How Bend, Oregon, Tackled the Housing Crisis with Enterprise GIS

The City of Bend is a fast-growing municipality in central Oregon. With the second-lowest tax rate in the state, an outdoor lifestyle, growing businesses, and a community-oriented feel, the city has experienced recent sustained population growth, placing new pressure on the housing market. Leaders knew the city was undersupplied by several thousand units and lacking in diversity of housing types. And while there were plenty of permit approvals for construction, many new homes were priced far above what the median household income could support. This mismatch made it evident that permit counts alone couldn’t explain the truth on the ground. To respond effectively, planners needed a clearer view of where housing was being built, what types were being delivered, the length of the review process, and what barriers were preventing more attainable options from moving forward. City staff began pulling reports to answer these questions.

To understand the housing shortage, city staff started with some basic questions: How many units were being permitted? What types of housing were being built? How long were approvals taking? Was new development addressing affordability needs?  However, these questions revealed inconsistencies. The city’s data lived in disconnected systems. Depending on how a question was framed—calendar year versus fiscal year, issued versus in-process permits—the answers could vary widely. This lack of a single, trusted source of truth became increasingly problematic as Bend’s housing shortage intensified. Bend leaders faced growing scrutiny from the city council, residents, and the development community, all asking for clearer explanations for delays in housing production and permitting timelines. The State of Oregon also introduced more detailed reporting requirements, including breaking housing data down by income levels rather than broad categories like single family or multifamily.

To move from reactive explanations to proactive planning, Bend focused first on improving data quality. The city underwent major system transitions, replacing both its permitting and financial systems with a comprehensive geospatial platform. Earlier attempts to answer housing questions were slowed by the city’s technology history. Bend started with a paper-based permitting process before moving to an electronic plan review solution in the mid-2000s. Eventually, the city outgrew this legacy permitting software. To create a reliable system of record, Bend identified ArcGIS Enterprise as the foundation for unifying authoritative data and making it usable across departments. The city built an integration with GIS so staff could connect permits, projects, and inspections to real locations. The new approach made it easier to add and track new reporting fields as state, federal, and local requirements evolved—without rebuilding the entire workflow each time.
 

With integrated, location-based data in place, the next step was to make that information easy to understand and share. To do this, the city used ArcGIS Dashboards to deploy several dashboards on housing production, permitting activity, timelines, and geographic patterns. These are all accessed using ArcGIS Hub, an extension of ArcGIS Online, in a single, accessible location. Dashboards are updated daily and drawn from the same authoritative datasets used internally, creating a common narrative for staff, leadership, developers, and the public. After establishing transparency around what was happening, the city used the same data to understand why it was happening—and where policy could make the biggest difference.

Within the Hub site, residents and stakeholders can see progress toward housing goals, explore heat maps showing where different permit types are concentrated, and track how production changes over time. Internally, staff use the same data to run operational reporting and spot bottlenecks early—down to whether delays are happening during city review or while applicants respond. Because the dashboards refresh daily, everyone is on the same page. The city can answer questions consistently in meetings, reducing confusion about what the numbers mean, and keeping conversations focused on data-driven solutions rather than speculation.
 

Beyond monitoring permits, the team began connecting permitting data to parcels and zoning to understand where capacity existed—and where it didn’t. By compiling information on which lots were realistically available for housing under current zoning and development rules, Bend officials could see gaps between planned capacity and what the market was producing. That spatial lens helped staff identify specific areas and lot types that would require zoning or code changes to better support the kinds of housing the community needed.

While the parcel and zoning analysis supported long-range decisions, the dashboard and supporting reports operationally improved transparency around permitting timelines. By clearly showing how long applications spend in city review versus applicant response, staff can have more productive, data-backed conversations with developers. Instead of debating anecdotes, teams can point to shared metrics that help developers plan their work and help the city demonstrate accountability. Over time, this consistency has helped quiet misinformation and rebuild trust after earlier system challenges.
 

The Housing Hub has also become a strategic tool beyond day-to-day operations. The city now uses housing data to evaluate the real-world impact of policy changes, identify trends linked to state legislation, and support discussions at the state level with concrete evidence. This created a feedback loop where the city could test a policy change, monitor the permitting response, and adjust course based on evidence.

As housing affordability has become both a statewide and national concern, Oregon has also introduced reforms intended to make “missing middle” housing development easier than ever. For example, Bend did not see an increase in production, so planners used permitting data to analyze barriers and identify regulations that were impeding accessory dwelling unit (ADU) development. After making policy adjustments, the team continued tracking ADU permits to pinpoint which changes led to increased production.

Taken together, these improvements gave leadership a clearer, statewide picture of Bend’s housing production. Furthermore, the State of Oregon has recognized the city as the example for every other city in the state to emulate, while leadership can use the online hub to reference the exact policies that have created this growth. 

Today, the City of Bend can answer questions with confidence and consistency. Leaders can now see year-over-year trends in housing production, understand where permits are coming in geographically, and distinguish between policy changes and their concrete outcomes. This clarity has shifted conversations with elected officials and state agencies from speculation to evidence-based discussion.