New dashboard spotlights metro housing gaps
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
A regional dashboard now tracks which metro cities are adding affordable housing — and which are not.
Why it matters: Des Moines leaders have long argued the city carries too much of the region's affordable housing burden while some suburbs do little or nothing.
How it works: The Polk County Housing Trust Fund (PCHTF) dashboard sets a nonbinding affordable housing target for each city equal to 10% of its projected five-year housing growth, spokesperson Matt Hauge tells Axios.
- The goal is not a mandate but is meant to help cities understand the scale of affordable housing they could consider as they expand, Hauge said.
The intrigue: The dashboard builds on PCHTF's inventory of federally backed housing and will track new income-restricted projects as they are completed.
State of play: Every city will start at zero because PCHTF began tracking data when the dashboard launched.
- The group expects to update the dashboard annually, likely in January.
- It is also meeting with cities to help include non-federally funded housing projects that may not be recognized in their initial counts.
Reality check: Des Moines has historically produced and tracked more because it receives its own federal housing allocation and must report it annually.
- Most suburbs do not have the same reporting requirements, making comparisons harder.
The bottom line: The dashboard is expected to provide cities with a clearer benchmark and give residents a way to see whether affordable housing is keeping pace with growth.
What we're watching: Whether public scorekeeping pushes more suburbs to support income-restricted housing projects.