Report 2021-125 Recommendation 2 Responses

Report 2021-125: Regional Housing Needs Assessments: The Department of Housing and Community Development Must Improve Its Processes to Ensure That Communities Can Adequately Plan for Housing (Release Date: March 2022)

Recommendation #2 To: Housing and Community Development, Department of

To ensure that its needs assessments are accurate and do not contain unnecessary errors, by June 2022 HCD should institute a process to ensure that its staff performs multiple reviews of data in its assessments, including data that staff members input and councils of governments submit.

6-Month Agency Response

HCD has created a review checklist that tracks the submission and verification of data provided by the COG during the consultation phase. The checklist will prompt staff to confirm and verify the data submitted by the COG, as well as the source of the data and any applicable notes as to why the data was either accepted or rejected. The checklist will also include a space for manager review and approval.

In order to ensure the accuracy of data gathered by HCD, and confirm data submitted by the COG, HCD staff have updated needs assessment documents to include application programming interfaces (APIs) which will reduce reliance on copy and paste for certain data sources.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Fully Implemented

60-Day Agency Response

Create checklist which documents the data submitted by the COG, prompts staff to confirm the accuracy of the data submitted, and documents how factors were considered.

Include data verification and confirmation checks in the RHNA data workbook.

Ensure multiple levels of review, from staff to management, of data inputs and review checklist to ensure completion of checklist and review materials.

Consider implementing new data gathering methods, such as utilizing application programming interfaces (API's) which can reduce errors caused by copy/paste or other manual collection methods.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

After additional communication with HCD, it clarified that the list of actions provided in its response are those that it is taking to implement the recommendation. HCD further clarified that the fourth item should state that it is testing new data gathering methods, rather than just considering them.

All Recommendations in 2021-125

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.