The District offers over 50 resources to support current and future homeowners with mortgage payments, renovations, repairs, homebuying, taxes, and more. These resources are provided by 14 agencies with no central point for residents to find them. We built Front Door, a website where residents can learn which housing resources they’re eligible for and how to apply for them. Front Door is a model for a growing number of District Government design initiatives centered around residents.
Why is this issue important in DC?
Front Door is part of Mayor Bowser’s 2019 order that establishes her goal of creating 36,000 new housing units by 2025. DC Government offers many resources to assist homeowners, but residents often had to find them on their own and could miss out on assistance. Government staff also spent valuable time repeatedly gathering the same information to direct residents to the appropriate resources.
What are we doing?
We built Front Door together with 14 District agencies and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. We used best practices in
resident-centered design, and iterative web development. Front Door allows residents to:
- Figure out which of the 50+ housing resources they might qualify for by answering just nine simple questions
- Learn about each resource through easy-to-understand descriptions, easy-to-follow eligibility criteria, and step-by-step application instructions
- Browse housing resources based on their interests, needs, and circumstances
We’re also tracking key performance indicators, such as the number of applications to homeowner programs and traffic on the website, to see how residents use the site to access the resources.
What have we learned?
Front Door was shaped by the experiences of and feedback from more than 250 residents, DC government staff, housing counselors, practitioners, and advocates. Front Door taught us a lot about what works for residents because they helped design it. The website has a button for feedback on every page, and we welcome residents to keep sharing their feedback. This will allow us to keep improving the site.
What comes next?
Front Door is updated as the District expands and revises its services to better meet residents’ housing needs. The DC Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development maintains the site together with 14 District agencies.
Front Door is a model for a growing number of District Government design initiatives centered around residents, such as the new innovation team (i-team) in the Mayor’s Office of Policy. The i-team’s focus will be on a user-friendly, digital platform for giving feedback and engaging with DC Government.
What happened behind the scenes?
We incorporated feedback from people who use screen readers, speak English as a second language, or experience some color blindness early on in the design process. The site is also translated into Amharic, Chinese, French, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese. To support residents without internet access or those who are not comfortable using technology, we held demos on Front Door for 80+ DC government and local partner staff who already help connect residents to resources.
“In order to meet our growing housing needs and take on the forces of displacement, we need to be bold and implement an all eight wards strategy.”