Showing posts with label 311. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 311. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Report: 311 calls about homeless people are on the rise in the East Village/Lower East Side

Catching up to this story from DNAinfo on Monday… in which reporter Lisha Arino went through public records to find that 311 calls "about the presence of homeless people, homeless encampments and panhandling have spiked in the past year."

Per the article:

More than 300 complaints relating to homeless people were recorded this year through October in the 10009 and 10002 zip codes — which covers the bulk of the East Village and Lower East Side — a jump from the 171 calls recorded last year overall…

The increase in calls continues its upwards trend. Records show that there were only 83 calls logged in 2010.

However, as DNAinfo points out, the "numbers don’t necessarily mean the neighborhoods’ street homeless population has increased." The mayor's office says that "the number of complaints was proportional to the increase of citizens using the 311 app."

In addition, Manhattan Outreach Consortium director Cesar Vanegas said that he has not seen a significant increase in street homelessness recently.

Read the full article here.

Friday, October 16, 2015

New city site let's you know about real-time transit delays and disruptive banging and pounding noises



The city is rolling out a new website — www.neighborhoods.nyc, now in beta — to provide up-to-the-minute updates on what's happening on your block.

We'll cut-and-paste this overview from Curbed:

The site reflects real time updates to transit, construction, and traffic alerts, 311 service requests, emergency notifications, event permits, and other data. The data is also displayed on a neighborhood map that can be used to look up things like restaurant grades, greenmarkets, and parks.

I checked on it last night to learn that there were delays on the 4 and F trains... that a sewer backed up at 111 Avenue C ... that "Rats were reported in a park at Avenue A and East 7 Street last weekend" ... and my favorite — "Disruptive banging and pounding noise was reported last Tuesday at 103 Avenue A."

Each neighborhood page includes details on the weather, garbage and recycling schedules, school closures and alternate-side parking.

The site, which went live on Wednesday, arrives via the Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation and Vizalytics, a local tech startup. DNAinfo noted that the developers will continue to tweak the site over the next 90 days or so. Specific sites — with names like EastVillage.nyc — are expected in early 2016.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Wizz kids


Columbia University's New Media Newsroom site has a handy-dandy interactive map showing 311 reports of urinating in public in Manhattan since the beginning of 2008 by zip code.

And the winner? 10011 in Chelsea. Woo-hoo! Nice going! (Uh, so to speak.) And in the 10009 zip code of the East Village? Just one! Hmm.

According to the post:

Admittedly, information about where we pee illegally may be subject to reporting bias: residents of tony Gramercy, for instance, may be quicker to complain to 311 than those in the neighboring (and more transient) Lower East Side, which may explain some of the difference captured in the DoITT's reports. Indeed, neighborhoods that rank the highest in complaints may even try to claim superior citizenly virtue, for being so quick to notify the city of their misbehaving brethren. This isn't the last word in the Great Manhattan Inter-Neighborhood Piss-off. But until then, let's let the numbers tell their own story.