Design study · Public housing authority · New Mexico
The road home starts here
A redevelopment concept for a housing authority serving more than 5,000 households, built around three clear paths and the question applicants actually ask first — do I qualify?
Redesign concept built as part of a response to the Website Redevelopment and Related Services RFP. Not the Authority's official site, which remains at abqha.org.
- Housing authority website
- Program finder
- Waitlist tracking
- Landlord flows
- Spanish
- Document search
Albuquerque Housing Authority — open the working site
Case study overview
The problem
Rental assistance is administered as a set of federal programs — Housing Choice Vouchers, Public Housing, HUD-VASH, Family Self-Sufficiency — and published the same way. An applicant does not arrive knowing which one applies to them; they arrive knowing their household situation. Every step that asks them to self-select into a program name before telling them what it means is a step where someone eligible gives up.
The approach
The site leads with what can we help you do today, then offers a program finder framed around the household rather than the funding stream, so someone can find the program that fits before learning its acronym. Three tracks run in parallel — apply, current resident, landlord — and each carries through to real forms, plans, and board documents via a live document search rather than a documents page. Spanish is a full route. The reviewer-facing note is explicit about what is real and what would post to the Authority's systems on a live site, which keeps a concept honest about its own seams. The palette comes from the Authority's own terracotta brand color and the Sandia sunset, with open-license photography standing in for the Authority's own.
The result
Fourteen routes covering applications, public housing, vouchers, landlords, documents, the board, and contact, with Spanish pages, a live document search, and an accessibility audit of the current site.
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