The 'Housing Development Dashboard' Promises a New Understanding of Housing Policy

"We need a tool that can help us to more objectively assess and weigh our multiple policy objectives, from ensuring we have housing for families with a wide range of income levels, to reducing the time people have to spend in their car to get to work," explains a post by Carol Galante on the Terner Center for Housing Innovation blog. The reason for the blog post, however, isn't an appeal. It's an announcement. The Terner Center actually built that tool.

The Housing Development Dashboard, as it's called, "has the potential to significantly reshape how we engage in the housing development debate in cities across the country," writes Galante, by offering "an interactive platform that allows policymakers, developers, and members of the public to quickly and easily understand the interaction of land use measures and market conditions on housing production."

The dashboard actually includes two tools, both described by Galante. One is the Development Calculator, which estimates the probability of delivery for a given project. The second is the Policy Gauge, which "assesses the cumulative impact that a policy change might have on housing production across an entire jurisdiction." Galante also promises to share results from the dashboard as the Terner Center deploys it in real world scenarios.