Nationwide in the US, 600,000 people return from prison each year to try to rebuild their lives. Around 50,000 people go directly to a shelter after being released from prison. 71% of people returning from prison are reincarcerated during the first year.

In this past weekend, our student Inês Ayer (MFAD ’23) and her team were presented with the challenge of rethinking the way we can use technology to reduce friction for justice-involved individuals trying to locate, obtain and maintain housing at Columbia University.

They addressed this problem through the creation of Humane Housing. A project that aims to help formerly incarcerated people (FIP’s) find a place they could call home.

“Navigating the housing process can be manual, selective and put little regard to the human behind the application. FIPs encounter discrimination and Landlords have a lack of trust to rent to FIPs. Our solution was based on automating the housing application process. Buddies are matched with FIPs reducing the friction of submitting rental applications. We empower FIP’s to select directly from landlord’s apartment listings that they are matched with. Landlords are able to build trust with their tenants through our background checks, credit reports, and automatic rental payment setup. We list tax breaks directly on apartment listings so landlords are incentivised to rent to FIPs.”

This project main goal is to combat homelessness and recidivism. An intense 48 hours journey that led this project to be awarded with the 1st prize in the competition. Thanks to a multidisciplinary team: Inês Ayer, Cristal Espejo, Olivia Wilcox, Diana Tereshchenko, Sejal Behere and Brianna Singer.