But as high-quality 3D modeling and layered spatial data become easier to produce, visual narratives emerge as powerful tools for policymaking. This can help mediate objections to new affordable housing construction. Interactive digital tools offer a practical way to engage residents, advocates and private partners across sectors and neighborhoods.
Fairfax County, Va., shows how maps and dashboards can be a critical part of responding to the affordable housing crisis by building greater consensus and identifying new sites using transparency and GIS mapping. This layered ecosystem of data visualization tools changed how the county plans, communicates and delivers affordable housing while, crucially, bringing communities along.
At the center is a Power BI dashboard maintained by Affordable Housing Program Manager David Huaman that tracks both outcomes and equity. The dashboard displays units by committed affordable housing program, area median income level, unit size, supervisor district, development center and transit corridor, as well as market-rate affordability. It maps the full development and preservation pipeline using geocoding to overlay data on Fairfax’s development and transit centers.
The county set a goal of creating 5,000 affordable housing units by 2034, then increased it to 10,000. Fairfax also has a parallel goal of no net loss of existing affordable units, so the new production adds to, rather than replaces, the county’s affordable housing supply.
Making progress visible on a public dashboard creates accountability. County staff can easily track progress, advocacy organizations can make the case for more production and every community can see exactly how its neighborhood is contributing to the countywide goal.
Fairfax has built a full public-facing ecosystem on ArcGIS Online that lets any user move from the big picture down to a single parcel. Residents and planners can access thousands of approved site plans, compliance histories and development records, all searchable by parcel.
The county maintains a real-time comprehensive spatial data catalog of planning, zoning, real estate, infrastructure, environmental and community-based data sets and tools for generating maps and reports. The planning department also created specialized tools such as a Zoning and Active Cases Map. The Infill and Conservation Plan Viewer maps lot-level grading and environmental constraints relevant to future development sites. For deeper spatial analysis, Fairfax offers more than 170 additional data layers to combine and analyze. The county’s 3D viewer fuses building models with lidar data, allowing both planners and community members to visualize the built environment in three dimensions.
Future layers in development include transit ridership data and heat maps of affordable day-care availability, cross-departmental overlays that connect housing decisions to the full ecosystem of services residents rely on every day. “Housing is really the fundamental that helps drive all other outcomes,” said Anna Shapiro, a deputy director at Fairfax County Housing and Community Development.
In Centreville, a community undergoing a comprehensive plan amendment that hasn’t seen new affordable housing development in recent years, Huaman used the dashboard to generate conversation. Community members could see the shortage themselves, becoming advocates for the project.
The tools also reinforce a principle the county board has been explicit about: Affordable housing must be distributed across all districts, not concentrated only in cheaper or easier-to-develop areas.
According to Shapiro, by examining housing questions as part of bigger needs, “it is far harder to push affordable housing to an isolated site when a GIS layer shows, parcel by parcel, which locations actually serve residents’ daily lives.” Starting with a map, not a meeting, making the goals and progress public, and connecting housing to daily life position Fairfax County for success in closing the gap.
