Every year, all cities within the State of California must report on their respective housing production to the California Department of Housing & Community Development (HCD). This process that can take a significant amount of staff time for local agencies because it often involves taking data from a permit database and manually imputing data into the State form, leaving much room for human error. Here is an example of the form that was filled out by all California cities in 2015. These reported housing numbers are then used as the basis for establishing future housing production targets that every city in the State is asked to meet.
In partnership with the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) (http://www.abag.ca.gov), HCD (http://www.hcd.ca.gov) and 21 Elements (http://www.21elements.com/About-Us/about.html), OpenSMC will be developing a Pilot Housing Platform to simplify the way in which cities report annual housing construction activity to the HCD and ABAG. The goal with the Pilot Housing Platform is to simplify the reporting process by transforming the form into an easy interface that cities can use to input housing production data.
The following six cities have volunteered to participate and share their user experience with the existing reporting process and to share their housing production data:
- City of Redwood City
- City of Belmont
- City of San Mateo
- Town of Hillsborough
- City of Millbrae
- City of South San Francisco
- Meet with members of HCD and ABAG to understand the existing end-to-end process for collecting annual housing data from cities and understand user needs and challenges.
- Schedule a whiteboard session to brainstorm on the design of the housing platform.
- Identify Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Michelle Littlefield, OpenSMC Brigade Captain
A Code For America Brigade Serving San Mateo County
Email: mlittlefield@opensmc.org