Phase I – Initial Discovery Process & Ideas Jam

Before settling on the issue tracker as a solution-oriented tool, we engaged in an initial discovery process to better understand the issues plaguing the tenants we set out to work with. There were no better experts than the tenants themselves, so we interviewed tenant leaders and tenants on multiple occasions. Some of these interviews occurred on-site at the tenants’ building, while others occurred during in-class clinic seminars.

Tenant concerns could be broadly categorized into two buckets: concerns regarding the building and management company, and concerns about potentially organizing into a formal tenants organization. It quickly became apparent that our solution needed to provide value to tenants in both areas. It could do this by alleviating the burden on tenant leaders, who often spoke of being bombarded by complaints from their fellow tenants, and on tenants largely, who generally felt unheard, and simultaneously feared retaliation from their landlord in the event they raised their complaints.

Discovery did not end with the tenants alone. We further interviewed the HUD regional representative whose purview included the building in question. Additionally, we had a chance to meet with community organizers who have had experience working with tenants organizations from formation through maturity.

The HUD representative was generally sympathetic to the tenants’ concerns but offered different perspectives to a few of the issues we had heard from tenants. Most prominent was that tenants would complain to HUD about feeling dismissed by management, only to be unable to provide any record of the conversations with management at issue. Further, our local HUD rep informed us that this building had been under scrutiny previously, but nothing had materialized from it. Our representative was aware of a previous code enforcement visit and subsequent citations but informed us that no tenant had been to HUD to raise the issues. Clearly, there was a power imbalance at play between tenants and the “powers that be” that relied on the tenants to advocate for themselves if they wanted any hope of changing their living conditions.

The community organizers we spoke with provided valuable insight into what benefits any solution should attempt to confer to tenants. Most important was that it should be something that could be easily used. We learned that the biggest differentiator between a successful tool and a failed one was adoptability – if tenants felt that using your product added an additional burden to their already complicated daily lives, it would be dropped nearly immediately. Second, organizers expressed that anything that helped tenants raise their case to management, HUD, local government, or any other formal body would be invaluable. Noting the power imbalance we learned of through our initial interactions with tenants and their HUD rep, one community organizer told us that collecting data about problems and using that data to present irrefutable facts was one of the strongest means of effecting real change.

The discovery process culminated in a series of collaborative synthesis discussions with our peers, tenant leaders, community organizers, and professors during a regularly scheduled clinic seminar. Using a round robin format, we rotated between small groups to identify and describe what we had learned through discovery, what common trends appeared among all student teams, and, ultimately, if our intuitions regarding points of contention between tenants and management were correct. This synthesis process yielded a synthesis map – a visual organization of learned insights and important points of note.

An excerpt from a synthesis map generated during a February 2024 in-class seminar organizing some of the issues raised by tenants and other stakeholders into key categories.

Once we had formulated a synthesis map, the next step was an “ideas jam” – a seminar-wide brainstorming session that included collaboration with fellow students, professors, tenant leaders and community organizers to help focus our ideation efforts. To help students brainstorm, Professors Pope and Khan guided us in formulating a series of “how might we” questions – a thought exercise designed to transform a research insight into an open-ended question that will generate potential solutions. These “how might we” questions were based off insights gleaned during the discovery process. One such “how might we” question we aimed to answer was as follows: “How might we assist tenant leaders in bringing tenant concerns to management?” Another such question was: “How might we alleviate the burden placed on tenant leaders who often hear of issues from other tenants who are afraid to approach management directly themselves?” A third example question was: “How might we assist tenants and tenant leaders in maintaining accurate records of issues around the building?”

An ideas prioritization graph developed at the end of an ideas jam session. The graph visually depicts potential solutions to discovered problems and organizes them by feasibility and impact.

Phase II – Concept Ideation, Process Mapping, and Peer Review

Prior to putting pen to paper, we sat down as a team to determine what key elements were necessary to have a successful tool. Three elements that needed to be embodied by our solution were: 1) ease of use; 2) low to zero cost; and 3) value add.

Ease of use was an obvious choice. Our conversations with community organizers and tenants taught us that any new addition to the proverbial scale of concerns absolutely needed to offset a burden on the other side of that equation. In order to ensure the solution we developed would be used long after we left it in the care of the tenants, we had to design something that they could utilize without any specialized knowledge, training, or intervention.

Cost was a natural consideration. Many tenants in the building were recipients of affordable housing vouchers and program participants under Section 8. Creating something that added an additional financial burden would be an immediate non-starter. So, we made a point of ensuring that all aspects of our solution would be zero cost.

Value add was the most important element under consideration. After learning about the myriad types of problems faced by tenants, we realized that all shared one common underlying theme – the power imbalance at play between tenants and ownership was one fueled by stark asymmetric knowledge of legal and social responsibilities (specifically on the side of ownership and management). One way to address this was to provide tenants the ability to record and capture any and all issues plaguing them individually and collectively.

Taking these three considerations and baking them into a process that could be utilized by tenants to bring their problems forward resulted in initial process maps that outlined how our utility would be used and the part it would play in the raising of complaints. One such example is depicted below.

