
Beyond providing the organization with actionable steps forward, the team helped moved the organization closer to a customer-centric mindset. Rather than maintaining the status quo, the project challenged the organization to think about the ramifications of its current role and where it could make meaningful changes. It also set up our client to have conversations with leadership about obtaining funding to make our solutions a reality.