California City Turns to AI to Meet Housing Goals
“In California, local governments have been tasked with creating 2.5 million new housing units by 2030, one million of which are supposed to be affordable. For many jurisdictions, however, it’s a steep hill to climb, as development projects continue to be bogged down by complicated, time-consuming permitting processes.
The city of Corona is no exception to permitting delays that often drive up building costs and further fuel housing shortages. Residents and developers are constantly submitting building plans that have to undergo evaluation by reviewers who have to check those documents against hundreds of policies and requirements, according to Chris McMasters, chief information officer for Corona, California.
That means obtaining a permit in Corona could take several weeks to several months, sometimes even stretching out to more than a year.
“We see that as a constant pain point,” McMasters said, and with staff and budget constraints, current resources to sift through the incoming and backlogged permit processes are “never enough, and it’s never fast enough.”
Enter artificial intelligence. By automating parts of the permit application and compliance process, “we want to reduce the menial tasks that government does, and make [the process] more accurate and make it faster to help our employees,” he said.
Leveraging AI for permitting was an ideal use case for introducing the technology into city operations because “you’re not telling it to create art, you’re just telling it to compare this against that,” McMasters said.”
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