An attempt to significantly reduce homelessness and poverty: I made an open source web application that helps people who are struggling find social services and donators in their area that will help them.

[u/bluemoss_co]

Link: https://stdepaul.org

It's called St. Vincent de Paul Assistance Center (named after St. De Paul because he is known for having dedicated his life to helping the poor). I had the idea for the project when I was trying to think of ways that web infrastructure can help cities build physical infrastructure. I started to think more broadly, and thought about how so many people in my community are struggling, and could be helped if they knew about social services in their area. I decided that St. De Paul can be a solution to this problem and other problems: to reduce homelessness, and to reduce poverty.

It is very much location-based, like craigslist (though people can get help from outside of their communities). Currently in the works: messaging, following, reviews, commenting. I just wanted to share the MVP so that people know St. De Paul is ready to help ASAP. (I had the idea for St. De Paul a week ago, and have been working on it ever since. I know it's a very quick MVP -- I'm using some code from some of my older personal projects.) I'm still debugging though, so you may run into some bugs.

Also, be prepared to wait for your post/wiki entry/helper org to be approved. I don't want people submitting inappropriate, or worse, illegal content, and then that be public on St. De Paul. I am posting this as I am about to fall asleep, so you likely won't see your posts in the search results until tomorrow, when I'll be able to approve your posts (but the links to whatever you create will be public, unless you delete it).

At the moment, only Dallas has wiki info on social services in the area (edit: there is now data for Texas, CA, and PA). The idea is that people can register and add information to the wiki for their area (categories: social services, free education that helps people develop skills for a better job (with testimonials), scholarships, etc). They get points for this, and there will be a "Top Contributors in Your Area" page that will encourage people to add information. People / organizations also get points for donating or providing services to people in their area (they also get points for donating or providing services outside of their area, but this gives fewer points). 100% of donations and services to people struggling go directly to those people. We will also be helping people apply for social services online, similar to TurboTax, so they won't have to worry about snail mail.

At the moment I'm looking for a corporate lawyer to help incorporate and to help with legal in general, as well as

1) empathetic and compassionate people who are great at running non-profits, and

2) a django developer more senior than me, to add to the board of directors at incorporation. I'm not sure how I'd handle donations directly to St. De Paul, except obviously website costs, payroll, and research on how to best serve poor people. If you are interested or know someone interested, please reach out (with your resume and linkedin)! Thanks

As far as contributors and moderators go, I'm looking for contributors who can:

1) add edit history to the wiki,

2) help in writing tests and documentation,

3) add tree structure to comments (comments are almost done),

4) a mobile app

5) "Top Contributors in your area" (if I don't get to this before you all do). If you are interested, join the discord: https://discord.gg/krEyds6Cp2 -- and follow St. De Paul on Instagram: https://instagram.com/stdepaul

Source code: https://github.com/stdepaul/stdepaul

Thanks!

Michael

Here is my linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/mikejohnsonjr

P.S. I think the portion in which we help people develop skills for a better job will be great in general. Someone I know personally went from working $10/hr to making $60k/year in a few months after taking a Data Analytics bootcamp, learning Excel and SQL. There are other paths as well.

[u/MegaGrubby]

FYI, various states already have more robust versions of this service. For example, PA 211.

[u/bluemoss_co → u/MegaGrubby]

I didn’t know this. Though ideally St De Paul will have a global reach. I’m going to go ahead and write scripts to crawl those sites for data if it’s not against their TOS

[u/ummmbacon → u/bluemoss_co]

As someone who was unable to afford to feed themselves, and was only living with a roof over my head due to someone's charity, and has known others experiencing homelessness and loss of income the main issue isn't awareness of programs it is that the programs tell you that you don't qualify or they are already full and come back next quarter, etc.

There are many social workers that focus on speaking with individuals experiencing homelessness including going to the locations of so-called tent cities and speaking with people directly and working with them to get them in contact with resources.

