A bit more helpful than nothing, permits
I once complained that DC wasn't particulary helpful when it came to making permits public. I compared them to the county office in Florida that linked permits to properties, so the public could see what permits were approved for a house and what was supposidly done. The information would be helpful in helping the citizens help the city monitor whats going on, and help home buyers know a bit more history on their house.Well, I stumbled upon the DC permit database, while googling a contractor that will be doing work near me. And well, it is a good start. I plugged in an address of a problem property and saw permits going back to 2005, and saw that the owner of said problem house has applied for permits this year as well. I threw in my own address and saw my permits. Now, there is no detail to the permits, only the tracking number what kind of permit, the applicant's name, and their approval status. I gather I might get more info if I had the projected cost and date. But this is helpful in answering the question if a house has permits or not.
Labels: city services
posted by Mari @ 28.5.08
5 Comments:
Hi Mari, tried the link and it doesn't work.
Hummm, try this there might be something that you have to agree to, saying you won't use the database for evil.
you can also view the list of approved permits going back about 8 months or so. its a massive pdf file but easily searchable. provides a bit more detail...
http://dcra.dc.gov/dcra/lib/dcra/services/permits/permit.pdf
let's say that si's like is "somewhat" easily searchable. Some neighborhood properties don't seem to have permits -- or maybe it's the wrong time frame.
The contractor I was looking up, I ran into him yesterday and he mentioned that he got the permits that day. Looked at the database just putting in the street (not house numbers) and noticed his bright shiny new permits for 5/28/08 in the long list of permits for the street.
Yes, the devil is in the details, particularly when I've noticed a number of my dear neighbors have not displayed their permits, as they are supposed to.
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