Take the data with you

Every number on the dashboard is available as JSON or CSV, free for journalists, researchers, students, and anyone else building on Portland's public data.

JSON endpoints

Each dashboard topic has a JSON endpoint with the headline metric, trend, time series, source attribution, and insights:

GET https://www.portlandciviclab.org/api/dashboard/{topic}

{
  "headline": "...",          // plain-language summary
  "headlineValue": 1234,      // the key number
  "trend": { "direction": "up", "percentage": 5, "label": "vs last year" },
  "chartData": [ { "date": "2026-04", "value": 1234 }, ... ],
  "source": "Portland Bureau of ... ",
  "insights": [ "..." ]
}

Available topics:

climatehousingsafetyhomelessnessfiscaleconomyeconomic-healtheducationqualityaccountability

CSV downloads

The same topics download as CSV. These are the identical files behind the “Export CSV” button on each dashboard page:

GET https://www.portlandciviclab.org/api/dashboard/{topic}/export

Ground rules

Free to use, no key, no signup. Attribution to Portland Civic Lab (and the original government source, listed in every response) is appreciated.
Responses are cached for up to an hour; please don't poll more often than that.
Know the caveats: the methodology page documents each source's lag, bias, and known issues.
These endpoints are young and their shapes may change. If you build something on them, tell us so we don't break you.

Want the raw pipelines?

The ingestion scripts, the schema, and the site are all open source under AGPL-3.0 at github.com/ekrolewicz6/portland-civic-lab. The code is AGPL. The writing is CC BY-ND, so share it whole with a link, but don't publish altered versions under our name. The curated datasets are CC BY: use them, build on them, credit the Lab and the original public source.