#blexting

5435 Grandy Street, Detroit

For background on how a street like this comes about, read this post.

This block is incredible. Still pretty dense with housing, but only one of them is occupied. If you go a block to the west, the housing stock changes to brick and the neighborhood looks pretty stable.

The New York Times visited this block during the Motor City Mapping survey:

"Blight, as Karl Baker, one Detroit resident, has seen, tends to spread. Along his block of Hazelridge Street on the East Side, he is the only remaining tenant. “Everyone went bye-bye,” Mr. Baker said the other day as he walked up the center of the silent street to get to his house since no sidewalks had been shoveled.

Most of the houses nearby are standing but abandoned, and visitors have clearly passed through — empty liquor bottles lie along debris-covered floors near broken windows and doors, every memory of a metal appliance or gutter seems to be gone from some of the homes, and two old couches that were dumped along a lawn are now blanketed by a thick layer of snow.

While we were in Detroit for The Product Sessions last weekend, Charles and I got to catch up with Jerry Paffendorf and the awesome Loveland Technologies team (thanks again for lunch!).  

At LOVELAND Technologies, we just released a free mobile application -- “Blexting” -- designed to help Detroiters photograph, survey, and map the condition of every property in Detroit. It’s in beta so please break it and let us know how to improve it!

Blexting (derived from blight + texting) is a mobile, web-based application that works in concert with Loveland's service Why Don't We Own This? Users photograph a property, then answer a series of questions related to a property's condition and occupancy. Results of the survey are posted to a public map on Why Don't We Own This?, accessible via the Blexting header at the top of Why Don’t We Own This?, or at whydontweownthis.com/blexts

Blexting data can be shared with government agencies, neighborhood organizations, contractors, and more who seek to address issues such as blight and illegal dumping, as well as to help people in difficult situations, identify community assets, and investment opportunities.

Anyone who wants to start Blexting can do so by going to blext.wdwot.com on their mobile device and logging in with their Why Don't We Own This? credentials. You can also create a free account from your mobile device at blext.wdwot.com. Blexting works best with mobile browsers like Chrome and Firefox.

Our first mission for Detroit is to survey the 16,000 properties headed to the second round of the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction. Many of these properties are blighted, and many still have people living in them. We want to help focus resources on occupied properties, starting by determining where exactly they are.

Many speak of the tens of thousands of structures that sit vacant and blighted across Detroit, yet there is limited understanding of where these structures are, who owns them, and what their condition is. With community action and tools like Blexting, this can change.

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Get in touch with questions or comments at [email protected]