Purpose

This document summarises the process and checks the Housing Hub completes to ensure that the information contained in the property listings and Provider profiles that appear on the Housing Hub are accurate, and highlighting that reasonable steps are taken to ensure no misleading information appears for Housing Seekers, their Supporters, and any other website users on the Housing Hub. 

Background

The Housing Hub on average receives over 216 new listings created per month over the past year, and 44 Provider applications accepted per month over the same period, with even more not accepted, from Providers to list their properties. In order to ensure a quality experience for Housing Seekers and their Supporters a number of steps are taken by the Housing Hub team and platform itself to check the accuracy and completeness of the information provided. These checks are continuously refined and updated based on website user feedback and Housing Hub’s own commitment to providing quality outcomes for people looking for a home and expertise on what makes for a quality listing.

Provider Checks

Registration Status with NDIS

All new provider applications are checked for NDIS registration as follows:

1. Review the submitted Organisation’s application details, including the categories of homes they are providing, and then input their ABN into the NDIS Registry, here, to see if they are a registered provider.
2. Ensure that they are registered for the specific categories they want to list for, e.g. Specialist Disability Accommodation, as this pertains to a specific type of listing on Housing Hub or Support categories if they are a support provider or offering SIL.  
3. If their organisation does not show up search results, we promptly reach out to the Provider, requesting that they clarify their status with the NDIS, or if they are operating in official collaboration with a registered Provider, to provide their organisation information and evidence of this partnership. All provided documentation is kept on file. 

All providers with published listings are checked again regularly to ensure they are registered to offer the the type of dwellings they list, as follows:

1. All Registered Providers are included into a regular (6-month period) list for checking their registration status is up to date as a Registered Provider with the NDIS to continue to be able to list homes on the Housing Hub
2. If there has been any evidence of a change of status on the NDIS registry, reach out to them and ask for clarification. Depending on their response, give them 5 business days to clarify their status or Unpublish their listings within registered categories, as well as following our organisation’s complaints procedure. Please refer to our Privacy Policy, linked here, in the Complaints section.
3. If no response or change, Unpublish their listings and update their Provider account with different accesses to creating specific categories of listings based on this update in status.
4. Regarding point three in the previous section, if they are operating under partnership with a registered Provider, this regular check includes verifying that their partner is still registered, and that they are still under contract with them.

Choice of Supports Checks

Housing Seekers should always have a say over their supports and the Housing Hub aims to support this choice through our regular checking of listings to align with this value. The Housing Hub reviews listings monthly to find those who have the same Support Provider name (organisation) to SDA Provider name and then resolve by requesting the Support Provider list the actual SDA provider on each listing, or vice versa. 

The checks process is as follows:

1. There are two core steps to ensuring the highest quality of listings possible, with regards to Seekers being able to choose their own supports. Firstly, checking that the field “Tenants can bring their own Supports' ' has the option “Yes' ' selected. Doing 6-monthly checks for those that say “No” involves reaching out to the Provider in question and clarifying the NDIS’s requirements, as well as our organisation's position on this, for SDA listings. Note: from 5 March 2024 this is a mandatory Yes for all SDA listings so will be updated as providers edit their published listings and this task will not be required after six months when all current listings expire.
2. If the SDA Provider field includes the same organisation as the Support Provider, this is also a part of regular checks to reach out and clarify similar to point #1, the NDIS’s requirements as well as our own position that SDA Provider and Support Provider should not be the same organisation.
3. More development work may be undertaken in the future to enable more automation to these requirements, such as fields automatically not being able to save if the two fields have the same Provider included, as well as if the “No” is selected from point #1 above. 

Listing Quality 

Along with checking of Providers and the type of dwellings being listed, the Housing Hub has measures in place to ensure the quality of individual listings. These are some examples of how we do this:

User Feedback

Leveraging insights from ongoing feedback from User Groups with the various types of Housing Hub users that includes Seekers, Supporters, and Providers, we are making constant updates and adding or improving features to raise the value of the Housing Hub for all users. 

Recent improvements here include Livable Housing Australia’s certification level of each home listed on the Housing Hub to be included within listings. This with the aim of enabling our housing Seekers to seek out the highest quality homes that fit their accessibility needs as well as being aligned with a national accreditation body such as LHA. Seekers can now search for homes using the LHA Certification level filters and Providers and include this information within the designated field to clarify the level of accessibility in accordance with LHA’s certification. 

Additionally, recent improvements have been made  to the Rental Amount field of listings to clearly show Seekers what they need to pay as a  rental amount.

Listing Guidelines & Support

Our Marketing Guidelines, found here aim to help all Providers create the best, most informative listings possible on the Housing Hub. Other coming resources include an in-depth guide to each listing field for Providers to create quality listings, to further this initiative. This also includes a high-level runthrough of improving the descriptive language used in listings, listing image quality, clarifying the living situation for tenants within a listing and more. 

Coming soon also will be a full video runthrough for creating a Seeker Profile, for our Housing Seekers, as well as a similar guide for creating and using a Supporter profile. 

There are also thorough and descriptive hint text pop-ups next to each field to give more detail and context to what’s required to fulfil each section.

Listing checks

Housing Hub team members, many of whom are assisting people with disability to find housing, will consistently engage with dozens of listings across Australia, and will always flag with the digital team if any listing information is confusing or misleading. This includes checks across all listings for qualitative fields such as a clear and quality title and listing description, if they include quality listing images, if their local amenities fields are accurate, and more, and will be done bi-monthly. This also includes checking if floor plans have been included, and the quality of the included floor plan images.

Missing information 

To ensure that listings display as much useful information as possible, audits are completed for missing or inaccurate data key data such as missing rental amounts, empty fields that are useful for Seekers to learn more about the listing, and any other instances of fields missing crucial information. These will be performed by our Digital Team via reporting run from our system to check for missing data fields across all listings on a bi-monthly basis.

Provider Webinars & Events

Provider Events are regularly hosted by the Housing Hub team. The contents of these events have included topics such as “How To Create Quality Listings”, providing tips to improve listing image quality, copywriting, and more. 

One of our recurring types of Events include the quarterly Provider User Group where we gather to understand how we can improve our platform and best meet the needs of our Providers. We are constantly making updates and developing new provider portal features, and participants in these groups often see and hear about new features before any other Providers or website users in order to make as many improvements as possible before implementation.

Website Security Measures

The Housing Hub considers cyber security and the security of your information a top priority. We are proud to share a number of best-in-class cyber security practices, for which we employ the following services to ensure your data is secure:

• Penetration tests are run annually including the use of Certified Ethical Hackers to actively attempt to breach our systems
• All long-term data is stored on-shore in Australia with Amazon Web Services and Salesforce
• All payments are processed through Stripe and PCI DSS compliant
• Our engineering and technology teams are 100% on-shore in Australia
• The website is authenticated through a secure sockets layer (SSL), meaning the website and content is represented accurately, truthfully and it’s audience will find the content it expects

The security of your personal or organisation information is paramount to us and we use all reasonable endeavours to keep your information in a secure environment and to protect your personal or organisation information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We keep records of the personal or organisation information we gather from you in secure systems, limit access to those systems only to people who need access to the information in order to provide you with the services you have requested, and store information on secure servers or in locked facilities. 

If we no longer need your personal or organisation information, unless we are required under law to retain it, we will take all reasonable steps to destroy, securely delete, or permanently de-identify your personal information as appropriate.

For a complete view of how we handle your data, please review our Privacy Policy or if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to our team at support@housinghub.org.au