2019 Homelessness Hackathon
From an article by Chartered Institute of Housing
On Tuesday 25 June, 2019, FutureGov, Housing 2019 and Inside Housing organised a hackathon to find innovative ways to end homelessness.
While government involvement, such as supporting the building of new social housing, is clearly vital, everyone has a role to play. The Homelessness Reduction Act has placed new responsibilities on councils to support homeless people across the UK, but there’s more that needs to be done.
Housing 2019, Europe’s largest housing festival and the Chartered Institute of Housing’s annual event, presented a unique opportunity to bring together housing experts to address a problem affecting every locality and housing provider.
On the opening day of Housing 2019, they invited hack participants to collaborate and design new solutions contribute to ending homelessness.
Participants with a wide range of life and professional experience collaborated in teams to come up with innovative suggestions and solutions. The ideas were voted on by the event audience and the winning idea was announced at the end of the conference.
Around the room they showcased inspiration from great work done to date from the UK and abroad, providing a constant reminder that the ultimate purpose is to create ideas that will effect real, lasting change.
Bishop David Walker, chair, Manchester Homelessness Partnership and Mark Southgate, chief executive, MOBIE announced the winning idea, which was:
Virtual addresses with lockers and a service to get your ID and a bank account. Install lockers in local council and housing association offices that rough sleepers can use as an official address. Combine this with a service that makes it very easy to request any missing ID documents such as your birth certificate, national insurance number, passport, scan them into a virtual locker, and put them in the physical one, and then use these ID documents to open a bank account.
GM Homes Partnership agreed to pilot this idea and this is now in development.
Just wondering if churches could install such lockers?
Watch a 2 min video of the event:
Read the full article here.
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From an article by Chartered Institute of Housing, 04/02/2020