A USDR team worked with Memphis Shelby County Emergency Rental Assistance to automate painful, manual workflows, enabling them to disburse funds and help residents immediately.
Partner:
Memphis Shelby County Emergency Rental Assistance
In Spring 2021 the Memphis Shelby County Emergency Rental Assistance (MSCERA) coalition needed to quickly scale their Emergency Rent and Utility Assistance Program in order to keep families in their homes. U.S. Digital Response (USDR) worked with the team to understand their workflows and built a system that leverages several low-cost software solutions.
The coalition wanted to create a single “front door” for all applications in this city-county program. The team also needed to streamline how they managed several complex workflows across different teams, including:
MSCERA had to build processes from scratch to meet the needs of a new program. As the original process evolved, USDR helped build out tools that relied on a series of spreadsheets (in Google Sheets) and manual steps (like emailing landlords or residents). As workflows got more complex, we helped transition to:
To understand the major steps involved in ERAP processing, the USDR team mapped out a high-level workflow, as well as a screener workflow that details how an application is processed once received.
MSCERA and USDR’s partnership gave the program the technology and process it needed to begin disbursing funds and helping residents immediately. It also allowed MSCERA to use real-world examples, learnings, and user needs to assist in its procurement process.
This system can be adapted for different programs, users, and workflows. For a city that supports 10-20k applications, we estimate that this solution will require:
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has highlighted these workflows and data integration in its guidance on best practices in local ERA programs.