City staff roll out interactive development dashboard to track housing inventory and pipeline

City planning staff introduced a publicly accessible, interactive development dashboard at the Jan. 27 Planning and Development Board meeting to provide searchable data on housing inventory, affordable units and the development pipeline.

Sam, the staff presenter, described the dashboard as an interactive data portal with glossary definitions, project-level detail, and pages showing housing inventory, affordable-housing breakdowns, projects under construction, pending construction and projects under review. "The idea of the dashboard, if you haven't had a chance to look at it, is that it's an interactive, data portal," Sam said, and encouraged users to provide feedback through a built-in form.

Board members praised the tool’s potential: one member said the visualization clarified a shift in project types since 2020 toward more subsidized affordable projects, and another suggested adding direct links to project folders and the planning-board packet to improve accessibility. Staff said the dashboard will be updated quarterly and that they would explore adding links to project folders and clearer stage indicators.

Why it matters: the dashboard aggregates data citywide and enables searches by neighborhood, AMI tier and project status, creating an evidentiary basis for discussions about the "missing middle" and other policy interventions.

Next steps: staff invited feedback through the site’s feedback form and signaled a willingness to present the dashboard to community groups or university classes. The board urged staff to include a link to the dashboard in future planning-board write-ups and public materials to broaden use and transparency.

Ending: the board asked staff to consider adding stage links and to return with any suggested enhancements that would make the tool more actionable for policy and neighborhood discussions.