ITHACA, N.Y. — The City of Ithaca has made a bounty of housing data available to the public with the rollout of its new “Housing Dashboard.”
The Housing Dashboard is intended to be an informational one-stop shop. Different sections highlights the city’s total housing inventory (14,629 housing units), the amount of legally-designated lower-and-moderate income housing available (1,690 units), the number of housing units built under construction or approved and “pending construction” (1,244 units), and the number of units approved since 2020 (3,026 units). Housing counts are separated by building size, by project if it was approved or built since 2020, and by affordable vs. market rate status.
The dashboard’s launch was announced on Jan. 8. The project was spearheaded by Planning & Development Director Lisa Nicholas, and city planner Sam Quinn-Jacobs. Nicholas has worked in the city’s planning department for over 20 years, and Quinn-Jacobs, who grew up in the area, has worked with the city for the past three and a half years.
Nicholas said the city has always had the housing data that appears in the dashboard. The cost of housing in the Ithaca area has remained high, and remains a pressing issue for local lawmakers.
“I think now, with all the interest in housing and our affordable housing inventory, was a really great time to make that transparent to people so they will know. We wanted everybody – councilmembers, staff, the public – to have this information at their fingertips,” Nicholas said.
Aggregating and digitizing the data wasn’t an easy task, Quinn-Jacobs said. Ithaca has about 200 years of property records. Those tens of thousands of records are incomplete and inconsistent, so additional work was required to verify the accuracy of data and “clean” it, a process that Nicholas described as taking significantly more time and work than creating the housing dashboard itself.
Quinn-Jacobs noted that there is a little potential wiggle room for final unit counts in larger projects due to changes in internal configuration during pre-construction, but substantial changes would still need to be reviewed and approved by city staff and the city’s Planning & Development Board, so the data for projects in the pipeline is fairly solid once the building permit is issued.
Tracking housing construction site data has its quirks. For example, the 95-acre Southworks redevelopment straddles both the city of Ithaca and the town of Ithaca. The project has 915 housing units planned to be built out in different phases, with some units coming up in the city and others in the town.
Quinn-Jacobs said SouthWorks is not on the dashboard yet because no explicit housing plan, either on the city’s side or the town’s side of the property, has been approved. However, it’s possible they may add the town’s portion of the site with a footnote on the dashboard; there’s no immediate rush on what approach to take, given the project will take about 15 years to build out.
Another important detail of note – the dashboard represents “gross” gains of housing units. If a three-unit apartment house in Collegetown comes down for a 30-unit apartment building, the dashboard will show 30 units, not the “net” gain of 27.
Quinn-Jacobs said a net housing pipeline subheading could be possible in a future dashboard update. The site also does not track non-residential construction, though Nicholas noted that the large majority of projects in the city are housing developments.
As currently planned, the planning department plans to do regular quarterly updates to the dashboard unless a large change occurs. . “One thing I was maybe surprised about was that the number of large buildings we have, 100+ units, is fewer than I had visualized in my head,” Quinn-Jacobs said.
Now, it’s tempting when seeing these large numbers thrown around to ascribe this as proof that Ithaca’s housing issues are overblown. But as Nicholas noted, the county housing assessment and rising rents demonstrate otherwise.
Nicholas noted that while the dashboard shows that the city is seeing increases in its housing stock, Ithaca is still experiencing rising rents and needs more homes to meet demand.
“The market is going to be the final determinant factor on if things get built. But our vacancy rate is still quite low, and our rents are still quite high. With all the remote work, and our quality of life, there are a lot of people who want to live the lifestyle that the city has to offer.”
The planning department is requesting that members of the public reach out if they have ideas or critiques for improving the dashboard. Feedback, comments and suggestions can be sent to planninginfo@cityofithaca.org.
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