This article is part of the Under the Lens series
It’s not until change is long overdue that new technologies tend to finally make their mark. So it makes sense that the pandemic ushered in a technological shift for many sectors that had urgently needed one, including the affordable housing industry.
“The pandemic was a real game changer for a lot of organizations,” says Allen Feliz, vice president of solutions and innovation for affordable and public housing at MRI Software, a property technology firm. The firm offers management and compliance software to over 2,200 affordable and public housing providers across the U.S.
While market-rate, multifamily real estate properties were using AI chatbots or waitlist management systems, managers at affordable housing properties mainly used tools to monitor the performance of assets. Today, however, we’re seeing affordable housing providers use different types of software and web-based applications to help them operate more efficiently. They’re using new programs to manage headcount, create a faster recertification process for voucher holders, and provide tenants with 24/7 access to their renter information so they can submit service requests and make monthly rent payments. The virtual self-service function has allowed for a major reduction in inquiries from tenants, says Feliz, which has helped speed up the processes for repairs and other service requests.
Affordable housers are also updating their office equipment to bring more flexibility into the workplace. “We’re seeing people now who are able to work from home more because they’re using web-based applications to help them with a variety of things that they probably couldn’t have imagined a decade prior,” Feliz says.
Still, there are caveats that affordable housers should be aware of as they transition over to newer technologies, including challenges residents may have accessing these applications.
Bringing Efficiency to Public Housing
The pandemic forced the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) to lean on technology to foster community. Today, the housing authority is in the first phase of a multi-year plan to modernize its technology to improve resident services. In April, it began switching over to two integrated property management solutions: the Yardi Voyager, a management system, and a Yardi subsidiary called RentCafe, a user-facing portal. “It gives [tenants] that level of interaction where they’re seeing everything happening in real time. It’s not waiting for a notice to come three weeks later in the mail,” says Adriana Ruiz, deputy director of the Section 8 program at HACLA.
“The platform that we used prior . . . was not as user-friendly,” she explains. “[The old] portals were more like pass-through portals—you use it as a way to submit something to the agency, but it wasn’t very interactive.”
We prioritize personalized support through our Call Center, where callers are connected with a live representative.”
Adriana Ruiz, Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles
The new system will give households the ability to upload documents, complete annual recertifications—which are required for housing assistance programs like Section 8—change direct deposit information, and submit an income change. So, let’s say a tenant loses their job and can’t afford to pay rent next month. They can quickly ask for help through the portal.
And employees can upload information for tenants about rent increases, nonpayment of rent, and other communications.
Many market-rate housing providers are using AI chatbots to address resident issues and concerns. On one hand, these chatbots can provide information to residents at any time of day and automate service requests. But these chatbots can also provide incorrect or unhelpful information to residents who truly require assistance from a person.
For its part, HACLA is sticking with live representatives. “While RentCafe does offer an AI chatbot feature, HACLA has opted not to use this feature at this time,” Ruiz said in an email to Shelterforce. “Instead, we prioritize personalized support through our Call Center, where callers are connected with a live representative. If no one is immediately available, callers receive a prompt callback from our staff to ensure their questions and concerns are addressed directly by a human team member.”
Saving Time and Cutting Down on Paperwork
Moving some communication and documents to online portals has considerably cut down the paperwork affordable housers handle. And less paperwork means less physical space needed for tenant files.
“We can’t talk enough about how much time our industry spends going through paperwork and making sure that we’re housing the right people—and when I say the right people, I mean people that are income eligible,” Feliz says. “It takes a lot of checking and verification and calculations to make sure that they’re under a certain requirement.”
In some states, the recertification process involves filling out as much as 80 pages of paperwork for every person who lives in a unit, says Michelle Boyd, chief strategy officer of Terner Labs, a nonprofit that encourages innovation to increase affordable housing.
Screening tools have made this process more efficient. Boyd and Feliz both point to Pronto Housing, a company that provides tech solutions to certify tenant incomes.
“They’ve turned that into an online portal that the applicant can interact with in multiple languages,” Boyd says.
The online portals can also reduce in-person visits, which saves time for residents and housing providers. “Before if you were a resident and you needed to communicate with your housing authority, you might need to head to the housing authority and meet with someone face to face or make a phone call,” Feliz says. That all gets cut out now by using portals to communicate and submit documents.
Helping Residents with Assistive Technology

In the Greater Philadelphia region, the nonprofit Inglis develops affordable and accessible housing for people who have disabilities. It uses assistive technology to help residents live more independent lives—think smart home appliances, like using Amazon Echo to turn on the lights or open doors.
