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Innovations - Challenge Program

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Challenge Program

The Challenge Program is authorized by American COMPETES Reauthorization Act. In short, it allows HUD to offer a cash prize to participants in a competition to solve a particular problem. This is often called “Citizen Science”.

HUD’s program intends to expand finding solutions to housing specific problems to a larger audience looking beyond the traditional experts. Working with other federal partners and developing internal challenges, we will bring new ideas to managers within the housing and building industry to improve processes, introduce different approaches and ultimately serve our citizens better.

 

From the Office of Policy Development and Research
Kurt Usowski

From the Office of Innovation
Greg Castello
John Leggitt

Department of Census
Anna Valuev of Census/TOP

Tech participants
Amazon Web Services
ApartmentList.com
CARTO
Google
Mapbox
Mayday.ai.

The primary outcome of the Sprint is the software products generated by the participating technology firms. A secondary outcome will be to raise awareness among housing stakeholders and relevant government units (federal, state, local), as effected by the December 13 to 15, 2021 conference and publicity on the Census/TOP website. These software products might be used by any number of organizations or individuals moving forward. We also worked toward a third goal in building on the contacts and relationships of the sprint – with the goal of generating a planning white paper and perhaps more. This is work in progress.