Berkeley Housing Pipeline Analysis

This is the technical beginning. To quickly see all 174 projects, click on the **Pipeline Explorer** button below, then on **Spatial**

These several web sites are designed to track every step of our actual housing development from permit application to certificate of occupancy to actual occupation. Originally built to prepare Berkeley's Annual Progrss Report to the California Housing and Community Development department using an independent, completely open public database constructed from the City of Berkeley Open.Gov data, we now have outlined a new way to enlist thousands of data science students and instructors to help our overburdened planning offices in every city tell our housing story in a clear and accurate way. These pages are a first attempt.

In building our independent APR for 2023, 2024, and 2025, it became clear that the official APR suffered from cumulative double counting, errors in dating of entitlements, of issuance of actual building permits and inspections. Since Berkeley submitted its report to HCD on March 26, 2026, covering 202, here are the differences; we corrected for accounting errors and redundant project entries for both Table A and Table A-1. The more accurate number of residential units issued building permits is as follows:

Not huge errors, but when Berkeley is tasked by the State to enable over 1,000 new units to be built each year until 2031, we are behind in applications for permits, behind in entitlements, behind in building permits issued, and, most importantly, behind in buildings completed and ready for occupancy. The State tracks building permits issued: the real issue is that almost all actual construction is stalled due to increased building costs, a decreasing labor force, higher interest rates, and lower levels of bank lending and investor interest.

An off-setting new supply comes from UC Berkeley, with almost 4,000 new beds in dormitories under constuction, putting downward pressure on rental costs.