Inglis serves a largely senior population that sometimes finds it challenging to adapt to new technology. That makes it vital for affordable housers like Inglis to not only provide smart home appliances and assistive tech, but to be there with ongoing support.
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“It’s not just about installing the smart home technology, it’s about making sure that the individuals that have that technology know how to use it and are comfortable using it,” says Kristen Rantanen, chief development and external affairs officer at Inglis.
Inglis has community educators who are certified assistive technology professionals and can assess a resident’s needs and then provide education and recommendations for using technology to overcome impediments in their home. Some of the services they’re trained in include software application use, environmental hardware setup, accessible gaming options, and opportunities for developing independent life skills. For example, one tenant had trouble eating independently due to a physical disability, so Inglis used 3D printing to make custom utensils and bowls for him.
Using Tech to Prevent Bias and Ensure Sensitivity
Becoming more experimental with tech can even allow the industry to broaden inclusivity. When it comes to seniors, you may think technology applications would be limited to things like fall prevention buttons and emergency call systems. But at the nonprofit SAGE, which provides advocacy and services to LGBTQ+ seniors, they’re thinking outside of that box.

SAGECare, the organization’s cultural competency training and consulting division, focuses on care and service provision for LGBTQ+ older adults from a person-centered trauma-informed lens, which means they approach situations with a deep understanding of the ways in which trauma can affect a tenant, and they prioritize individual agency while doing so.
They’ve created virtual classes to train service providers—including affordable housers—on how to best work with this vulnerable population. “We use programs that specifically allow me to build fully interactive, beautiful online learning courses,” says Sadiya Abjani, director of learning and instructional design at SAGECare. “Our goal with these trainings is to really put the individual [taking the course] in the mindset of an LGBTQ+ older adult.”
SAGECare emphasizes through these teachings that older LGBTQ+ adults may be fearful of their new environments due to past traumas related to living in residential settings where they weren’t accepted due to their identity. “These are not PowerPoints with audio on them or things that you read boringly and ad nauseam—they’re really interactive,” Abjani says.
Challenges of Implementing Tech
The pivot to being tech-forward is quite a departure from where the affordable housing industry stood a decade ago.
While all this innovation is certainly exciting, it doesn’t mean everyone is always initially on board. “Where I do see pushback is where certain things are perceived as nice to have instead of things that can truly add value,” Feliz says.
That comes into play more when organizations are short of cash—which is happening right now with so much uncertainty around federal funding for affordable housing, along with rising costs for things like insurance.
Feliz hopes that public housing agencies and other affordable housing providers will eventually be more open to the beneficial impact new solutions can have on operations. For example, Feliz says that public housing authorities could save 15 to 30 percent in utility expenses by using energy management tools.
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Even when affordable housing providers decide to move forward with new tech, it can be a little tricky. The period of implementing new systems and training staff can be daunting. At HACLA, Ruiz says they’re expecting it to take some time for staff to get familiar with the new system.
“The Section 8 department alone has almost 500 employees,” she adds. “We all have to get used to it.” [The good news for HACLA is that many employees who previously worked at different housing authorities have already been introduced to Yardi. Ruiz herself is on her second Yardi transition—the first time was in 2008 at Los Angeles County Development Authority.]
At the same time, some technologies have greater risk of unintended consequences due to automation. Boyd of Terner Labs points to tenant screening technologies that just tell managers whether a tenant is approved for housing, without giving additional context. “It can be really harmful because it removes meeting a person, looking at their history and deciding whether or not that matters to you as a landlord,” Boyd says.
Also, some tenants may not have access to phones, computers, or internet service, which makes using these portals especially difficult. At Inglis, they address this by also hand-delivering resident notices, posting flyers, and hosting community meetings. Staff also hold regular office hours to connect with tenants who either don’t have access to computers or smartphones or prefer not to use them. Plus, many of their communities have common rooms with computers and printers for all tenants.
Another challenge is just trying to integrate the various technologies in use. “There was a time where our system didn’t necessarily speak to other systems so that we can verify things,” Ruiz says. She hopes that future innovation in the affordable housing industry brings more of a seamless approach. “As time goes on, hopefully housing authorities have more visibility and more communication with different verification systems, whether it’s at federal, state, or even at the local level.”
As we look toward the future of tech within the affordable housing industry, one thing is for sure: there will be more solutions popping up to simplify administrative tasks, eliminate paperwork, and allow affordable housing providers to focus on making strategic decisions to drive their missions forward.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to reflect Allen Feliz’s correct job title.
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