HousingWorks.net began after The HIV Infoweb, one of the two largest HIV websites on the planet, won an award from the Attorney General of Massachusetts. At that point, the AIDS Housing Task Force requested that the Infoweb team create a resource for persons with HIV who needed housing. The Infoweb team was able to draw on its extensive network of social service agencies across Massachusetts, and was also able to arrange interviews with Housing Authority directors, Departments of City Hall, Lead staff at the offices of various Management Companies, Disability Groups such as Deaf, Inc. and the Carrol Center for the Blind, Agencies serving populations that did not speak English, Homeless Shelters, Regional Housing Advocacy Groups, Legal Service organizations, and CDC staff. Not only did we interview groups from every county, we also volunteered inside various agencies to understand the housing search experience first-hand. We entered data for several Housing Authorities, we worked in various Management Company offices, organizing the files and typing applicant data into the existing waitlist systems. And of course, our staff had also worked with the Boston Living Center, where we staffed its computer room and taught hundreds of its clients how to use a computer and how to search for AIDS information on the 'net. Most of the visitors to that program also had housing needs so we were able to not only interview them but *follow them through the process.*

Early into this process, we realized three things rather quickly:

1. The Housing Search issues affecting persons with HIV were not significantly different from the issues affecting *every other applicant for affordable housing*; so, whatever solution we implemented,  would ethically need to be made available to all, including those with no access to, or skill with, a computer, postage, paper, and study time of exhaustive Rules documents.

2. The issue of Housing Search was actually part of a larger issue, which was that the Low-Income Housing World was balkanized* in the extreme:  there were more than 40 different types of low-income housing maintained by separate agencies, who published their particular inventory in 40 different formats (or did not publish it at all), with each agency using different terminology to evaluate eligibility for housing. Worse, some agencies used the same eligiblity terminology but assigned the words a different meaning, for example: "Low-Income" might refer to a household making between $0-$24,000 or it might mean a household with a mimimum income of $60,000!  It was clear that the Helping Systems had become the MAJOR obstacle to getting housed.

3. The affordable housing world could in essence, be described as three very distinct groups: Applicants and their Advocates, Landlords and Property management, Oversight and Funder and Policy groups) and each group was implementing policies, strategies, and initiatives that were unknowingly wreaking havoc on the other two groups. The system as a whole was at odds with itself emotionallly and in terms of efficiency.


Our solution was to lay a resource over all three that would convert the broken networks into a functioning ecosystem. We created a working model, then re-visted stakholders in all three groups to see if they could figure out how to use ith without any training. Agencies requested to use the site even during its pilot year, so desperate were they for a parachute.

Some of the key elements that made our model work so well were:

1. Any act performed by any one party solved problems across all three sectors.
2. No contracts or MOUs would need to be signed to enlist participation: as with any ecosystem, anyone in the field was automatically included.
3. We would not require any systems change or education from anyone in order to benefit from the basic benefits of ecosystem; but we created rewards for those who chose to participate at a high level - if system change was adopted, the reward had to be immediately apparent, both emotionally *and* fiscally.
4. Even those who were not aware of our service would benefit, for instance, landlords would receive fewer frivolous applications from ineligible applicants.
5. Our messasge to users was not "everytyhing is connected" but rather, "use this and we will save you time and money".  Not everyone is comfortable with both vision and detail.

The impact was immediately appreciated across most stakeholders: applicants found housing with less effort and landlords filled units with less effort. As for the third sector, the data we collected from the other two groups has helped shape policy on multiple levels, from a local neighborhood CDC to a City-wide initiative that resulted in the converion of many so-called affordable units to truly affordable housing.