Imagine a Boulder where everyone could live. For over forty eight years Boulder Housing Partners (BHP) has worked to create equitable housing, vibrant communities and opportunity for change in people’s lives. BHP builds, owns and manages 33% of the total inventory of affordable housing in Boulder. BHP’s five housing programs provide assistance to nearly two thousand households.
During our Discovery Process it was immediately clear that BHP’s highest priority was to get their users information on their housing programs. This was especially the case when there were highly coveted vacancies in their properties. BHP’s audience is also largely Spanish speaking. The site would need to present multilingual content. It also needed to perform well on all devices, so that their users could receive important updates by phone.
Our User Story and Wireframing process created a functional blueprint to accomplish these goals. The home page accentuates a housing program widget and three call to action blocks that direct users to a list of programs, properties and a now renting list. The housing program widget helps users navigate the confusing regulations of public housing, landing them on the program that is best fit for them. Each housing program landing page is easily editable by BHP’s staff and can have housing alerts that make vacancies obvious. Individual property pages, inspired by contemporary real estate sites, give a visual tour of the location and are connected to the programs.
The site also boasts full multi-lingual support. BHP’s Spanish section houses essential translated versions of the English site features. This content is also translatable and manageable by BHP staff. Support for other languages can be added at any time. The look and feel of the site is contemporary, but inviting and homey. The fully responsive theme was optimized to work well on phones, tablets and older computers.
Open Media Foundation’s web process made sure that BHP’s fair housing is accessible to those who need it the most. Our sustainable, easy to maintain and affordable websites eliminate the digital barrier between nonprofits and their audience. Combined with a passionate and experienced staff, the Open Media Foundation leverages open source tools and provides a 50% matching grant to ensure that the expense and complexity of web technology is not a barrier to any organizations’ mission.
