What the Hack?

Teams competing in the hackathon. Photo by HUD employee Shula Marklund

SEATTLE - "On the heels" of President Obama's State of the Union address in January HUD Secretary Julián Castro joined Stan Humphries, the chief economist for the real estate firm Zillow, in Washington, D.C., reported RIS Media, for a streamed, nationwide "fireside chat" about questions submitted to #HousinginAmerica on "some of the more prevalent themes on the minds of today's homeowners, buyers and renters."

A theme, no surprise, that emerges again and again in conversations like these is "how to I find housing that is affordable and right for me?" Nuts-and-bolts answers to those kinds of questions were the focus of a February "hackathon" hosted by Zillow, the University of Washington and HUD in downtown Seattle.

What the heck, you may ask, is a hackathon? A first-time golfer struggling to finish 18 by sundown? A cabbie pulling two straight 12-hour shifts? A homeowner chopping up a 60-foot oak for firewood?

The answer? None of the above.

A hackathon, it turns out, is a gathering of software developers and designers collaborating and, yes, competing to come up with software solution to a vexing problem or pressing need. In today's real estate market, for many Americans there's no problem more vexing than finding and affording a place they want to call home.

Hence the hackathon. The purpose of the event - Hack Housing: Empowering Smarter Decisions - was pretty straightforward - "coming up with creative solutions to make it easier for first-time homebuyers, low-income renters and senior citizens to find a home that meets their needs," said the hosts, using "deep housing data" - much of it provided by HUD - that's "more accessible than ever" but that "remains fragmented across a number of dense .gov websites and can be confusing even for the experts."

When the doors opened Friday night at Zillow Tower more than 200 developers - some professional, some not - were ready to get to work on "a chance," said Shula Markland of HUD's Office of Chief Information Officer "for innovation." They would get what they came for.

Hackathon participants. Photo by by HUD employee Shula Marklund

The apps developed by the 30 participating teams were evaluated on four criteria - usefulness, innovation, impact and functionality. On Sunday afternoon, each team had three-minutes to explain why its app was "best of show." The first-place team would win $10,000, the second-place $5,000 and the third-place $3,000. But apps, not bucks, are what drove the participants.

And they delivered. Including, reported, Taylor Soper of GeekWire, "a social network that helps people find accommodating roommates, software that calculates the return on investment for landlords interested in offering space to low-income renters" and "a tool that lets senior citizens filter available housing based on specific accessibility requirements like ramped entryways, wide doorways, or supportive bars in the bathroom."

Who won? Third place went to Team Cellophane for its Zillow Wheeler search app for accessible housing. Push to Rent placed second with a website to "upload rental application information once and easily use the data again for future listings and provides those without a smartphone or Internet access to apply via text."

The grand prize went to the SmartMove app that identifies the best place to live by its proximity to the places the user most frequently visits. "As I've grown up," team member David Puerto observed, "I found that living in the middle of everything cuts down on travel and living expenses. . .Finding a place that has everything I want is where I want to live."

"They were software solutions," HUD analyst Rob Renner said, "I would have never imagined before." Maybe they're not yet ready to go to market, he added, but "just actually seeing the way folks who are used to building innovative tools look at your data and look at your problem and completely turn it on its head - there's value just in that alone."

Zillow founder Rich Burton agreed. At the opening session he talked about the importance of data and creative software that mine it and make it useful to the average consumer. He noted, for example, that housing data enabled Zillow to write the algorithm which drives it Zestimate home valuation tool. Data also identifies and documents when a neighborhood is being red-lined by lenders. With data, we "shine sunshine into dark corners." Do that, he added, and "all the nasties crawl out" and "all the mold dries up."

The hackathon, added Lisa Wolters of the Seattle Housing Authority, "literally could change people's lives. When people can find housing, they can go get an education, go get a job. They can get medical care." It all starts, as it did this weekend in Seattle, with the data and, of course, the drive and determination of those who delight in putting them to good use.

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