The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) released a new online tool showing how each California city or county is progressing toward its housing goals. The Annual Progress Report (APR) Dashboard can be found on the department’s new Open Data Tools webpage.

California cities and counties are required to plan for the housing needs of all their residents and must adopt a housing plan, or “housing element,” every five to eight years. The housing element must show how they will accommodate their housing needs, including how they will provide opportunities and reduce barriers to housing development affordable to people at all income levels. On April 1 of each year, local governments must submit these reports to HCD, showing their progress toward their housing goals.

“At HCD, we are committed to transparency,” said Department Director Gustavo Velasquez. “For the first time, with this new dashboard, you can see the housing-planning progress of California cities and counties in one place, formatted as easy-to-use, interactive graphs and charts that have built-in filters, so you can customize data.”

With the APR Dashboard, viewers can:

•  Quickly see which cities and counties have HCD-certified housing elements (housing plans) and if they have submitted their annual progress reports.
•  View housing-element compliance rates statewide or by region/county.
•  Track housing production at a variety of income levels, structure types, geographies, and more.
•  Summarize housing-project data or view individual project detail.
•  Track changes and trends over time or view stand-alone trends.

In addition to consolidating data already available on HCD’s website, the APR Dashboard includes a variety of new data points never previously published, such as updates on housing-element program commitments, housing applications, and housing funding-source information.

Virtual Tour Available

HCD will host a virtual tour of the APR Dashboard at on May 4, 2021. Attendees will need to register online

New “Open Data Tools” Webpage Launched

The APR Dashboard is just one of a variety of online, interactive tools offered by HCD on its new Open Data Tools webpage — designed to democratize housing data and serve as a user-friendly portal for local governments, advocacy organizations, academia, and the general public.

For more information about housing-element annual progress reports, please visit HCD’s Annual Progress Reports webpage.