The Housing and Community Development Department (HCDD) recommends that City Council approve an Ordinance authorizing the expenditure of up to $345,000 of Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone funds previously appropriated by City Council on Jun 11, 2014 by Ordinance 2014-0606 to enhance and improve the VisionLink Crisis Cleanup web platform. These enhancements will add functionality needed to improve the tool’s effectiveness in helping Houstonians clean-up and repair homes damaged in disasters.
Crisis Cleanup is an open source web platform that connects disaster recovery organizations with residents who need help cleaning up after a disaster. The platform enables relief organizations to coordinate response efforts, unlocking the collaborative power of Houston’s private, public, and volunteer resources. Crisis Cleanup improves collaborative community response by managing cleanup tasks for volunteers, facilitating multi-agency coordination, tracking the tasks ready to do and those already completed, and by creating a transparent view of cleanup efforts with real-time mapping tools. To date, Crisis Cleanup has connected more than 300 voluntary organizations and 40,000 volunteers with 15,000 families across 18 states.
It was first used in the Hurricane Sandy recovery in the Northeast and is currently being used by dozens of organizations still helping survivors of the recent Houston flooding. Along with cataloging homes where volunteers are responding, Crisis Cleanup also tracks volunteer hours spent responding. This is information which translates to direct dollars for the City of Houston in local match to FEMA funding. Additionally, Crisis Cleanup facilitates HCDD’s ability to identify low- to moderate-income homes for subsequent funding of work such as carpet/flooring and sheet rock replacement which comes after the initial clean-up phase.
Among the improvements and enhancements to be developed under the VisionLink contract are:
- Mapping tools capable of isolating geographic areas, such as low- to moderate-income communities, for faster response as well as specific analysis and custom reports
- A smart phone app that enables volunteers to update data in real time as they canvas neighborhoods to identify damage and enter or complete tasks in the system
- An incident dashboard for easy examination and analysis of data captured in the system
The contract is effective through May 31, 2016, with two 90-day renewal options, and may be terminated by the City Purchasing Agent and/or Director of Housing upon 30-days written notice to the contractor.
Founded in 1991, VisionLink creates solutions for education, workforce, social and health services and disaster response at the local, state and national levels. VisionLink created CommunityOS®, used by 2-1-1 centers to share important information with homeless shelters, by state governments to coordinate with local nonprofits, and by emergency disaster relief agencies to connect those in need with nonprofit resources.
This item was reviewed by the Housing and Community Affairs Committee on Oct. 20, 2015.