The Greater Portland Council of Governments has launched an online housing dashboard that it says will fill a gap in accurate, town-level building data.
Senior planner and data manager Rick Harbison helped design the project.
"We're in a housing crisis, we have statewide targets for housing growth, but we don't really have accurate data on how much housing is being built," he said.
Harbison said the dashboard tracks building permits collected directly from towns in Cumberland County, information he said is often siloed within towns.
"This really shows it all in one place, allows you to see how the region is doing, where the growth is happening within the region, from community to community," he said, adding that building permits offer a more accurate picture than Census estimates.
Going back to 2004, the tracker shows the greater Portland area falling well short of new construction targets most years.
Harbison said the tracker project was developed with support from the state Department of Economic and Community Development, and could be eventually be scaled up to cover more communities across Maine.
