Boston partnering with Vermont tech firm to combat homelessness
Technology entrepreneurs in Boston and San Francisco are taking very different paths to addressing homelessness.
The city of Boston will work with a Vermont-based technology company to develop an app designed to help housing advocates find shelter for homeless residents.
Green River, a technology firm with an office in Cambridge, was selected by the city on Friday to build the new system, as a part of an action plan the mayor presented in 2015 to end chronic homelessness.
Green River CEO Michael Knapp said that his company’s work will help streamline and unify the disparate programs and offices that help the homeless.
“We’re building a unified front end, a piece of software that allows the caseworkers to match the people to the housing opportunities,’’ Knapp told Boston.com. “Ideally over the long term the system should be able to predict success based on what we know about [the case].’’
This is the first time Green River has partnered with a city to address homelessness, said Knapp. Boston presented a unique challenge: the city’s responses to homelessness has been scattered between shelters, transitional housing, treatment centers, and more, according to the mayor’s office. An app that provides a coordinated access platform can help advocates match homeless people in Boston to vacant housing best suited to their needs, and notify caseworkers and clients when housing becomes available.
The mayor’s office said a pilot iteration is expected to launch in April, and Knapp said to expect the design to be iterative — the technology will improve based on user feedback and will evolve over the next three years.
This collaborative approach was not apparent in a response to San Francisco’s homeless residents. There, Justin Keller—described as a “tech bro’’ by The Guardian—wrote an open letter this week to publicly complain about the homeless population’s visibility. Keller wrote that he “shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people’’ during his commute.
Online rebuttals called his statement arrogant and insensitive, and Knapp said that Keller’s approach isn’t the most productive.
“I thought the story in San Francisco provided an interesting contrast: Instead of complaining and beating each other up in the tech community, let’s work with mayors. The commitment is there so now let’s start helping. The same technology we create can be used to help the city,’’ Knapp said.
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