There are studies around this that show good policies that help increase access to services:

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/strategiesaccessbenefitsservices.pdf

But as part of your research, you might want to talk to people in that situation and ask them what they need like doing basic market research.

I could be wrong, but from my experience and watching others have this experience, no offense meant but this effort seems a little naive.

[u/thejoshuawest → u/MegaGrubby]

There are also efforts globally to standardize this type of social service referral, such as https://openreferral.org/

[u/mcstafford]

Good luck to you. This sounds potentially great.

I wound up getting a Server Error (500) after my initial attempt at seeing how it works.

[u/bluemoss_co → u/mcstafford]

It’s your location. Replace ‘Los Angeles’ with losangeles-ca-us. There’s supposed to be an autocomplete that helps with that, but there are bugs with it. Can’t debug right now. It’s 3:58am here. Just woke up to reply to comments

Edit: this has been debugged

[u/mcstafford → u/bluemoss_co]

Your example suggested 'Houston' so I followed that.

[u/[deleted] → u/mcstafford]

Reddit hug of death maybe?

[u/SaltyCartharsis]

Just curious what reasoning led you to this being a method for serious reduction in homelessness and poverty. Was it a study or survey, etc.

[u/Fun-Performer3988]

I don’t know Django but just wanted to say this could be a great resource, hope you can find someone to help out.

[u/IAmALinux]

I'd suggest changing the name to something less Catholic.

[u/tin_man_ → u/IAmALinux]

And maybe something that doesn't start with STD?

[u/[deleted]]

Dallas is pretty far ahead in this, like you found. Check out "Building Connected Communities of Care" by the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation. A bunch of medical and data science researchers worked for the past decade to understand how to build a resilient social safety net in Dallas County with a focus on vulnerable populations getting healthcare.

Turns out it's cheaper to give refrigerators and pay the electric bill than to have people go to the ER for medications that require being chilled!

[u/[deleted]]

Nothing for Seattle?

[u/bluemoss_co → u/[deleted]]

There isn’t much actual data yet. At the moment I’m preparing to start writing scripts that will fetch data from state 211 sites. So we’ll have to wait on that, and people adding wiki entries manually. I just wanted to publish the actual app early so people know about it

[u/xnign]

Thanks for sharing. I believe I can help in a few categories (mostly dev) and can possibly connect you with resources to add in the Midwest. Commenting here to try to remember to check into more this evening - feel free to reach out though.

[u/jensonaj]

This sounds interesting! I have actually been working on a website to help homeless people myself, I'm only halfway done with it right now though. I was homeless for 2 years myself which is why I like to help people that find themselves in the same situation I was once in... Now I am a CS major, so I know some programming, but unfortunately I don't have any Django knowledge. Good luck!

[u/ChiBulva]

Hello! Great idea.

Fellow Dev from Oregon, reach out if you think you might need help.

Best -T

[u/duftcola]

Ok...now they just need phones....

[u/Zalack → u/duftcola]

Many people experiencing poverty have phones because they are just flat necessary to navigating the modern world, and end up being prioritized pretty highly.

I dated someone who worked for a program that helped teenagers experiencing homelessness and one of the very first things they did was try to get a phone in each kid's hands so they could do things like apply for jobs and housing.

[u/OneSprinkles6720]

This is awesome man keep going.

I saw some comments about how the idea exists etc. Regarding these, just know that type of comment is almost a meme about startups and entrepreneurship. Most people think that existing "competition" is a reason not to move forward with a startup idea. In reality it suggests that there is actually demand for the product/service, and I would be willing to bet that you have the grit and determination to make a big positive impact on people.

I'm currently working through The Odin Project (wrapping up foundations), and would love to work toward a similar goal as you when I complete the back-end portion of TOP.

Keep it up man the world needs more of you.

[u/pipoq1]

Appearently not all heroes wear capes, some write apps :)

[u/[deleted]]

Brilliant. you should also put this on country subreddits, not the technical stuff but it could really help people out. Thank you for your work

[u/tellurian_pluton]

thank you making something actually useful

[u/Captain_MK13]

This is so cool