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Toyota Genuine Parts are defined as all Toyota parts and accessories that are either manufactured or specifically approved by Toyota Motor Corporation and sold by TMS or its authorized Private Distributors to authorized Dealers. This warranty applies to new or remanufactured parts which are Toyota Genuine Parts. It is incredibly motivating to work on something that is helping some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and I am grateful for the opportunity Zillow provided me to work on the Affordable Housing Search Tool with Housing Connector.Toyota* warrants that it will either provide a replacement part or repair any Toyota part or accessory that is defective in material or workmanship. The key learnings about socially inclusive design, team building, partnering with external groups with domain expertise, and the role leadership plays were invaluable and will guide our work going forward. When I joined the Social Impact Product Team at Zillow last year, I had a feeling the work would be rewarding, but did not fully comprehend everything that would be necessary to be successful.
#Housing connector professional#
This support has allowed my colleagues and I who are hungry for these opportunities to find a way to integrate it into our professional development. We simply couldn’t replicate their experience.Īdditionally, the support of our leadership in prioritizing this work and demonstrating the value of the work to the internal teams we partnered with was critical to our success. This included building relationships and working with public offices, community partners, and property managers. They had the expertise to do the work that we as a tech company can’t.
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Social issues like homelessness are nuanced, and require subject matter experts like our colleagues at Housing Connector. Through our early success, it became clear that we’d be more effective as partners. What’s been most impactful, though, is how partnering with the Housing Connector organization has shown us we cannot simply build an app to solve an issue as complicated as homelessness.
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#Housing connector how to#
It’s also started several organic conversations on how to incorporate this work into future products, and has provided greater transparency about how upcoming work will impact the Affordable Housing Search Tool. An added bonus was being able to introduce a large team to the concept of socially inclusive engineering.īy integrating our work on the tool into the existing Zillow listing process, we increased the chances of it being maintained over time. To say it’s been a busy 10 months would be an understatement but by aligning our work with other teams we ensured Housing Connector would be a win for all. It spanned our Seattle and San Francisco offices and multiple Zillow Group Brands. The project included contributions from over 30 colleagues and consultations with another 40. Our work touched our search experience, data ingestion, reporting, and rental products. I participated in their sprint planning, planning pokers ( work estimation exercise), and standups. With the intent of building it into our main rentals product, I embedded myself fully into our Seattle Rentals Team. We saw the work of Housing Connector as perfectly aligned with Zillow’s mission to “Give people the power to unlock life’s next chapter.” Helping people overcome homelessness with the support and care of the community is perhaps the most powerful example of unlocking a new chapter! We decided on developing a socially inclusive design, and building a solution into our existing rentals product. So it was a natural fit to build this new tool directly on our existing tech stack. Our rentals product on already functions as a connector between landlords and property managers and people in need of housing. When we first signed on to build this tool, my project manager and I were determined to not build a standalone solution. I was excited to leverage my expertise and the Zillow platform to foster opportunities for our neighbors experiencing homelessness.Įnter the Zillow Affordable Housing Search Tool project, a partnership between Zillow and Seattle nonprofit, Housing Connector, that acts as a landlord liaison program to help private property owners and landlords easily and successfully rent to people experiencing homelessness.
#Housing connector software#
Ten months ago I accepted the role to be the first software engineer on the Social Impact Product team at Zillow.
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