Barrie’s First Housing Hack Brings Out Housing Innovation
Barrie’s first Housing Hack brought out innovation and exploration as 10 teams worked on finding housing availability and affordability solutions. The Housing Hack: Housing for Everyone took place this past weekend at Barrie’s City Hall. It was hosted by BDAR, in partnership with The City of Barrie. At the hack, participants used their skills, expertise and collaborative efforts to propose an informed and forward thinking solution to improve the future of living in the Barrie area.
The Winners!
Bare Essentials - 1st Place Team Team Members: Jesse Belleau-Karaskewich, Ethan Davis, Brian Vaughan
Submission: Team Bare Essentials identified that the average income in Barrie was significantly lower than the average home price in Barrie. Their solution, the Barrie Affordable Real Estate application seeks to secure mortgages for first time home buyers by considering supplemental income streams such as rental income and clean energy revenue.
Hütte - 2nd Place Team Team Members: Harlan Batchelor, Dylan Bromell, Connor Minielly
Submission: Hütte is a clean and effective platform for matchmaking landlords and tenants. In addition to making it easier for tenants to find the perfect place to call home, the application also allows landlords to find great tenants without just waiting to see how applies. The team suggested their app was "like Tinder for renters and landlords".
Happy Together- 3rd Place Team Team Members: Tasha Sandbach, Gwen Kavanaugh, Shelley Raymond, Moksh Soni, Sebastian Vasoff
Submission: Happy Together is an innovative solution to home ownership through co-housing and creative financing solutions such as Social Impact Bonds.
The Hacking Weekend
Kickoff
The hackers came out to hear speakers including, Tim Hudak (CEO of OREA), Dave Meslin (Speaker TEDTalks), Jeff Lehman (Mayor, City of Barrie) and more! They then formed teams and started hacking!
