Use Seattle’s New Data Portal to Track Housing Affordability, Stats, & More

The City of Seattle recently unveiled Performance Seattle: a website where residents and government employees can dig into what’s going on in our city and see how well Seattle is performing.

The site currently houses seven dashboards, tracking the city’s performance on everything from basic services to housing affordability to homelessness. It illustrates the city’s progress with data visualizations like graphs, maps and charts as well as written reports.

While all this information was publicly accessible before, the new site brings it all together in one accessible place.

The launch of Performance Seattle follows months of criticism about how the city has handled the housing and transit crises associated with its rapid growth as one of the biggest tech hubs in the country.

Taking inspiration from cities like Boston and Chicago, which both launched similar portals in 2017, this site was created to make sure the city gets things done. According to a press release, Performance Seattle will ensure that the city meets specific goals, like its commitment to repair 80 percent of potholes in 30 days and have the police department respond to 100 percent of its Priority 1 calls. It’s centered around accountability.

This launch is a product of months of work by the Seattle Innovation and Performance team and was developed in collaboration with more than 150 city staff. The city has also been working with Results for America and What Works Cities, which recognized the city for its use of data in city government.

Explore the complete database here.