Council approves amended housing data dashboard ordinance to publish new-unit counts
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Summary
Council amended and approved bill 41 to create a public housing data dashboard that will report new available housing units by year; the measure requires city planning to collect unit data and IMP to build a minimal viable public dashboard, with a deadline for initial publication by year-end.
City council amended and approved an ordinance (bill 41) on Feb. 25 to create a public housing data dashboard intended to report how many new housing units come online in Pittsburgh each year.
The dashboard, as amended, will include communal living spaces and requires the planning department to collect the underlying data while the Department of Innovation and Performance (IMP) will build the public dashboard. The sponsor said the goal is a minimal viable product that publicly shows “that last year in Pittsburgh, 726 new units were built,” and to expand functionality over time.
“Let’s create the minimal viable product right now,” the bill sponsor said during debate, noting the dashboard should measure places where a family or individual can live rather than proxies such as building permits or certificates of occupancy alone. The sponsor also asked planning to develop methods to track units that come offline in future iterations of the dashboard.
Councilwoman Gross said departments previously could not produce an authoritative, shareable count of newly available units. “I could show you years of emails requesting this information from various departments and getting partial or incomplete spreadsheets back,” she said. Gross said the occupancy permit is often the clearest evidence that a unit is ready for occupancy, but added that city records had not been organized to produce the needed report.
Council members pressed administrators on scope and responsibilities. The acting director for mobility and infrastructure explained that city planning would collect the data and IMP would construct the dashboard; the ordinance sets a deadline for the dashboard to be operational by the end of the calendar year.
The council voted to amend the bill to ensure communal living units are captured and then gave the amended measure an affirmative recommendation. The ordinance was returned with an affirmative committee recommendation for further city‑council consideration.
