"Solve For Homelessness" Website for the City of Austin's Office of Innovation
Skills at a Glance:
Teamwork
Research
Writing
Critical Thinking
Project Management
Wix Platform
Web Design
Leadership
About This Project:
In 2017, the City of Austin's Innovation Office secured a three-year $1.25m grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to focus on the city's goal of ending homelessness. The grant funded an iTeam to help the city identify the best ways for City Council, departments, and the community to collaborate towards a shared understanding of homelessness in Austin.
In February of 2018, after the iTeam had been working for almost a year, I was hired on as a researcher to help create a literature review of studies regarding homelessness to support the work that was already being done through this grant. This literature review eventually transformed into a website detailing the work and research conducted by the iTeam, as well as our findings and local projects meant to address issues people experiencing homelessness saw as most important. Leading a team of four other people, I helped draft content, design, and create the iTeam's Solve For Homelessness website with the purpose of sharing the iTeam’s processes and research, communicate what we learned, and provide up-to-date information, recommendations and ongoing collaborative projects.
My personal contribution to the research culminated in the History of Homelessness page, which contextualizes the iTeam's work with local history, especially in regards to community and political responses to homelessness.
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To read more about the iTeam's work, check out this Austin Chronicle article written in August of 2018, or check out the iTeam's website.
Landing page for the website, designed to take you through the research according to your experience with the topic of homelessness.
"History of Austin's Plan to End Homelessness" page that I researched, detailing the ways in which Austin has historically approached "solving" for homelessness.
Interesting Pages on the Site:
Austin’s Homelessness Advisory Committee (AHAC) is made up of 16 members who have previously or are currently experiencing homelessness. The goal of the group is to provide a voice for people with lived experience of homelessness so we can create better informed and more successful services.
The Phone Booth
Project
The Phone Booth reduces communication barriers by freely connecting people to family & friends, employers, and homelessness services in Austin. Additionally, the Phone Booth also collects relevant data about which services are accessed and at what frequency, allowing the system to think more dynamically about placement and support of services.
Discovery Phase: Insights
An insight is a learning, an "a-ha" moment -- a provocative statement of truth that is grounded in data. In insight is usually a new way of viewing the challenge we are trying to solve. Based on our Discovery Phase, which included personal contact and interviews with over 120 people with lived experience of homelessness and service providers, the iTeam developed our list of "Insights."