Using data to streamline housing development

The Office of Data and Innovation (ODI) built a tool that helps the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) meet legislative goals of building more housing faster.

The opportunity

California has an ambitious goal of issuing permits for 2.5 million homes by 2030. As a result of underproduction, housing costs have soared. This means that a majority of renters spend over 30% of their income on rent. A third spend over 50% of their income on rent. Recent laws aim to alleviate the issue by building more affordable housing faster (Senate Bill (SB) 423 (D, Weiner-San Francisco), Land use: streamlined housing approvals: multifamily housing developments; Assembly Bill (AB) 2653 (D, Santiago-Los Angeles), Planning and Zoning Law: housing elements).

HCD gets housing permitting and development reports from 539 jurisdictions (cities and counties). HCD has 90 days to review these reports and request any needed corrections. But these days, HCD gets more data than they can process manually. This makes it hard to meet the 90-day deadline.

How we helped

ODI built Homestead, a tool that analyzes and visualizes data for HCD. In its trial run, Homestead:

• Showed the potential to save HCD almost 2,000 hours of staff time
• Verified 400,000 projects from the last 5 years qualify for SB 423 streamlining
• Identified 1,800 projects misreported as SB 423 eligible or incorrectly reported
• Provided new insights into housing costs by county, income level, and unit size over the last 10 years
• Calculated average development timeline for all jurisdictions, highlighting areas that need streamlining the most

What we built

Homestead gives HCD staff in-depth insights into the state of housing in California. It does 3 things that help HCD process housing data more efficiently.

Finds outliers

Homestead highlights projects that take longer to build than others in the area. This lets HCD staff dig deeper to understand why.

Automates time-intensive processes

Homestead automates tasks that traditionally have taken the most time for staff to do. This gives HCD more time in the 90-day window to determine if they need to request a correction. For example, Homestead collects several Excel spreadsheets into one place. This gives HCD reliable information on housing affordability in California.

Spotlight: Syncing mismatched data

539 jurisdictions reporting housing data using inconsistent methods	58 counties measuring median income and housing costs	One Homestead syncing all housing production data to HCD’s dashboard

Housing project data has to be mapped to geographic features to determine if a project is eligible for SB 423 streamlining. But it takes a lot of work for HCD staff to sync them. Homestead can now do this complex work to assist them in meeting this legislative requirement.

Data Science Accelerator

The Data Science Accelerator (DSA) helps departments tackle business challenges using data science. The DSA works closely with teams to apply analytics, unlock new insights, and find new ways to effectively use available data. DSA projects use advanced analytics to directly improve a service or process. DSA projects emphasize:

• Smarter and more efficient work
• More effective use of staff time and resources
• Data-driven decision making