Dear Colleagues,
Based on our discussions, I've drafted a proposal for catalyzing the creation of a regional Housing Navigator. Here is a PDF version accessible via your SHFC One Drive:
hnm_for_ctx_v3.pdf
Below, I've coped a plain-text version.
Catalyzing the Central Texas Housing Navigator
A proposal to improve online search for Central Texas affordable housing
I. Current State of Affordable Housing Search in Travis County
Presently, there are several digital search tools that help apartment-seekers find income-restricted affordable housing in Travis County. Perhaps the most prominent mission-driven tool is the City of Austin’s Affordable Housing Online Search Tool, or AHOST. The AHOST web application aggregates affordable rental information from the City of Austin, the Housing Authority of the City of Austin, the Housing Authority of Travis County, and the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. The web application is, basically, a simple query form that visualizes information via a map. Users can search by their income level, household size, and related criteria.
However, AHOST does not offer real-time vacancy information. There's no convenient connection to waitlists. There are no images of the properties or of the available rooms. There is no clarity about whether a unit with one's bedroom requirements at one's income level is available. A tenant has to compute their AMI themselves. It's a user-friendly map, but a tenant-centered review of its design would yield a need for significant feature development.
Additionally, while it is understandable that a City of Austin-backed tool focuses on said jurisdiction, we know that the lives of affordable housing tenants don't conform neatly to jurisdictional boundaries. Ultimately, a regional listing is optimal given how jobs and family needs may develop over time.
Unfortunately, for-profit apartment search platforms do not provide a superior "market" solution. While many have glossy interfaces or more powerful search features, they face similar shortcomings to AHOST. They also introduce additional friction for tenants as a result of their design for the market-rate leasing process.
For example, category-leader apartments.com has an application fee ($29 as of this writing). Their data is often manually-entered and, therefore, can feature stale information, such as outdated AMI levels. The search filters and application logic are not designed with affordable housing waitlists and program coordination in mind. This can lead to confusion about eligibility and the actual rent-level for Housing Choice Voucher and Project-Based Voucher holders.
II. Benefits of a Central Texas Housing Navigator
A Central Texas Housing Navigator would generate four major public benefits.
First, it would make affordable housing easier to find and cut down on the process "sludge" that is a time tax on residents looking for affordable housing. Residents would not waste time on repeated phone calls to determine what affordable housing exists, who it is for, or how to pursue it.
Second, it would improve leasing efficiency for affordable properties. This is particularly valuable when affordable housing stock dips to lower occupancy rates. We are currently in one of those periods. A stronger regional navigator would help connect the right household to the right property more quickly, which is good for residents and for the operational health of affordable housing providers.
Third, it would raise the productivity of the Central Texas public and nonprofit housing ecosystem. Today, each participant must solve the same information problem in their own silo. A regional technology social enterprise would allow shared technical costs and generate economies of scale. The current period of tight budgets across Texas provides an opportunity to catalyze collaboration in pursuit of efficiency.
Fourth, it would create a stronger regional housing planning and policy foundation. A regional housing navigator can become more than a search tool. It can also become a shared "data utility" that helps local governments, housing authorities, and housing finance agencies better understand needs and trends.
III. Housing Navigator Massachusetts: A Proven Model
Housing Navigator Massachusetts (HNM) offers the strongest proof of concept for Central Texas policymakers.
In 2018, Kuehn Foundation Executive Director Jennifer Gilbert, along with Citizens Housing and Planning Association CEO Rachel Heller and Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation CEO Joe Flatley, convened a working committee of Massachusetts affordable housing leaders to address the "digital divide" in housing search. A year later, HNM launched as a dedicated nonprofit focused on building a single, statewide apartment search platform around the features that matter to affordable housing apartment-seekers. By 2024, HNM reports over 400,000 annual users.
The HNM platform addresses the challenges discussed above. It provides:
* Up-to-date and granular information on bedrooms and income levels
* Direct links to application forms and contacts
* Clear information on waitlist status.
While a web application is HNM's most visible product, quality technology is not the most important factor in HNM's success. HNM's special achievement is creating a high-performing enterprise that is able to transcend organizational silos to ensure data quality.
Locally, achieving data quality will depend on the level of commitment to collaboration from the many relevant Central Texas participants that provide affordable housing. A Central Texas version of HNM will need to earn collaboration by providing the best platform for providers to achieve their goals. Unlike in Massachusetts, a top-down mandate implemented via formal state-level policy (e.g. the LIHTC Qualified Application Plan) won't be a starting point.
IV. Financial Benchmark
To determine the cost of a quality Navigator we can use HNM's most recent Form 990 to create "back-of-the-envelope" estimates.
For the fiscal year ending in 2024, HNM reported total revenue of $1,670,598. According to the Census Bureau, Massachusetts’ 2024 population estimate was 7,136,171. Taken together, that results in a cost of $0.234 per resident per year. Given the 400,000 HNM users per year cited above, this would put the per user cost at $4, which is an infinitesimal cost compared to both the total subsidy of an income-restricted unit and any reasonable valuation of the “time tax” reduction.
The table below applies HNM’s per-capita benchmark to (1) Travis County and then (2) to a broader Central Texas regional footprint defined by the Capital Area Housing Finance Corporation service area counties (Bastrop, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Fayette, Hays, Lee, Llano, Travis, and Williamson). This is an admittedly imperfect budgeting formula, but it is a practical benchmark for discussing the relative scale of funding required.
Geography | Population | Annual budget | Cost per resident
Housing Navigator Massachusetts | 7,136,171 | $1,670,598 | $0.234
Travis County | 1,363,767 | $319,262 | $0.234
Central Texas region | 2,686,819 | $628,992 | $0.234
V. Strategic HFC’s Role
Strategic HFC's Board can help catalyze the creation of a new regional Navigator enterprise without undermining its core housing finance work.
The Board should consider the following actions:
1. Budget funds to select a social entrepreneur (a local version of Jennifer Gilbert) to launch the new enterprise. The entrepreneur will be selected via a competitive process. Strategic would cover the entrepreneur's salary for a start-up period (2 years) to galvanize engagement from regional peers.
2. Pass a resolution in support of the Navigator concept that affirms a willingness to commit to a permanent funding formula for the Navigator and to make every reasonable effort to ensure our developer partners and property managers provide timely data updates.
3. Share this proposal with policymakers and agency peers to support formation of a working group that the funded social entrepreneur can facilitate.
Julio Gonzalez Altamirano
Strategic HFC Board of Directors
5/4/26 - DRAFT