Initial process map – Tenants would be expected to work with tenant leaders in bringing forward complaints and logging them. Tenant leaders could then take the collected data and show it to management / HUD / etc. to bolster their advocacy.

Bringing our process map to our peers for review yielded important initial feedback. Concerns raised from our peer group included technology accessibility, the potential burden on tenant leaders, and security risks in the event the landlord “sabotaged” our solution. Additional feedback included a concern that an overreliance on HUD, which seemed unresponsive to the plight of our tenants, could sour opinions on our proposed solution.

Incorporating this feedback into the initial prototype, we decided to scale back into a general use utility that could help tenants collect data to be used when approaching building management, HUD, local government, and other entities with power to effect positive change. This decision included consideration of tenant involvement; we realized that allowing everyone to contribute to using our tool would strengthen the chances that the tenants would eventually decide to collectively organize. This became what we call the “issue tracker.”

Phase III – Initial Prototype Development Process

The process of developing the initial prototype required choosing a technology suite that could help us achieve what we envisioned for our product without imposing any financial or technical burden upon Alliance Park tenants or the clinic. After a bit of investigation, we decided to settle on the Google product suite. Google Forms automatically integrates with Google Drive and Google Sheets, thereby keeping everything in one ecosystem while also being zero cost. Furthermore, these are commonly used products and services that require little expert knowledge to utilize, making them perfect for our issue tracker. The reporting and tracking capabilities provided by Google Sheets made this a powerful and effective choice for what we set out to accomplish.

Once the technology stack was selected, the next step was researching what information would be of legal significance and warranted capturing. This approach was broken down into statutory and case law research, as well as substantive research of what HUD required when filing a complaint. Most of this information was readily available online at HUD’s website and on legal databases.

After determining what needed to be captured by our intake form, it was a relatively easy task to build the form itself. Since Google Forms is intended to be used by everyone, no specialized technical knowledge was required. Finally, once the form was constructed and a test record or two were captured, we were ready to move on to live demos.

Phase IV – Live Demos and Tenant Feedback

In running live demos, we sought to capture tenant feedback relating to our three key elements of ease of use, cost, and value add. We did not tell tenants about any of the research we did regarding legally significant information; we simply showed them the tool and asked them to log fake complaints. We were specifically interested in how tenants used the tool, how long it took them to complete the intake form, whether they understood the purpose of the tracker, and, if so, whether they felt it provided a net benefit to them. After having two tenant organizers and one tenant log complaints, with many other tenants observing the tool at work, we collected the following pieces of important feedback.

First, tenants raised a point regarding technology access due to the large number of senior citizens in the building. We concluded that a paper form that could be later entered into the tool electronically would be the best remedy.

Second, we received recommendations that clearer wording on the form would be beneficial. This was an expected point, as we needed to strike a balance between legalese and using terms that would accurately convey the level of detail required to be provided. Simple changes to word usage were incorporated into the second version of the utility.

Third, we were informed that many tenants felt wary of such a utility, fearing retaliation from their landlords for using it. This led us to add additional disclaimers to the tool informing tenants that this was for internal use by tenant leaders, that no retaliation from a landlord would occur for using the tool (and that they have legal protections against said retaliation), and that using the tool would be entirely up to them. Additionally, we added language informing tenants that they need not provide information if they choose not to, and we made almost every field on the form optional (with the exception of date fields as these are essential).

Fourth, stakeholders posed questions regarding the security of the tool itself. These questions led us to contemplate potential data privacy and protection aspects, as tenants could potentially upload sensitive information alongside their complaint submissions. We decided that a disclaimer informing tenants not to submit any information of a sensitive nature would be appropriate to add. Tenants who had erroneously done so could contact tenant leaders and ask them to delete it. Furthermore, we concluded that in the event the landlord “compromised” the utility by somehow gaining access to the tenant leaders’ email address used to host the form and tool with Google, it would not only constitute a crime, but any attempt by the landlord to utilize said information would effectively be an admission of guilt.

We took this collected feedback and created an affinity map to graphically organize and help us glean further insights. The map is depicted below with questions / comments in yellow, replies in blue, and gleaned insights after an inter-team review in green.

Phase V – Future Development Plans

The tracker currently exists as the embodiment of a tool designed to better arm tenants in the event of litigation and/or a meeting with HUD. While valuable, there is additional potential value in the hands of a tenants organization and/or an NGO. Tenants organizations could use it to collect and aggregate data by issue type, frequency, and other valuable indicators, to help drive future organizational planning (e.g. subcommittee creation). Since the tool currently utilizes Google sheets, an NGO or other formal organization could theoretically port it to a CRM platform and reap the benefits provided by those technologies. These ideas, and more, would require further testing among different user groups.

For tenants who seek to form their own tenants organizations, live testing is important, but further inquiry into expanding functionality to assist such an effort would be valuable. This may include sub-forms, separate intake forms based on the nature of the issue, and perhaps even inquiry into obtaining a CRM or other paid-for utility that complements the functionality of the tracker.

NGOs likely already utilize a CRM for their daily case management, so the tracker could become another means for them to interact with their clients and stay on top of what is happening on site.