See a stranger taking a picture of your home? There’s a reason for that

If you see people in bright vests taking pictures in your neighborhood, don’t be alarmed.

They’re with Loveland Techonologies, and for the past couple of weeks, they have been helping map properties across Macon-Bibb County, taking pictures of about 33,000 parcels.

“We are doing a property survey where we go parcel by parcel and update vacant lots, houses and commercial buildings,” said Meredith McGraw, a Loveland project manager.

The parcels are being documented and put in a database. The focus is on blighted areas and abandoned homes, and almost two dozen surveyors are involved.

County Commissioner Virgil Watkins is using $183,600 of his $1 million in blight bond money to pay for the work.

The sight of strangers in neighborhoods taking pictures, however, has spooked some residents, including those on streets off Vineville Avenue, where a rash of thefts in recent weeks already has residents on alert.

Vineville area residents are among those who have raised questions on a private social network about the young people they’ve seen using phones to snap pictures of homes.

The surveyors are taking pictures of property all over the county, not just blighted homes.

McGraw said the workers wear bright green safety vests and have a pink card that says Loveland Technologies on it. The card will have the Macon-Bibb seal on it, along with a description of why they’re in a neighborhood.

The surveying is scheduled to end on Friday.

“We’ve done this project in a few other cities, and there’s always concerned residents,” McGraw said. “What you should do first is talk to the surveyor. They’re more than willing to talk about what they’re doing.”

Loveland launched a similar project in Detroit, and local officials took a trip in 2015 to see how the Michigan city was dealing with its blight problem.

The surveyors aren’t taking any personal information on property. They are creating a spacial data map.

“At the end of this project, we’ll have a complete landscape of the Macon-Bibb area,” McGraw said.

The map is going to provide clusters that show areas that need the most help and resources to battle blight.

“If the house is occupied, they just mark down that it’s not vacant and abandoned, then move on,” she said. “It has nothing to do with taxes and ownership.”

If residents are suspicious, they can contact McGraw and Loveland Technologies at 817-584-2251.

Once it’s completed, the Loveland Technologies blight database will also be updated, showing the status of properties.

This story was originally published July 20, 2017 at 6:12 PM with the headline "See a stranger taking a picture of your home? There’s a reason for that."