creating pathways to justice and permanent housing for New Yorkers facing discrimination on the rental market.
The project:
Housing choice vouchers are designed to make housing more affordable, especially for families who live in expensive cities. They can enable families to find a home that is safe, healthy, and accessible for them. However, many landlords discriminate – often, illegally – against people who use a housing choice voucher to pay for their rent. When tenants inquire about a listing, they face discriminatory treatment and unfair assumptions about what type of a tenant they would be.
Working closely with voucher-holding New Yorkers, we developed a chatbot that helps tenants file a complete and actionable report to the city after a discriminatory encounter – right on their phone. As a UX/UI designer on the team, my focus has been on blueprinting the user experience for tenants, advocates, and city investigators, developing the chatbot’s flow, processing reports, and analyzing our impact and usability.
What happened next:
Unlock NYC launched in January 2021. Reports filed by tenants through Unlock NYC have resulted in fair viewings, signed leases, and apologies from landlords and brokers who discriminated against members of our community. We’re now bringing on new partner organizations who will use our tools with their members/clients, and will recently launched a feature that helps tenants record their phone calls as additional evidence.
Why it matters:
Research shows that housing choice vouchers are a powerful tool for improving both physical and mental health outcomes, reducing risk factors for diabetes, obesity, depression, and more.
Further, while vouchers can improve health, housing discrimination does the opposite. We've heard from families stuck in crowded homeless shelters for years because of the discrimination they face on the housing market, or living in apartments filled with cockroaches, toxic mold, or severe structural damage because they couldn’t find a safer apartment that would accept their application. Further, the discrimination itself is perilous to mental health, causing anxiety, depression, and a constant sense of uncertainty.
Year: 2019-present
Location: Brooklyn, NY
My role: design research, UX/UI, product management
Collaborators: Jessica Valencia, Madeline Avram Blount, Manon Vergerio, our Leadership Collective, and 100+ New Yorkers with vouchers.
Implementing partner: Neighbors Together
Resourcing partners: Blue Ridge Labs at The Robin Hood Foundation, Awesome Foundation, and 100+ individual donors