Bridge Housing Solutions: An AI prediction engine (utilising NLP and contextual scoring) to match social housing properties and reduce the need for temporary accommodation

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The current 'cost-of-living crisis' along with job losses from the COVID -19 pandemic has increased rent arrears and homelessness across the UK with 274,000 people homeless and ~250,000 of these living in temporary accommodation (84,740 households). However a 2021 Crisis UK study shows that there are currently ~45,000 social housing properties that are currently vacant.The current process for filling these empty homes is vastly time and resource consuming, meaning that despite record homelessness in the UK, a majority of these home remain empty. Local authorities currently can only offer accommodation in the borough where they are an accepted homeless case and nothing else -- meaning if no properties are currently available then service users must move between temporary housing or face homelessness (waiting lists are often over 10 years).Example: A service user is in Brent in Temporary Accommodation and is waiting in a B&B for secure and affordable accommodation. There is a void property in Harrow Council (neighbouring borough) that is vacant as no one from Harrow wanted the property. That property will sit vacant until the council can find someone for it. However, there are thousands of families currently in Temporary Accommodation in London, that would welcome the opportunity to be re-housed into a property in Harrow.There is no current way or process to make these properties available and visible to all service users in the UK. UK councils are in desperate need of a solution to help match service users with available and otherwise empty social homes from outside their borough (either through a neighbouring borough or to another area with strong links such as family).In order to address this critical issue, My Social Housing are developing an app that helps users find their own properties based on their individual criteria, such as location near family, work, school or other factors. The app will contain an AI algorithm to match properties based on app interaction and user preferences, automatically shortlisting suitable properties and notifying users when available. The platform will also be able to store documentation such as tenancies so the process can be fully managed.