Did COVID-19 Induce A Strenuous Effect on the 311 Non-Emergency Services System?

In this paper we examine whether COVID-19 imposed a crowd out effect on the 311 non-emergency services using data from Kansas City, Missouri during the early stage of the pandemic. Using description text data, we identify covid-related requests and use them as a proxy for the strains put on the 311 systems by the health crisis. We find robust evidence through our difference in difference approach that zip code with an additional covid-related request would experience half an hour delay the response time for non-covid related requests. In addition, the strains on the 311 system mainly affected three categories: "Mowing / Weeds", "Trash / Recycling", and "Animals & Pets".