达拉斯垃圾车给房屋打“破旧分”

Today, you are at home.

Listen.

A big vehicle comes in front of your home.

The big vehicle moves slowly.

It comes today, and it will come tomorrow too.

You have many things you do not want.

Now those things are all inside the big vehicle.

This big vehicle is called a garbage truck.

The garbage truck collects the things and drives away.

In Dallas, in the United States, garbage trucks also look at houses.

There are cameras on both sides of each garbage truck.

The cameras take pictures of houses.

After the cameras take pictures, the photos appear in a computer.

The photos show the grass, road, and walls in front of a house.

The cameras cannot see inside a house.

They can only see places beside the road.

Why did Dallas put cameras on garbage trucks?

Because the city wants to find problem houses more quickly.

The computer may record tall grass, broken pavement, or unwanted things by the door.

After looking at the photos, the computer gives each house a score.

The score runs from one to four.

A score of one means a smaller problem, and four means a bigger problem.

This score is called a blight score.

Since April, fifty garbage trucks with one hundred cameras have been working in Dallas.

The computer found more than twenty-one thousand houses that might have problems.

However, the computer cannot issue a fine directly.

City employees look at the photos first.

Only after looking do they decide whether there is a real problem.

If there is a real problem, the city first sends a reminder letter.

So far, the city has sent about eighteen hundred reminder letters.

People who receive a letter can fix the problem first.

Only if they keep doing nothing might they later have to pay a fine.

One person also received a reminder letter.

The letter said the chimney on his roof looked discolored and needed repainting.

He looked at his chimney and found it very strange.

He thought: the chimney is only a little old, so why should a garbage truck care?

He later learned that a camera photographed his house as the garbage truck passed.

Dallas says this method can make the work faster.

In the past, employees had to drive out and inspect houses themselves.

Now garbage trucks already travel to many places every day.

With cameras riding on the trucks, they can quickly take many photos.

The camera company also says faces and license plates in the photos are blurred.

The camera system is not connected to police computers.

However, many people are still worried.

They say the city should have told everyone first that garbage trucks were photographing houses.

They also worry that the method is unfair.

Many houses found by the computer are in southern Dallas.

The south has many lower-income families, and its houses are often older.

These people may not have much money to repair their homes.

They ask: why are we often the ones receiving reminder letters?

A city council member also wanted to stop funding the project.

Later, the city promised a December meeting where residents could share their views.

So the council member decided to wait until after the meeting.

The project has a three-year contract worth about 2.5 million dollars.

Some people think the money can make the city cleaner.

Others think the city should not look at everyone’s home this way.

Dallas has not made a final decision yet.

Garbage trucks are still collecting trash, and the cameras are still taking photos.

Think about it: how would you feel if a garbage truck photographed your home every day?