Tech Companies Tackle the Housing Affordability Problem

According to the Washington Post, technology start-ups are working to disrupt the affordable housing industry in a variety of ways.

Companies such as Module, which manufactures Lego-like prefabricated housing, or Rentlogic, which culls publicly available data to issue ratings for 1.1 million apartment buildings in New York City to give tenants more bargaining power, are looking to make a difference in the housing crisis — and build successful businesses.

“What we really need to see is a transformation in how housing is provided and consumed, not so much from a regulatory or subsidy-driven approach but really from a transformation on the market side,” said Matt Hoffman, former vice president of innovation at Enterprise Community Partners, where he built an investment portfolio of start-ups trying to make housing more affordable. Hoffman left Enterprise in May after he said his position was eliminated. He’s now a managing partner at Innovation Ventures, a spinoff of his work at Enterprise.

“Many start-ups try to overpromise,” said Brian Gaudio, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Module. “We’re not a silver bullet to solve the affordable housing crisis, but we’re a very important component of it.”

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