Empty Houses Capture & Reporting System

Developed to Support Pennsville NJ Town Watch

September 26, 2014

Project Mission• Improve appearance of neighborhoods, improve home

values in Pennsville• Improve the general appearance of Pennsville

neighborhoods and the quality of living for its residents• Create a list of abandoned houses (with pictures) to enable

the Township to collect fines that go into the PV Township general revenue to offset property taxes and cleanup expenses

• Provide a meaningful project that empowers Pennsville residents to improve their community

• Create and implement the system without incurring expenses: use volunteers and open source software

Benefits to the Community

• Aug 2014, NJ.com: Hefty fines under new law

• Fines generate revenue– $1,500/day for in-state owners– $2,500/day for out-of-state owners

Example

• Reduce tax burden on PV homeowners• Cleans up neighborhoods & improve

overall home values

Avg In-state Daily Fine 3-Days20 $1,500 $90,000

Avg 0ut-State Daily Fine 3-days10 $2,500 $75,000

Total Rev $165,000

NJ.com Poll Aug

Benchmarking and Best Practices

• Other communities in NJ that have addressed this problem:– Woodbury and Westville's councils recently set up

registries of the abandoned properties that implement annual, gradually-increasing fees for creditors to list them on the registry.

– East Greenwich also enacted the same kind of registry, as well as resurrected its board of health and established a group of volunteers that identify homes in need of maintenance and dole out notifications.

Proposed Process Overview

• “Divide and Conquer”– Partition Pennsville (example partition: census tract)– Identify Abandoned Houses– Photograph Houses with Geo-tagging Devices

• Save Photos in Database– Upload geo-tagged* photos to designated web site

• Subsequent periodic, bulk upload to Google Picasa site

– Includes other tagging information (addresses, damage, offending characteristics)

• Generate Registry [optional: Map onto Google Earth]

• Validate entries with Town Watch assessment• Present tabular Registry to Pennsville Township

Committee*Example of geo-tagging device: Apple iPhone 5

Photo Capture Assignments: Pennsville Neighborhoods

Divide PV Neighborhoods using Census Tracts

• 214: East side of 49, north of Pittsfield to Carney’s Point• 215: Pittsfield north to Carney’s Point• 216: Penn Beach down to Salem (Pittsfield to Salem;

riverside to 49)• 217: East side of 49, from Pittsfield to Salem

Source: http://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/dc10map/tract/st34_nj/c34033_salem/DC10CT_C34033_001.pdf

Photo Capture Assignments: GeoTagging via Smartphones

• Geo-tagged Photographs– A geo-tagged photograph is a photograph which is associated with a

geographical location by geo-tagging. Usually this is done by assigning at least a latitude and longitude to the image, and optionally altitude, compass bearing and other fields may also be included.

– In the most typical application, only the position of the photographer is associated with the entire digital image.

• Automatic Geo-tagging via Smartphones– Some mobile phones with assisted GPS use the cell phone network to

speed GPS acquisition times.– The Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy devices have automatic geo-

tagging. Tests can be performed to determine if volunteers’ phones have this required capability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagging

Capture & Reporting SystemImplementation Plan

Activity Responsibility Due Date Comments

Socialize solution Consultant Volunteer Sept – Oct 2014

Pilot system Town Watch, Consultant Volunteer

Nov 2014 Pick 4 streets in various PV neighborhoods

Review Results, Make Adjustments

Town Watch, Consultant Volunteer

Dec 2014

Approve approach Town Watch, PVTWP Dec 2014

Assign neighborhoods

Town Watch Dec 2014

On-going Review

Ad hoc uploads

Google+ Account

Google Picasa Database

Google Earth Views

Google Earth views show an entire neighborhoods and the abandoned houses in them.