In early June, I published a standalone article on how Philly's 311 wait times vary significantly by income, pulling and analyzing over 1.3M records. Aside from statistically robust findings, what surprised me was how much inbound interest I received from reddit and reporters to dig deeper. So I did. This series is the culmination of that effort, cutting the data in lots of ways, not just to understand the income impact, but also to gain a deeper understanding of what Philly 311 is, how it functions, and how well it serves us - culminating in 5 recommendations I think are universally palitable - regardless of politics, race or location. Also, here's a tool on where you can look up 311 service levels for your zip or ward, by ticket type (e.g., potholes vs abandoned cars) and by operational department (e.g., Streets vs Police).
115 articles
A massive playground with potato sack slides, the art museum steps since before he could walk, and the Broad Street Line that refuses to let me on.
Six months after a Common Pleas judge ordered Sheriff Bilal to appear in court twice to explain why a special master should not be appointed, the public record contains an op-ed with no numbers, two appointees whose own homes were foreclosed on by the office they now run, and a search portal framed as “innovation” for a weekend-project-scale technical problem.
Philadelphia Code § 9-813 makes rental price coordination a code violation, with $2,000-per-violation civil penalties and a private right of action. Passed in 2024. The second major US city to write an anti-price-fixing ordinance for residential rentals, after San Francisco, and the first on the East Coast.
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 9
The eight articles above make the case. This one makes the ask — five policy moves, each anchored in a number the city itself generated.
My son builds towers and knocks them down, builds them and knocks them down. I've been thinking about what that means and why Kipling was right about triumph and disaster.
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 8
I categorized what 311's "closed" means across 69,140 service requests. 28% of tickets in lower-income zips end in real action. In higher-income zips, it's 50%.
The School District of Philadelphia settled for $650,000 with the three families who sued over the 2021 selective-school admissions overhaul. The district admitted no wrongdoing, kept its lottery policy in place, and the deeper questions the case was supposed to resolve are still open.
This Sunday at 830am, we set out to finish up the job we started last week. Today, we visited 16 potential abandoned cars spread over 3.5 miles, and found 14 were already gone!
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 7
A small number of Philadelphia addresses generate a disproportionate share of 311 complaints — sometimes the same complaint, year after year.
A citywide map of single-family properties with no Homestead Exemption on file, with synthetic dots showing where likely owner-occupied outreach targets are concentrated.
Philadelphia's 2027 citywide reassessment was supposed to spread the property-tax burden evenly. The mean moved +7.0%, the median +4.2%. ZIP-level medians ran -2.7% in Fishtown to +11.5% in Kensington; the worst-hit census tract saw +44.4%. Aggregate modeled increase: $77.7M, before Homestead relief.
June 2026 monthly update. Both composites dropped sharply from May — the steepest single-month decline on the government side. Code enforcement collapsed as L&I issuance spiked.
Some places in Philly — the kind that grow on you over time rather than the tourist spots.
On a spur of the moment decision, my family and I decided to do our part to help identify abandoned cars in the open 311 tickets. A story of 3 miles, 90 minutes a 19 month old, and 15 abandoned cars
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 6
Income tier predicts 19% of 311 wait times. The other 81% is zip-by-zip — Fairhill runs at higher-tier speeds, Elmwood waits 17.9 days for the same 311 service. The within-tier story is bigger than the income-tier story.
My car was broken into twice in Fairmount. Both times the window got smashed. Then this summer — nothing. The 9th District weekly report explains why.
An interactive tool to explore Philadelphia 311 service-request wait times by ward or ZIP, filtered by department and issue type. The same data behind the geography-of-waiting analysis — sliced along three axes you control.
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 5
7 of Philadelphia 311's 27 published SLAs are met less than half the time. Two are 1-Business-Day safety promises. The published numbers are fiction.
Philadelphia spent $120 million on the 250th anniversary of American independence. About $15.5 million of it paid for a single concert. Here is what that money could have funded instead — sanitation raises, school air conditioning, more teachers, and the buses that did not run last winter.
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 4
23,229 of 75,929 currently-open 311 requests haven't been updated in 365+ days. 88.1% haven't been touched in 30+ days. The system isn't backed up — it stopped.