⚡Complex
Good morning! Hope everyone had a great weekend. If you missed last Friday’s community email, here it is.
For those in the big apple: NYC’s Partnership runs some great accelerator programs. Two are taking applications right now for 2020.
Fintech Accelerator connects founders to CIOs of top financial companies in NYC as they build their companies. In the lats 10 years, close to 70 graduates have raised over $1 billion. Apply here.
Transit Tech Accelerator connects founders who are building transit companies to the leading system in the NY Metro area. The MTA is already piloting four technologies they found in last year’s program. Apply here.
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Let’s get into it!
Your ID, Digitized
Global forced displacement is at an all time high. As of mid-2019, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people — 40.1 million internally displaced, 25.9 million refugees, and 3.5 million asylum-seekers. This number has been rapidly rising, as a result of global conflicts in Syria, Venezuela, and more, as well as climate change — and it will only continue to go up.
Many governments, businesses, NGOs, and nonprofits are trying to support these people, but they all face the same fundamental problem — identification. As migrants move either within their own country or across borders, they often do not have their physical identification documents or have lost them across the migration journey. This often prevents them from accessing government services like health care.
To address this issue, governments are building digital identity systems to help people access jobs, payments, and public services. India’s Aadhaar program is the largest in the world today, with 1.2 billion people enrolled as of 2018. Other governments like Bangladesh, Ecuador, France, and Zambia have responded in kind.
Privacy challenges. I’m sure you realized where we were going with this. Data is extremely vulnerable and can be misused — both by government officials who control the data, and by third-party hackers who can break in. Companies today can’t even keep a lock on your latest social media rants — so can we really trust governments with even less sophisticated tech infrastructure to safeguard our identities?
Overcoming these challenges. Dakota Gruener, the founder of ID2020 and one of our profiled activists from a few weeks ago, put it well —
“We need digital ID that upholds human rights, and that can be trusted and recognized across institutional and national borders. We need systems that are personal, private, persistent, and portable. This means individualized structures that are owned and controlled by users, functional throughout life, and accessible everywhere in the world — as valid in sub-Saharan Africa as in New York City.”
Practically, this means the following:
Technology: Support the development of security tech, including “cryptographically secure and decentralized systems” — in a word, blockchain! We see some of you rolling your eyes, but trust us (or at least, trust Dakota) — this is the best solution.
Rules: Define government policy and technical design principles laying out how digital identity can be accessed and used and by who.
Digital identity is the future. In the near-term, digital ID systems can help millions of people access services, prove their credentials when trying to access jobs, and more. At Tomorrow, we’re dreaming a bit bigger. We want to see a world where each person has a truly global identification — one that isn’t linked to a country but to the individual. Each person would be able to control their own identity and decide how and where it gets used. If done correctly, this has the potential to address all the data privacy issues we’ve been seeing today. Accomplishing this won’t be easy and won’t be quick, but it would empower people in a way like never before.
Co-living to Support the Most Vulnerable
In a new apartment complex opening up in Harlem, some tenants will share a common spaces such as a kitchen and living room with as many as 19 roommates. Could co-living be a solution for more affordable housing?
It’s not a new idea. You’ve probably seen ads for it before. “Come live in this hip space where you can find community, but wait… it’ll be more expensive than your current apartment.” This is different — it’s not meant for renters with more income who (1) don’t like the idea of committing to a lease and (2) want to enjoy regular events in their shared luxury-grade kitchens. Cities increasingly believe that this model could also be useful for people who are struggling to afford rent and remain in the city.
That’s also not a new idea. SROs or single-room occupancy buildings were once common in NY as a way to provide affordable housing — unfortunately, these were “regulated out of existence.” Between the 1950s and 2000s, 1 million SROs were converted, demolished, and removed, pushing people onto the streets. The few that remain aren’t in the best condition.
Collaboration is best. A program called ShareNYC was started by the city, and they’ve started to ask companies to share their experiences. Teams were invited to pitch specific projects, with three teams closing deals. One project in Harlem will offer 253 housing opportunities within 56 shared housing units, with rents ranging from very-low-income to market-rate. The most affordable units will rent for $800 (the average rent in Harlem is $2,747). The hope is that by reducing construction costs, the affordable housing will actually be affordable to build.
This is an incredible example of when the public and private sector are coming together to better understand how an old model can be better adapted to fit the modern context. In the past SROs didn’t do well, because they were stigmatized. This plan to build mixed complexes should hopefully help ensure that doesn’t happen. The city will be studying management practices and how well the buildings appeal to tenants of all kinds.
Short Takes
A federal judge in Oregon blocks the Trump administration from implementing a policy that would require immigrants to demonstrate they have health care or can afford it.
Timberland announced a new partnership with Other Half Processing to build a responsible leather supply chain sourced from ranches that employ regenerative practices — this means the ranchers manage their cattle in a way that mimics the natural movement of herd animals.
The wildfires in California are mostly under control, but the damage was devastating. A new set of sensors — which track heat and then try to figure out how fast and in what direction the fire will move — could be a game-changer.
MIT’s Open Agricultural Initiative, once celebrated as a set of micro-greenhouses to grow food under virtually any conditions, has been shut down. They’ve been accused of misleading sponsors by exaggerating results, and they also had ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
New York City kids who live closer to fast-food restaurants are more likely to be overweight, according to a new study by the NYU School of Medicine.
Tomorrow Today
🎟️ Thursday, December 5: Community Event
Change cannot be achieved alone, only together. In that spirit, we are kicking off community events at our space in New York City. Mark your calendars for our very first event on Thursday, December 5 — we’ll be sending out more details soon!
Igniting Tomorrow
💰 $100k-$250k Seed Funding
Many of you are either already working on a number of world-changing things or have ideas bursting out of you everyday. Our goal is to see unconventional activists like you succeed. Let us help connect you into the space and access the financing you need to get started. If you’d like to share your ideas (or know a friend working on something exciting), please reply to this email! If a startup you send our way gets funded, you’ll receive a $1,000 referral bonus.
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