

Show HN: Beds and services for homeless youth - judah
http://ysnmn.org

======
judah
Author here. Just a few technical notes about the site:

This was my first Angular project. I had done Knockout, Durandal, and classic
server-rendered web apps before, but this was my first stab with Angular. I
liked it, and now use Angular for most of my projects.

I used TypeScript and found the classes to work great with Angular's
controllers.

C# and MS SQL on the backend, hosted on Azure.

On the site, youth can subscribe to get emails or text messages when a bed
becomes available. For this, we use SendGrid and Twilio.

We're using a custom Bootstrap theme for the UI. This enabled us to easily
make the site responsive, which was a major goal since most homeless youth
have phones but not desktops.

The project was commissioned by Youth Service Network, a group of youth
shelters in Minnesota, with grant money supplied by Microsoft and Target.
Microsoft provided free Azure credits to host the site.

SendGrid and Twilio both got involved in the project and offered a large
amount of free credits. Kudos to them for that.

~~~
maxbrown
Great work and happy to see the support from all those corporations.

Agreeing with the others on the Minnesota label being needed on the site, but
moreso - what do you think would be required to take this to other major
cities? Is the limiting factor just data or is there more to it?

Aside: if this is still in active development, I'd be happy to offer some time
on design & UX

~~~
judah
Thank you! Super encouraging to hear the feedback.

Thanks for the offer for time on design and UX. It's ultimately up to the
shelter network to continue with the next version of this app. I've got your
email from your profile; I'll keep in touch.

------
OliverJones
This is terrific. Thanks for doing it! The responsive design works great. It's
simple enough to figure out with cold fingers on a mobile phone or in a public
library -- which is where your target audience members most likely are.

Some suggestions.

Do you need a "we don't track you" statement, so the youth feel safe? (Or is
it better not to bring it up?)

Somebody else mentioned that you have a geographic service area. It might be
helpful to mention that, or to somehow geofence requests, for the sake of
people in need from other geographies.

I wonder if "outreach worker" should say "somebody to talk to." Poor folks
have a lot of bureaucracy to deal with, and it might be nice to offer the
value proposition rather than the job title. Plus, it's a way to connect with
folks who might be suicidal.

"Parenting" \-- maybe "Taking care of kids".

\----

Promotion: Stickers and signs. Bathrooms, in the stalls, are especially
effective places to put them up. Youth with trouble don't want to be seen
copying stuff off signs on bulletin boards (social stigma).

\----

Is this available to be replicated in other geographies? If you want to try it
in MA, I can work with you.

~~~
judah
Wow - first, thanks for the awesome feedback. I'll relay this information to
the shelters who organized this.

As far as replicating this in other states, I'd personally love that! I will
speak with the organizers. Currently, it's a group of shelters in MN that got
together to do this. They may be interested in branching out.

Thanks again for the feedback!

------
rmxt
Slick interface, cool visual presentation, and awesome intentioned resource
for people in need...but outside of seeing "MN" in the URL and clicking
through the links, I wouldn't have known that this is limited to Minnesota/the
Twin Cities metro area. I like the plain, straightforward and neutral approach
to the listings, but perhaps a small logo (besides the iconography, e.g. the
Y's distinctive logos) for each link would help to break things up. Overall,
nice site. Thanks for sharing.

~~~
judah
Thanks for the feedback.

------
jbob2000
This is really great! Seriously, you don't know how helpful something like
this is. My girlfriend worked for a charity that helped people find housing
around Toronto. She was using this really ancient program from like 1995 to do
it. It didn't really do much, she would just end up calling shelters around
the city. From what I understood, most of her job was compiling data exactly
like what your service provides.

------
simlevesque
I deactivate the geolocation api and I think that you should allow the user to
tell you it's latitude and longitude if a user refuse to use geolocation.

It is a really nice initiative ! I will spread the word around.

~~~
cpeterso
The server could use GeoIP to identify the user's city, which is probably
accurate enough for finding relevant services. I imagine very few people know
their current latitude and longitude. :)

~~~
leesalminen
You'd be surprised of some policies shelters adopt for their service areas.

It's possible that a shelter will only accommodate you if your last known
address was west of X street within Y county limits (cities can span counties)
and an odd numbered house.

------
efriese
This is really awesome. I'm actually working on a very similar app! It may be
good to put a listing on the side of the cities you support. I'm assuming over
time you're planning to grow the coverage.

~~~
muaythaiguy
It'd be great to have other cities involved with this. It's something the
funding organization is interested in.

------
gargarplex
Thanks for building this; although I have never been homeless, this is
something near and dear to my heart.

I second rmxt's comment about clearly branding this for Minneapolis.

Thanks.

------
johnny_utah
Excellent project. Small angular error: when I go to
[http://ysnmn.org/#/services/30](http://ysnmn.org/#/services/30), it looks
like there's a ng-repeat dupes error in the console. Using track by $index may
solve this (I ran into this problem working with angular).

I don't see it on any other pages. Either way, nice work!

------
pav7en
Judah, very nice effort. Two points of note for me:

1\. When I click shelter it shows a very small nbr of beds available when
compared to the nbr of beds shown when I click the Search icon on the
homepage. Also agree with cpeterso's comment on this.

2\. It was when I clicked the Search icon and scrolled to the bottom that I
saw the wind chill advisory and only then saw it on the main page under Urgent
news. Perhaps putting this link (Alerts/Urgent news) at the top of the page
will improve its visibility. Not sure how it's rendered on a mobile browser.

All the very best.

~~~
judah
Thanks for the feedback!

------
taternuts
I really hope this service gains traction and 'vendor buy in' or whatever.
It's nice to see someone using their programming skills to try and defeat a
huge social problem.

------
leesalminen
Great design, I was able to navigate quickly through the app to find what I
needed.

I work in this industry (SaaS provider for non-profits) and just sent the
project out to the whole company.

Congrats!

~~~
judah
Thank you for sharing it around your company! I really appreciate that and the
kind words.

------
eriksie
This is really awesome! One minor question... aren't you making a rather large
assumption that homeless youth have internet access to use the site?

~~~
maxbrown
I'm sure user research would answer this quickly, but my guess is that many
may still have smart phones or, if not, public library internet access.

~~~
muaythaiguy
What is interesting is that most homeless youth or at-risk homeless youth do
have access to smart phones. The difference is that they typically do not have
an active data plan and rely on wifi access at local libraries, shelters,
coffee shops, etc.

I was also involved with this... more on the product side working with the
shelters.

~~~
justizin
A bit of delicate feedback: perhaps 'product' is a word that could be replaced
with a differently-shaped synonym.

------
bnchdrff
Check out [https://www.openreferral.org/](https://www.openreferral.org/) \--
maybe ysnmn could participate in developing the standard & integrate it into
the site?

------
MrBra
Great project.

------
reallynobody
feature request: queer/trans specific resources!

~~~
judah
Thanks for the feedback.

We actually implemented this at first: when searching for beds, you could
search for beds reserved for transgender and gay kids. Likewise, shelters
could mark beds as beds alloted for gay youth or transgender youth.

But after talking to the shelters in Minnesota, they told us that they don't
have beds specifically for transgenders or gays; if a female identity
transgender person is most comfortable with female beds, they give that person
a female bed. The shelters told us that creating beds specifically for
transgender and gay people would further isolate them.

That said, we do show which services are GLBTQ-friendly. For example, see
[http://ysnmn.org/#/services/2](http://ysnmn.org/#/services/2)

