# Houston Hackathon 2026: Which challenges to build and why

**Event:** Houston Hackathon 2026, The Ion (Sep 25–27). Civic theme. Submissions due **Sun 11:45 PM** on Devpost.
**Sponsors:** Claude Community Houston, Impact Hub Houston, Ion District, Latinas in Tech, The Quiet Rebel.
Stakeholders from the city, the county, and local organizations are in the room. No judging rubric is published, so this plan assumes the usual civic-hackathon criteria: a **working demo**, **real local data**, **fit with what the stakeholder asked for**, **impact**, and **a believable pilot path**.

## How the 14 challenges were scored

| # | Challenge | Can we ship a working demo in 48h? | Real data available | Stakeholder asked for something concrete | Visual demo impact | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | **Clean Houston!** | ✅ high | ✅ **live Houston 311 layer** (~3k dumping, litter, and graffiti cases) | ✅ "map, claim button, photo reporting" | ✅✅ | **BUILD: CleanHOU** |
| 4 | **Accessible Emergency Prep Hub** | ✅ high | ~ official hotlines + partner CSV | ✅✅ a 4-item spec (directory, plan builder, guides, 2G mode) | ✅✅ (Arabic RTL, offline, 2G) | **BUILD: ReadyHOU** |
| 6 | **City Streetlights** | ✅ high | ✅ live 311 lighting cases + solar math | ✅ 3 named outcomes (tracker, waste map, proposal) | ✅ ("$ wasted" counter) | **BUILD: DayBurn** |
| 3 | Stay Cool | ✅ | ~ | ✅ | ✅ | Strong backup. Overlaps with ReadyHOU, so its cooling-center filter covers part of this |
| 1 | Spaces for HOU | ✅ | ✗ scraping venues | ✅ | ~ | Backup. Crowded "directory" idea |
| 10 | Senior re-housing | ✅ | ✗ | ✅ | ~ | Backup. Good for a questionnaire + checklist flow |
| 5 | Adaptive resources + clinicians | ✅ | ✗ | ~ | ~ | Overlaps with ReadyHOU's accessibility tags |
| 11 | Houston Streets / Vision Zero | ~ | ✅ crash data | ~ open-ended | ✅ | Open scope, so it's hard to beat focused teams |
| 13 | Mid-career skill map | ✅ | ~ | ✗ vague | ~ | Skip |
| 2 | Startup Sandbox | ✅ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ | Skip. Generic marketplace |
| 7 | Co-buying a home | ~ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ | Skip. Legal/finance risk |
| 8 | Drive Youth to Work | ✗ minors + safety + payments | ✗ | ~ | ~ | Skip. Liability |
| 9 | Licensing exams (GIA Method™) | ~ | ✗ proprietary | ✗ | ✗ | Skip. Depends on a proprietary framework |
| 12 | Foster Place sidewalks | ~ | ✅ 311 | ✗ asks for a neighborhood plan | ~ | Skip. CleanHOU's 311 map already covers it |

## Why these three

1. **CleanHOU (Clean Houston!)** does exactly what the stakeholder wrote ("map, claim button, photo reporting") and runs on the **City's own live 311 feed**, not mock data. The "Need score" hotspot ranking answers the stakeholder's question of *where the need is greatest* on screen.
2. **ReadyHOU (Emergency Prep Hub)**: the stakeholder gave a 4-part spec, and we hit every part. The demo moment is switching to Arabic (RTL), turning on 2G Data-Saver, and pulling the network cable. It keeps working, because it runs offline.
3. **DayBurn (Streetlights)**: few teams will pick this one, and the outcomes are concrete. Residents report a light in about 10 seconds with no pole number. We add a public status tracker, a **transparent $/kWh waste estimate**, the City's own 311 lighting cases to show the accountability gap, and a ready-to-adopt **policy brief**.

The three apps share one approach: **static, no build step, runs offline from a data snapshot, falls back from live to snapshot data**. The demo can't break because of conference Wi-Fi.

## Submission checklist (per project on Devpost)

- [ ] Team registered on Devpost; one submission per project (or one lead project plus the others as extras, if the rules require it)
- [ ] 2–3 min video: problem → live demo → impact → pilot path (script in each app's README)
- [ ] Screenshots from `apps/*/screenshots/`
- [ ] Live URL (GitHub Pages workflow in `.github/workflows/pages.yml`)
- [ ] Credit data sources (City of Houston 311, OpenStreetMap/CARTO, ReadyHarris / Houston OEM)
- [ ] Get a quote or reaction from the stakeholder on Friday at the Ion, and put it in the pitch
- [ ] Mention Claude (sponsor): the prototypes were built with Claude Code

## Friday at the Ion: talk to the stakeholders

- **Clean Houston:** Can KHB share its adoption-site list (CSV)? Which neighborhoods do they want to pilot in?
- **Emergency Prep:** Confirm the language priority. Ask Be More Adaptive for its resource list, and ask how UT Health's mapping data will be delivered.
- **Streetlights:** Which city should host the pilot (Galveston, Texas City, La Marque, or Houston)? Is there a CenterPoint contact? What electricity rate should the estimate use?

## Pitch hooks (computed from the City's own 311 data, snapshot of Sep 25, 2026)

- **DayBurn:** 240 of the 245 Houston 311 lighting cases in the City's layer are still open. The median open case is **726 days old**, and **97%** are past the City's own resolve-by date, which is usually about 1 day after the case is opened. 225 of the cases are freeway or bridge lighting. *This layer keeps open cases but only recently closed ones, so quote the ages of open cases, not a fix rate.*
- **CleanHOU:** 582 open dumping and litter cases across 515 hotspots, each about 2–3 blocks across, ranked by a need score whose formula the app shows.
- **ReadyHOU:** the first screen is about 17 KB gzipped, and the home screen is usable in about 2.2 s on emulated 2G. It works offline after the first visit, in 5 languages including RTL Arabic.

The dashboard dollar figures in DayBurn come from **sample** reports (the "Load demo data" button). Say so when demoing them.