Stronger Neighborhoods
Stronger Neighborhoods are those in which people have an affordable, quality home and a feeling connectedness to others. These neighborhoods emerge in a built environment that creates a sense of space and facilitates health and well-being.
Things We're Tracking:
Residential Permits - We track how long it takes to issue residential permits to improve existing neighborhoods or even create new ones. We also monitor what types of permits are issued and their estimated value added.
Residential Blight - We actively work to reduce blight among residential properties throughout the City by active code enforcement.
Service Requests - Our Department of Public Works actively works to complete service requests submitted by citizens, such as brush pick-up and missed garbage pick-up, in a timely manner to ensure neighborhood infrastructure is operating efficiently.
Residential Permits
The Land Development Office seeks to ensure the public's health, safety, and welfare through the enforcement of adopted building, electrical, plumbing, gas and mechanical codes and the Zoning Ordinance. This enforcement promotes the economic health of the City of Chattanooga by enhancing business development, retention, and neighborhoods. All Residential Permits for properties within the City of Chattanooga flow through the LDO, and the current time it takes to issue a Residential Permit is well below similar Cities.
Residential Permit Locations
The map to the right shows the location of residential permits issued in the past 90 days. Larger dots indicate a higher estimated project cost and economic impact. Click on the drop down above the map to change the dates and look at more history. Click on the individual dots to gain more information on the invidual permits.
Residential Blight
Neighborhood blight and the presence of vacant and abandoned properties have profound negative impacts on afflicted communities. Blighted properties decrease surrounding property values, erode the health of local housing markets, pose safety hazards, and reduce local tax revenue. The division of Code Enforcement within the Department of Economic and Community Development actively works to decrease blight within the City and change citizen's behavior.
Seasonality of Blight
As is expected, there are significant increases of Overgrowth violations in the warmer months. Housing and Litter violations remain fairly constant through the years. 2018 saw more overgrowth violations on vacant lots than prior years.
Service Requests
It is the responsibility of the City of Chattanooga to respond within a reasonable time frame to service requests that effect its neighborhoods. The 311 department of the City of Chattanooga receives numerous requests from constituents often related to residential issues. Common calls relate to brush pick-up after a citizen performs yard work, bulk trash after cleaning up their home, or even calls about trimming City owned trees in a neighborhood. Below are some select measurements relating to 311 service requests responded to by multiple City departments.
311 Service Request On Time Completion by Council District
Below is a chart of 311 SRs completed on time rates utilizing 311 data. The data is currently set to only include requests in the past 90 days and defaults to all request types, but both dropdowns can be selected to change the date range or look at specific request types. An interesting note is District 7 seems to be the only Council District with 311 Requests completed on time over 75% of the time. This appears to relate to the distribution of requests in that district. There are less Brush Pickup requests as a percent of total requests in that district compared to others, which is driving this rate.
Top 311 Service Requests
The most commin service requests submitted to Public Works via 311 is overwhelmingly Brush Collection. This is typical throughout the year, but is especially high in the warmer months. The second highest is bulk trash pickup which is a service offered by the City to pick up items to large to fit in the trash; common items include mattresses, old appliances, grills, and even furniture.
Learn More
Click on any of the below dashboards to go more in depth on the data and visualizations above.