Blockchain technology helping the homeless in Austin

By Kapil Gauhar

Blockchain technology has become the most discussed and talked about topic about Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin worldwide. All the Governments and private companies are intending to put blockchain technology into use. Blockchain technology has the potential to solve society’s major problems in a very decentralized, secured and reserved manner. Government bureaucrats have been doing a certain investigation as to how blockchain technology can affect and solve serious problems of the society. Now a country has finally taken a step forward in actually implementing the blockchain technology.

Stolen, misplaced and lost identities have been keeping 7000 (1) homeless people from getting the important and essential services like housing, medical care, employment in Austin, Texas. The city of Austin has won a grant sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies as a part of The Mayor’s Challenge Programme. The City of Austin is using the new blockchain technology, which will help the homeless people in creating a new digital individual identity for themselves which will help them rebuilt the credibility of their employment details, housing, health etc. and will also protect from any consequences if they ever lose their ID’s. Their identity will be unique, safe and secured.

According the example given by the Austin’s chief services officer, If in case you misplace your backpack or your backpack gets stolen or your social security Id Card gets damaged or gets lost, or if you are camping at a site and the city cleans up the place and takes all your belongings, you will have to start everything back from the beginning. This prevents one from going out and doing the activities which might allow them to get from homelessness and poverty, he continued.

US Mayors Challenge 2018 (2), Bloomberg Philanthropies selected around 35 suggestions out of 300 applicants. The Question was regarding ideas on how a city will find a solution to fight back some of its most crucial problems. Every winning city will be awarded $100,000 in grants to help and support them to experiment with their ideas. These ideas will be revalued in August, and the four winner cities will be awarded $1 million, and the 1 Winner city will receive $5 million as a grand prize to implement their ideas.

For the homeless people in Austin City, Blockchain is the sole hope and support system to get back their identity. People are hoping that blockchain will replace the old paper record system which can easily be misplaced with a digitalized recording system. This will also help the workers to identify and verify the person’s identity.

Austin’s chief services officer, Sly Majid gave an example pointing towards the medical records, it is difficult to verify a homeless person’s medical records due to the identity problems but once the blockchain system gets established any homeless person can use healthcare facility without any issue. The Chief services officer is hopeful that Blockchain Technology will be an effective solution to this issue and will help and keep the healthcare faculty updated on the on patient’s medical history and will also keep track of them.

Identity has become a major area of interest for many investors who are keen in blockchain and decentralization. Austin is currently looking out for partnering with startups like Banque to implement the service for the city. Austin has high hopes on the results of this technology, but Majid has stated that this programme is just in its baby phase, but he is hopeful that this programme will grow and expand in the near future.