Why We Do What We Do

When you look at this picture of the stacks upon stacks of paper applications for an affordable housing waitlist, with rubber bands and binder clips keeping the pages of sensitive applicant information in place, they are far from pictures of efficiency, compliance, and a modern process. The time it takes for staff and hired temps to collect, organize, and enter that data into a spreadsheet is costly. The potential for human error is high.

For a person applying for housing, the process is equally arduous, costing them time and money. Typically, applicants first must call around to properties to find the open waitlists or work with a case manager to find housing opportunities. Then, many applicants make multiple trips by bus to pick up applications and drop them off. Others may wait in lines for hours to apply in person for first-come first-served waitlist openings as early as 5am. Finally, when the applications have been submitted and they receive confirmation of their submission, they wait — on average between two to ten years — for their name to come up on the list.

The management of these waitlists is also time consuming for property managers, with additional room for human error and, in the worst-case scenario, intentional manipulation. Data from spreadsheets can be deleted or overwritten with incorrect data with one accidental click, without the user’s knowledge of the damage that was done. Supervisors find transparency difficult, not knowing what is happening with a list at a specific point in time.

Haven Connect exists to modernize the affordable housing process and to provide a user-friendly online platform that helps people search and apply for affordable housing online, and easily maintain their status on the waitlist. We save people time by providing a centralized list of open waitlists and allowing them to autofill their data to multiple lists. By allowing direct access to housing opportunities and self-management of information we eliminate the gatekeeper and save people time and money.

For property managers, our software enables them to manage waitlists efficiently, getting qualified applicants into unit vacancies faster. We remove the potential for human error and compliance nightmares, with each edit to an applicant’s data automatically documented. Additionally, we make communication with applicants easy and trackable directly through the property dashboard.

Haven Connect wants to make affordable housing accessible and efficiently and equitably managed. No more floor piles of sensitive personal data, no more waiting in lines, no more spreadsheets. Our goal is to create transparent and automated waitlist management and accessible housing for all.

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