Austin is Developing a Blockchain System for Improving Homeless Services

It has often been said that blockchain’s real potential isn’t developing a better financial system, but rather solving a wide array of human challenges that people throughout the world are actively dealing with. This philosophy has led to the appearance of numerous NGOs, and start-ups, looking to leverage blockchain technology to make the world a better place to live in.

Based on this, recent reports indicate that the US city of Austin, is actively working on a blockchain platform that would help the homeless. The project consists in improving identity services for the homeless, given the fact that a high percentage of homeless people lack any ID, and are not tracked, nor aided accordingly.

The mayor of Austin made a press statement for TechCrunch, mentioning that: “At a high level, [the pilot] is trying to figure out how to solve one of the challenges we have in our community related to the homeless population, which is how to keep all the information of that individual with that individual.”

The system, however, will have to solve several challenges, these being: easily verifying the identity of a person seeking help; getting data on what type of help the person has previously received, if any; giving individuals the power of owning all their records, via the distributed ledger.

In the long run, Austin hopes to track both the identity and other vital records of all homeless persons, in a secure and confidential manner, while also granting service providers the ability to access the information when affected individuals need help. If the project unfolds successfully, then Austin should be able to replace all paper records with electronic records, stored on the distributed ledger, in a decentralized manner.

Not long ago, Austin received a competitive grant from the Mayor’s Challenge Program, valued at $5 million, which should be enough to cover the costs of developing the blockchain identity system for the homeless.