Pittsburgh housing authority recruits AI to help with application backlogs
On Thursday, the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh (HACP) board approved payment of $160,392 to Boodskapper Inc., a private artificial intelligence company known as Bob.ai. The company offers several services to automate housing authority work, which include reviewing and verifying certification packages from current voucher holders. The effort will begin as a one-year pilot program.
Addressing concerns from the board members and a public speaker about the role the AI would play, HACP Executive Director Caster Binion stressed, 'The AI will not be in charge, not making decisions.'
'This will be used for recertifications specifically,' he added.
Recertifications refer to updates affecting existing voucher holders, such as household income level and number of family members. Households with vouchers pay 30% of their income toward rent and utilities, with the balance covered by the HACP.
The authority's Housing Choice Voucher Program Director Lashawna Hammond told the board the 'AI would scan recertification packets with their income and then it shows us on the back end if the packet is completed. So it's not processing, it's just doing preliminary work.'
Approval of the pilot comes after Binion signaled in a meeting last year with City Council the authority would experiment with AI and other efforts to improve the efficiency of the voucher program. In 2020, PublicSource reported that the housing authority planned to 'enhance the voucher program,' but those efforts were hampered due to staffing shortages, according to the authority's leadership.
Since then, steps have been taken to train new staff, according to Binion, who along with the board's former chair pledged improvements in 2022.
Board member Charlise Smith worried that the program might take on human tendencies to discriminate against certain types of people.
A public commenter at the board meeting echoed Smith's concerns.
'We all agree that increased efficiency is needed within the HCV Program to address administrative delays that limits the use of HCVs,' said Megan Hammond, a housing justice advocate and executive director of the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh.
'AI is dependent upon the humans who create the AI. As a result, AI is susceptible to the continuation and scaling of fair housing concerns,' Hammond said, noting that the National Fair Housing Alliance created a Responsible AI Symposium that includes a framework for auditing algorithmic bias in these programs.
Hammond called for 'greater transparency about the role of the proposed Bob.ai, including checks and balances for applicants and voucher recipients to dispute inaccurate information.'
She pressed for monthly public reports from the authority on the status of the Housing Choice Voucher waiting list every month along with information on where the authority allocates funds.
Concerns over the use of AI in public housing has also reached the federal level.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development released guidelines for housing authorities across the country on best practices and uses of this new technology in an attempt to enforce the Fair Housing Act and prevent discrimination in housing.
LaShawna Hammond maintained the program is needed to help with the backlog of recertification applications that threaten to overwhelm her staff.
She noted that the system will be used to improve processing time and reduce clerical and user errors. She said the system will be able to detect missing information in the application and how that would trigger an automatic response to the client, letting them know that their application is incomplete.
She said her department has 13 housing specialists, each averaging a caseload of 500. She said they hired five new housing specialists to start June 30 but it would take some time to train the new hires and bring them up to speed.
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