CLEVELAND — Cleveland neighborhood activist Ed McDonald has reported dozens of hazardous vacant homes to the city for several years, and is now hoping the city's new open data portal will help with a wide variety of neighborhood issues.
McDonald showed News 5 a vacant, burned out home on Magnet Avenue, near Cleveland's Slavic Village neighborhood. McDonald said he's been reporting the nuisance home to the city for more than 4 years using the city 311 reporting system, but so far the house has still not been taken down.
“Are they actually looking at the data, you have a house like this that’s been an issue since 2019, I reported it myself at least 8 times," McDonald said. “The longer it stays up, the more they keep busting into it, the better chance that somebody is going to be found dead inside this house.”
McDonald said he believes Cleveland's new open portal data system will help with neighborhood safety and resident awareness.
Liz Crowe, Cleveland Director of Urban Analytics and Innovation told News 5 the open data portal will give residents information on a wide variety of city services and city departments.
“It will make tools available, maps and dashboards, so you can zoom in on your neighborhood and see crime statistics," Crowe said. “We are working now on a software system where you’ll be able to go to a website, or go on your phone and report to the city or ask the city for things.”
The city also produced a video on the ease of using the online portal.
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said the open data portal will be a huge asset to residents in a variety of ways.
“Making sure we are transparent to the public on how we are spending taxpayer dollars," Bibb said. "Number two, accountability, holding ourselves accountable to delivering high quality basic city services, and lastly, innovation, we believe this data can help us create new innovations, new applications to really enhance how we are improving the living conditions in our city.”
Crowe reports some $4 million in 311 system improvements should be launched in the next several months and said the new system will allow residents to track the progress of their service requests via their smartphones or home computers.
"What we’re setting up is really that front door to the city that will then route that request straight to our departments so they can get a queue in their operational system and start the work the next morning for you," Crowe said. “And you’ll be able to call in with your confirmation number and look it up, or go on the website and look it up in your account and find out where we are in that process.”
Meanwhile, McDonald is hoping the open portal information will be examined by the city and help it chart the best way to make neighborhood response improvements or correlate the efforts between city departments.
“It’s great to have all the data, but what’s really going to be done with all this data, is it really going to be analyzed and say maybe this is a priority because there are so many people reporting on this one particulate issue," McDonald said. “For example if the fire department puts out a fire, they should be contacting the city or building and housing to make sure a board-up is happening.”
News 5 is committed in following through on this developing story.
