Mobile Alabama's Innovation Team tackles $83 million blight problem
In 2015, as many as 25% of Mobile’s properties were considered blighted, so the city launched a new Innovation Team to address the issue.
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How Mobile, Alabama, Used Instagram to Address Blight
Like many cities, Mobile, Ala., didn't even know how many blighted properties it had. Instagram offered a cheap and simple way to start figuring that out.
How Mobile, Alabama, Used Instagram to Address Blight
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Highlights
The i-Team leveraged Instagram and GIS applications to accurately (and quickly) catalog all of Mobile’s blighted properties for the first time.
Within one year, the i-Team helped remediate 270 properties.
In 2017, the city passed new legislation to accelerate the process of conveying the titles of blighted properties to new owners from 48 months to 12 months.
The city is now working directly with home owners to rehabilitate properties.
Summary
Blight is a serious problem for the City of Mobile, AL. Hundreds of properties and parcels of land are vacant and have fallen into disrepair. These locations are unsafe, have a major impact on local property values, and can even lead to an increased crime rate. Because the ownership of many of these blighted properties is unclear, and because many are tax-delinquent, it can be difficult or impossible for anyone to purchase and rehabilitate them.
In 2015, the city resolved to tackle this issue by forming an $ Innovation Team (i-Team)$ , funded by a $1.65 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The i-Team aimed to find new ways to solve city problems, starting with blight.
The i-Team’s first step was to properly document the extent of the blight problem. The team used Instagram to photograph blighted properties throughout the city. Whilst Instagram wasn’t an ideal tool, it was fast and effective, and enabled the team to rapidly form a good initial assessment of the scale of the issue. Subsequently, Mobile’s GIS Department provided an app that helped the i-Team log blight more quickly and accurately than ever. In the past, city workers could only log 10-15 properties per day using pen and paper; with the new GIS app, they logged 500 properties in a single day.
With a clear picture of the extent of the problem, Mobile was able to prioritize its anti-blight efforts. The city shifted to a proactive approach, remediating over 270 properties in the i-Team’s first year. To boost citizen engagement with revitalization efforts, the i-Team also created an eBook capturing historic stories of each of Mobile’s 99 neighborhoods.
In 2017, Mobile passed new legislation to make it easier to convey the titles of blighted properties to new owners for redevelopment, free from any outstanding tax liens. The new legislation cut the time to clear a title from 4 years to just 12 months.
Mobile is now working directly with home owners to rehabilitate blighted properties; for example, by providing free demolition. With the i-Team leading the initiative, the city hopes to restore millions of dollars’ worth of real estate equity to home owners, while improving public safety and reducing crime.