The challenge
Each building had its own paper forms, queues and lotteries, making affordable housing hard to find and apply for.
The case
San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development used to run affordable housing applications on paper: each developer had its own forms, applicants travelled to collect and return them with income documents, and lotteries drew paper tickets from a bowl. Working with Google’s design team through the city’s Civic Bridge program, the office built DAHLIA, one website to search and apply for privately owned affordable units, which debuted in 2016. Income documents are now needed only after the lottery. By 2019 it had cost about $4 million, and by May 2021 it had received more than 650,000 applications, 97% of the total. A city housing official said it made applying easier but did not get people housed faster.
Why the results were mixed
A single, standard online application removed travel, queues and repeated paperwork, and drew more applicants. But a portal cannot fix the shortage of units or the slow eligibility checks after the lottery, so the wait for a home did not shrink.
Sources
- City and County of San Francisco. Creating an online affordable housing portal: a Civic Bridge case study. SF.gov.
- Coleman, E. (2019). In this city, residents can search and apply for affordable housing online. Route Fifty.
- Bloomberg Cities Idea Exchange. Accessing affordable housing. Bloomberg Philanthropies.
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