About & privacy
A shortcut from “someone should fix that” to City Hall
Most people who notice a broken streetlight assume someone else has reported it, or that reporting won't matter. CivicBoost shows what's actually waiting in your neighborhood, lets neighbors agree on what comes first, and puts it in front of your council member with their names on it.
Who runs it
CivicBoost is an independent, non-partisan project built in Houston in 2026. It is not affiliated with the City of Houston, any council member, candidate or party, and it takes no position on who should hold office.
How a letter reaches City Hall
- Neighbors vote on the open 311 problems and on each other's ideas. The votes set the order of the letter.
- A neighbor's idea joins the letter once 3 neighbors back it. Links, emails and phone numbers are blocked, and we remove anything that isn't about a public place or City service.
- When 10 residents whose addresses are inside the neighborhood have signed, a person at CivicBoost reads the letter, prints it with the signature page, and mails it to the council member at City Hall. At most one letter per neighborhood per quarter.
- The neighborhood page shows when it was mailed and when the office replied.
What we store
- Votes: which items this browser voted on, linked to a random ID in a cookie. No name, no account.
- Signatures: your name and street name. We check your full address with the U.S. Census geocoder to confirm it's in the neighborhood, then discard the house number. Names appear only on the printed letter, never on this website.
- Email, if you give it: used only to tell you the letter was mailed and when the office replied. Never shared, never used for anything else.
- Champions: name, email and street (the address is checked like a signature). Only first name and last initial are ever shown, and only if the champion agrees. Champions see numbers about their neighborhood and their invite link, never who signed.
- Invite links: when you arrive through a champion's link, we note which link, against the same random browser ID used for votes, so the champion sees a count. Nothing else.
- Ideas: the words you post, exactly as you wrote them, public on your neighborhood's page. Don't include names or contact details.
- ZIP, address or location you type to find your neighborhood: not stored. “Use my location” is matched to a neighborhood inside your browser and never sent to us.
Taking your name off
Open your neighborhood's page in the browser you signed with and choose “Remove my signature”. It's removed right away. A letter that was already mailed can't be recalled, but your name won't be on future ones.
Where the numbers come from
The City of Houston's own 311 service request data and Super Neighborhood boundaries. Each neighborhood page explains exactly how its numbers are made, including what the data can't tell us. Find your neighborhood.