Rob Goodspeed at The Goodspeed Blog posted a recent article about vacant property and how to accurately track vacant properties in the district. This is a highly relevant topic to this blog and is an important discussion our community should be having. This discussion should be happening not just at the blog/grassroots level but at the ANC, Ward, and council level.
Here's a snippet of the article:
The city needs a comprehensive, interactive community database of all vacant properties in the District. The database should contain government data, but need not be administered by government officials. It would be seeded by the “official” lists of vacant properties. Each property’s page would list the property’s address, owner’s name and address, assessment value, tax rate and payment history. Each property would have a unique page that would allow visitors to upload photos, as well as post comments reporting any information relating to the property: reports made to the city, crime, graffiti, dumping, etc. The properties could be categorized or tagged according to their status: for sale, vacant lot, suspected vacant, taxed as vacant, etc. All the properties would be displayed on a Google Map for easy searching. Regardless of the precise tools used, the system should be easy to use (easier than a wiki!) and contain large fonts and a simplistic interface.
