Samaritan
Samaritan designs smart wallets with and for people without a home.
Outreach and case management teams use samaritan to engage individuals with the capital needed to reach housing and life goals. Samaritan provides hardware and software to city organizations looking to elevate their homeless from city streets.
Small bluetooth beacons are given to the homeless, such that city-goers with the Samaritan app can directly invest in their lives. The beacon holder can spend funds at partnered merchants or with a nonprofit counselor. Each month, the beacon holder has a 1-on-1 with the counselor in order to keep their beacon active. In Seattle, the platform is resulting in street exit outcomes, unprecedented data, and significant tax savings.
Problem/Solution
Two million people will experience homelessness in US cities this year. When they're forced to use ambulances, emergency rooms, and public services, it costs cities and businesses hundreds of millions of dollars (NYC $1.6B in 2016). There exists a desperate market for solutions.
Samaritan provides lifelines of hope to these people to financial capital and relational guidance needed to leave the street, with estimated savings of $40K per outcome per year.
How does the counseling work? Who bears the extra cost?
Monthly beacon holder 1-on-1s happen with existing nonprofit or city partners on the ground. With the beacon acting as a social and financial instrument to helping someone off the street, NGO and government counselors ultimately save time and cost per successful outcome (i.e. eight months of intervention may be required instead of nine). The platform also helps counselors to coordinate their efforts, learn and use unprecedented data insights, and meet more consistently with someone they're trying to help.
