Inspiration
The City of Houston's Neighborhood Mow Down Program reimburses civic groups for maintaining vacant overgrown lots, but many residents are unaware of the program and the there is no platform for integrating user onboarding, lot status, verification, payout, etc.
What it does
The app takes allows users to search the City of Houston's Mow Down program for available overgrown lots to mow. Users make an average of $50 per lot mowed, with a 10x cost savings for city compared to using private contractors.
How we built it
We started off by building a detailed framework, then took to building out the necessary react components. We still need to integrate mongodb into the program for data to store properly.
Challenges we ran into
We were not able to get the Mow Down Program data set from the City of Houston, so we created our own mock data. Also, we were not able to complete a working back end with the time restrictions, but this is our next priority.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We developed a platform for empowering local citizens to address local municipal concerns whilst also cleaning up the great City of Houston. We believe with cleaner lots people will take more pride in the neighborhoods they live in.
What we learned
We learned that the incentives available for the Houston community to clean their neighborhoods is not limited to the Mow Down Program. Residents are also able to report abandoned or neglected lots to Houston's 311 system. This will then get added to the database that we would query to find these lots.
What's next for M4: Mo Mowin Mo Money
- Pilot
- Launch and scale
- Expand to include other issues, like Illegal Dumping Abatement or Graffiti Removal
- Expand to other cities
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