Housing associations are increasingly using external links to use data outside their organization in their own processes. The introduction of the digital income statement (DIV) is a good example of this. Last April, this standard was launched at the three residential space distribution regions of Haaglanden, Utrecht and Rotterdam. What does the arrival of the DIV mean for housing mediation and how do home seekers respond to this? CorporatieGids spoke about this with Director Annemarieke van Ettinger — van Herk and Digital Development & Communication Officer Mirjam van Brummen Grisnigt van Maaskoepel.
“We are in the middle of a housing crisis,” Annemarieke begins the conversation. “There is also a major construction challenge in Rotterdam. We are looking for long-term solutions - with, for example, the Rotterdam Construction Acceleration - and what we can do now - with, for example, flexible living or options to share your home. In addition to looking at how we can add homes, we are also looking at how we can distribute the scarcity that exists more fairly. We can't and don't do that alone; you need each other.”
Distribute scarcity
Each region recognizes the distribution of scarcity, Mirjam continues: “That's why we work with a regulation in our region in which the municipalities set the frameworks that we then develop with the corporations among themselves. In doing so, we create flexibility to deal with the housing crisis. By the way, we like to talk about mediation and not distribution. Our goal is to mediate between the home seeker and corporate ownership. When you talk about distributing homes, the home seeker does not seem to play a role in this.”
Green, orange and red bins
The region uses four search models. Mirjam: “In two models — registration period and home draw — urgent home seekers have priority. Our other two models are DirectKans — where you have fifteen minutes to respond — and Wens&Wacht — which is often used for senior complexes and you sign up for a home in a complex that is not yet vacant at that time. This is how we ensure that home seekers with no or little registration period also have a chance to win a home.”
“In addition, we sort the offer according to the registration details and housing requirements of the home seekers. We also call it Google meets Pinterest, with the most relevant home at the top. We have green, orange and red “bins”. With the offer in the green bin, you have a chance to win the home, with the orange bin, you have less chance because you do not meet all the conditions, and you cannot respond to the red houses because you do not meet the requirements for appropriate allocation. This is how we try to make complicated laws and regulations easy for home seekers.”
Making it easier to respond
With the idea of making responding to a home increasingly easier, Maaskoepel participated in the digital income statement pilot and was recently one of the first regions to implement the DIV. Annemarieke: “This allows home seekers to share their income statement from the tax authorities via MijnOverheid. They log in with their DigiD, agree to share data and thus we collect the aggregate income as known to the tax authorities. A very nice development that is safe, easy and fast. And popular, because research shows that 86 percent of home seekers rate the use of the DIV as very easy, easy or neutral. Then we did provide noticeable added value.”
“In addition to the added value for home seekers, it is also very nice for our corporations. The DIV helps prevent housing fraud and we also need to request and manage less information from the point of view of information security. In addition, it enables the corporations to work even more digitally, which means an efficiency increase in the rental process.”
National Steering Committee
Maaskoepel worked with various parties inside and outside the sector in implementing the DIV, says Mirjam: “A national steering committee — consisting of Aedes, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Kingdom Relations, the Tax Administration and the pilot regions of Haaglanden, Utrecht and ourselves — has set out the main lines. Subsequently, residential space intermediaries managed their system developers. We provided the implementation to our corporations with a lot of information and progress updates. At both tactical and operational levels, our corporations were included in how the DIV works and what that means for your way of working. We do this through SuperUsers and Mandated Project Leaders meetings, for example.”
Voyage of discovery
In addition, according to Annemarieke, we worked closely with software supplier Embrace: “Embrace mainly helped us by taking care of all the necessary technical issues during the implementation. As a result, DIV was perhaps the biggest journey of discovery for them, because each link, certificate and approval were processes that have never been completed before. During the process, they really relieved us and made the technical requirements completely our own.”
“The adoption of the DIV is something that really lies with Maaskoepel. We include the corporations in the work and, for this, among other things, made an instructional film and card for corporation employees. Of course, the fact that the functionality is built very user-friendly by Embrace helps enormously.”
Lessons learned
The cooperation with Aedes was also very important, says Annemarieke: “We delivered our lessons learned to them so that they could be shared during the national rollout, or immediately provided improvements in the product. Now that the DIV is live and the national rollout is being taken up by Aedes, we will continue to work under the Aedes flag to improve the DIV. At the moment, a development agenda is being delivered by the project group that guarantees progress.”
Using BSN
From a legal and regulatory point of view, the DIV also involves major changes, says Mirjam: “First of all, the Housing Act had to be amended so that there is a legal basis for using the social security number of home seekers as an identifying tool. The accounting protocol must also be approved for how income was obtained through MijnOverheid. And the corporations and Maaskoepel had to be appointed users of the ministry's digital sharing of income data for the income test. By the way, the home seeker's BSN may only be used to validate the home seeker. This is not shared with the corporation and is kept encrypted by Maaskoepel.”
Development agenda
According to Annemarieke, the implementation is not ready yet: “As mentioned, we are currently setting the development agenda in the national working group. This includes, for example, expanding the application, expanding the data sources for carrying out the income test and points for improving the process.”
Delivering added value
Mirjam nods and adds: “In addition, we will continue to work from our job: providing noticeable added value for home seekers. At the regional level, we are of course tackling the housing crisis together. We want to explain the solutions we find for this to our home seekers as well as possible. We also want to ensure that our systems work properly so that the individual home seeker experiences less stress when looking for a home. Initiatives such as the digital income statement help enormously with that.”
Unfortunately, Mirjam van Brummen Grisnigt was unable to attend the photo opportunity.
Source: Corporation Guide Magazine, Photo: Jan van der Ploeg
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