Authored by Nikole Coleman, Planning Manager, City of Poulsbo, Wash.
To highlight ACS (American Community Survey) Awareness Month, the National League of Cities is spotlighting communities that have used ACS data to drive positive change in our From Data to Decisions series.
The City of Poulsbo, Wash. (pop. 11,975) has made data a central part of how it understands and plans for housing. During the City’s most recent Comprehensive Plan update, Poulsbo Planning staff completed its Housing Needs Assessment entirely in-house, rather than relying on a consultant to prepare the analysis. The American Community Survey (ACS) was one of the primary data sources for that work and continues to be an important tool for monitoring how the community is changing.
Building an In-House Housing Needs Assessment
Poulsbo’s Housing Needs Assessment (PDF) was developed to answer a fundamental question: Who lives in Poulsbo today, and what types of housing will the community need as it grows and changes?
Staff used ACS five-year estimates extensively to evaluate population characteristics, age, race and ethnicity, household size, housing tenure, household income, housing affordability and changes occurring over time. ACS data was supplemented with information from the Washington State Office of Financial Management, HUD Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS) data, employment data, housing production information and the City’s own land capacity analysis.
Importantly, the assessment did more than document current conditions. Staff examined trends over time and relationships between different data points to better understand what those changes mean for Poulsbo’s future housing needs.
For example, the analysis identified an aging population and changing household composition, while also showing that one- and two-person households make up a significant portion of Poulsbo households. It examined the growing difference between the incomes of renters and homeowners and found that renters were substantially more likely to experience housing cost burden.
Looking at these indicators together provides a much more meaningful picture than simply tracking population growth. It helps the City consider whether the housing being produced matches the incomes, household sizes, ages and needs of the people who live and work in the community.
Treating Housing Data as a Living Resource
One of the lessons from completing the Housing Needs Assessment in-house was that the information should not become static simply because the Comprehensive Plan was adopted.
To keep the information accessible and useful, planning staff developed Planning for Housing, a living document that brings together Poulsbo’s demographic, housing, affordability, employment, growth and housing production information in a format that can be regularly updated and used outside of the formal Comprehensive Plan process.
Each winter, as updated ACS estimates and other datasets become available, staff can refresh key demographic and housing indicators. This allows the City to compare new information with previous years and ask whether the trends identified during the Comprehensive Plan process are continuing, accelerating or changing.
That ongoing monitoring is particularly valuable in a growing community like Poulsbo. Housing conditions can change much faster than a periodic Comprehensive Plan update cycle. Maintaining the data as a living resource allows staff, elected officials and the public to have a more current understanding of the community when discussing housing policy, development regulations, infrastructure or other City decisions.
Moving from Data to Housing Policy
The value of this work became particularly clear during Poulsbo’s 2026 Housing Affordability City Council Workshop Series. Rather than beginning the conversation with a predetermined list of policies, the City structured the workshop series to first establish a shared understanding of Poulsbo’s housing conditions before evaluating potential responses.
The series began with the question “What is Affordable Housing?” and examined local demographics, housing costs, income, employment and wages, housing production and cost burden. Subsequent workshops explored why housing is expensive, what factors are within or outside of local government control and what regulatory and non-regulatory tools the City could realistically consider. The final workshop focused on prioritizing potential strategies for further implementation.
ACS and related housing data provided an important factual foundation for those discussions. Instead of talking about housing affordability only in broad regional or national terms, the City Council could see what affordability looks like specifically in Poulsbo: who is renting versus owning, what households earn, how many households are cost-burdened, what local jobs pay and how those conditions have changed.
That foundation helped shift the discussion from simply asking whether Poulsbo has a housing affordability problem to the more useful questions of where the greatest needs exist, what is driving those needs and which tools are appropriate for a city of Poulsbo’s size and circumstances.
Creating an Ongoing Feedback Loop
Poulsbo’s approach is ultimately about creating a feedback loop between data, planning, implementation and monitoring.
ACS data helped inform the Housing Needs Assessment and the City’s Comprehensive Plan housing policies. That work was translated into the more accessible Planning for Housing document and subsequently helped support the City Council’s detailed housing affordability discussions. Going forward, annual demographic updates will allow the City to monitor whether the assumptions underlying those policies remain accurate and whether community conditions are moving in the anticipated direction.
For a smaller city with limited resources, completing this work in-house has also built significant internal capacity. Planning staff are not simply receiving a consultant’s final report; they understand where the data comes from, how the indicators relate to one another and how to update and apply that information as new policy questions arise.
The ACS makes that possible by providing a consistent source of detailed community-level information that can be revisited over time. For Poulsbo, it has become more than a dataset used during a periodic planning exercise. It is an ongoing tool for understanding who our community is, how it is changing and whether the housing opportunities available in Poulsbo are keeping pace with the people who live and work here.
What Does Census Data Say About Your Community?
Explore your own community’s ACS data now.
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