The city of Austin, Texas, is using blockchain to provide help for those who need it most: homeless people.
Blockchain has seen a meteoric rise in popularity in the last year, mostly thanks to a bitcoin price surge. Ever since then, people are coming up with ideas on how to use this revolutionary technology.
Austin, a city that has more than 7,000 homeless people, plans to use blockchain to provide its homeless residents with an ID which will allow them to access critical government services.
Not having a government issued ID strips almost all of your human rights in this modern era. Most of the homeless people have lost their IDs sometime in the past which makes their tough life even harder – no ID results in no access to social help and legitimate aid.
So, the city of Austin is tackling the problem in a creative way – with blockchain.
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According to Slashgear, Austin is now searching for way to use blockchain as an ID management platform for the homeless using a grant awarded by Bloomberg Philanthropies:
“More than 7,000 people in Austin are homeless and experience delays or troubles getting social help due to ID issues, according to Bloomberg.”
Using blockchain, Austin authorities will create a unique identifier for every homeless person in the city. With this ID, these individuals will be able to access their personal records whenever they need it, without a risk of losing or destroying it, which was often the case with a paper or plastic ID card.
The project will run for the next four years
