Examining Scattered Sites: How can we better engage Landlords?
This post was originally published on September 18, 2022.
Over the past year, the newly formed Mayor’s Office of Innovation (or “i-Team”) has focused on one main priority area: accountability in San Francisco’s response to homeless.
Our first projected centered on the “Scattered Site” permanent supportive housing program run by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH). This program gives subsidies to people experiencing homelessness to live in private-market units. A cohort of local non-profits (or “service providers”) help these people find the right apartment, apply for it, and then move it — preferably within 75–90 days.
HSH reached out to the “i-Team” because the service providers have been struggling in contacting landlords with appropriate apartments to rent. Could the i-Team help recruit more landlords to participate in Scattered Site housing?
Over the next few months, we’ll be detailing a journey through the Scattered Sites program.
What’s the situation?
San Francisco’s permanent housing system is increasingly reliant on Rental Assistance Subsidies. A lack of available and easily identifiable units is slowing down the process of moving people experiencing homelessness into housing.
HSH has tasked the Mayor’s Office of Innovation with:
- Increasing the number of landlords renting to voucher recipients, and
- Increasing the geographical diversity of units rented to voucher recipients.
Our methodology:
The i-Team’s work revolves around research, data analytics, and user centered design to define the problem, co-create potential solutions with our partners, and then iteratively prototype before development a final product.
Research Phase
Before embarking on our research, we are posing the following guiding questions:
- What is the Customer Journey for Landlords?
- Where in the engagement process are we losing landlords?
- How can we improve landlord engagement?
- Can (and Should) the City increase its Rental Assistance Portfolio?
- How can we move people into housing faster?
Our research will focus not only on landlords, but also on the provider and client experience in order to fully understand the ecosystem.
- Primary research: interviews, surveys, site visits
- Secondary research: other city & state programs
- Quantitative data analysis: HMIS data system (ONE), partner data sets, 311 calls, and more
Stay tuned over the next few months as we go through our process!
This post was originally published on September 18, 2022. That blog has now been deprecated and is republished here on Medium in its entirety.
