Housing Associations and Blockchain – A Positive Match?

The defined Housing Act in 2015 represented a shift for housing associations in terms of redefining their traditional way of working. Housing associations have to focus on their core business again. This means they have to build, rent, and manage social housing for people with low incomes or who, for other reasons, find it difficult to find a suitable accommodation. The characteristics of blockchain technology seems to supply a solution to the housing association sector. To support the practical implementation of blockchain technology, this study aims for the
development of a solution for the tenant mutation process of housing associations. An explorative research is conducted to investigate where optimizations in the tenant mutation process are mostly desired. Therefore, many housing associations employees are interviewed to correctly model the tenant mutation process and to determine the major impediments and pains in this process. These interviews are evaluated based on the grounded theory approach and the results are modelled by means Business Process Model and Notation. Based on this analysis it is clear that housing associations are mainly experiencing impediments and pains in activities that are sensitive to errors. It is noticed that this is especially the case when the housing association have to check the documents of the tenant and everything involved in signing the rental agreement. Therefore, a blockchain database with API’s between databases it ensures that tenants are not responsible for obtaining the data, but the database request the data automatically. Furthermore, signing the rental agreement is a time-consuming activity that requires many manual actions, which could lead to human errors. A smart contract ensures that the information of tenants, dwellings, and housing associations is inserted automatically. Also, checks and reminders can be
automated. Ensuring a digital and automated agreement could reduce the paper-driven and timeconsuming signing activity. Based on this solution several UML models are created to technically show how the system works. Implementing the solution will also reduce the operational expenses
by approximately 22mio – 24.7mio. This research provides the first approach of presenting a detailed process model and a blockchain solution to this process.