With options for affordable rental housing across the state in short supply, it can be difficult to know where to start looking.
The need for affordable housing that people can call home motivates Jennifer Gilbert, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Housing Navigator Massachusetts, to want to help bring transparency to the affordable housing market.
The new “self-service” data dashboards are designed to share the state’s count of affordable housing with dashboards for every city and town in Massachusetts for people looking for affordable housing options.
Gilbert said the data from the housing search tool they launched a year and a half ago was used to identify the location of affordable housing and who it would serve by checking details such as whether buildings are age-restricted or not.
HOUSING:A 52-unit apartment development will replace a former RMV in New Bedford
“Part of our mission, part of what we want to accomplish, is to put information out there about the totality of the inventory so that people – activists, policymakers, politicians, journalists, researchers – can use that information to really help build more housing and build it well-matched to the people who are looking,” she said.