April 24, 2007
Vacant Richmond and vacant next door
The folks at Pharrout and neighborhood resident Daniel (aka Farrell IT), building on an idea by Jon at River City Rapids, have put together Vacant Richmond, a new way to find out about and comment on the vacant housing around the neighborhood and the city.
You can search by address and by neighborhood (Church Hill, Church Hill North, Union Hill, Fairmount, Woodville, Peter Paul, Brauers, Oakwood, Creighton), and you can also see other properties owned by the same person (for example).
16 Responses to “Vacant Richmond and vacant next door”
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What a great idea. The count per listed neighborhood and the sight of all those little ‘pins’ really get the point home in a big way.
Great idea but I spotted some errors. Just one example is 2715 East Grace St. It is not a vacant lot, it is a house (actually correctly listed by the city as two family). Assessment is over $400K currently. Who put the list together – the city? Just curious. Otherwise, an excellent idea, agree with Ann that the ‘pins’ make a point – when they correctly point to a vacant lot.
[...] congrats to the Vacant Richmond folks! [via][and here] Posted at 10:46AM under [...]
Celeste, I think the vacancies listed are not vacant lots but vacant structures. Is 2715 East Grace occupied? If it is not occupied, then the site is accurate.
The data comes from the city’s list of vacant properties. We’ll be getting some information up on the disclaimer page about what gets a property listed. One of those things is getting your water turned off.
There will be some mistakes and a little outdated information until the city updates the data again. But we hope that as a whole it will be useful, even if not 100% accurate.
I tried to look for a vacant house to flop in on East broad and the map read it as west broad and sent me to the fan… So, it is a good idea, but needs some technical tweaking
Good idea, but more effort should be placed on putting up correct information and updating yourself, rather then waiting on the city to update there database. Who knows how long that could take. Especially, if offered links to contact council and police to take action.
These folks are volunteering their time and effort to make this site. It seems a little harsh to criticize them for a purely volunteer effort. Does anyone really expect two volunteers to canvas the entire city daily to check behind the City’s report?
Great job Vacant Richmond founders! What an awesome idea, thanks for your effort to make RVa and even better city!
if you complain about something then you should also help in fixing the problem. If you would like the correct information about vacant properties than i suggest going to each property and doing a visual inspection on each to make sure that each is vacant. Oh and by the way there are 9000 vacant properties on the list. So if you are not willing to do something about it then shut your pie hole.
I have to agree with Ticked. I use my own personal time, energy and resources to do what I can in Shockoe Bottom and Church Hill yet people still complain about how, when, where, and the results of what I do. If you can do better, please feel free to.
AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!! No no no! The neighborhoods are all wrong! Man I can’t stand that the city does not even know its own neighborhoods and then the public is mislead. I have got to get my research underway. As a resident of Woodville I can tell you Woodville is not along Nine Mile Rd.
They also have a house on my block that’s never been vacant on the list.
They also have a house on my block that’s never been vacant on the list.
It is interesting that the site has become partially about verifying the city’s data now, as a number of questionable listings have ben found.
I think this is a great idea. The City has certain criteria under which a property is considered vacant. I would love to list all the properties in my neighborhood that are vacant (haven’t been lived in for months/years), but are not, by the City’s definition, vacant. They are mostly little old ladies who went to nursing homes or people who moved to the Rivah and never come back.
I thought it was a good site. Of course, anything of that magnitude is going to have errors, and volunteers do the best that they can. Let’s take it easy on them…This is time that they could spend working to pay bills, or being with their families or pets or gardens.
What is valuable is the COMMENTING system and the links to take action with your local government, as well as property owners’ addresses. You can comment there on an error, and you can do something about it. Sadly, the owner for the property at 623 N. 31st listed his address at 623 N. 31st. When they demolished the property, they bust up my side porch, and there has been construction debris dumped on the sidewalk for months.
[...] over 2 years ago, Vacant Richmond popped up and mapped all of the properties listed on the city’s Vacant Building Registry (PDF). The [...]