SeeClickFix: Could This be the Perfect Way for Birmingham to Track Blight?

Finding a way to crowdsource housing blight information will be a big contributor to solving the problem. Blight cannot be fixed if people aren’t aware of its severity. People need to be able to report where they see blight, the government needs to be made aware of it, and then it needs to be fixed. But before the latter part can happen there needs to be one place where all information on blighted properties goes so a blight databank of sorts can be created. Mobile, Alabama uses Instagram to track blight; a community named St. Joseph in Missouri uses a virtual mapping program called Building Blocks to record their city’s instances of blight. The tracking program that caught my eye, however, that I think would be best for Birmingham is an app called SeeClickFix.

I first learned of this app when researching the severity of blight in Atlanta. In an article published by online publication Curbed Atlanta, Sean Keenan reports that an Atlanta city councilman uses SeeClickFix to record vacant, rundown structures, because the app “forwards complaints of possible code violations” to the city government. Even though Atlanta is much bigger than Birmingham in geographical and population size the two cities are somewhat similar and both contain a large number of blighted properties. This app is a perfect way to connect concerned citizens directly to the government. While it originally wasn’t intended to track housing blight and was more meant to record things like graffiti and potholes around the city the fact that the app user is able to submit a picture, description, and location of the code violation means that blighted properties could easily be tracked and reported. The app works like this: a citizen registers for the app, provides their location, and gets connected to other users of the app and the government official in charge of sifting through citizen complaints. So, I could be on a walk in my neighborhood and notice a weed-ridden, abandoned lot filled with trash which is making my neighborhood’s value decrease. I could pull out my phone and snap a picture of the lot and make my city government aware of it so they will be more likely to do something about it. There is also a website version of the app that is easy to use and either citizens or government officials can log on to it. SeeClickFix has 4.4 out of 5 stars on the Apple app store, and as of 2017 over 1 million citizen users and over 300 partner organizations.

Multiple sectors (Birmingham mayor’s office and Birmingham 311) of Birmingham’s government are actually on the website, but they have acknowledged zero issues and they seem to view citizen complaints in a sporadic manner. In order to make this app work as a blight-tracker, our team will need to get in contact with a specific office at city hall that we believe would find this app helpful and worth their time. I think this way of crowdsourcing information could be helpful for the small staff of the Birmingham Land Bank Authority in tracking abandoned and tax delinquent properties. Mayor Woodfin and his administration should consider using this app as a blight-tracker since the Woodfin Way specifically cites eradicating blight as a priority of the new mayor and his office.

-Ann Mirette Carroll