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When Stefano McCoy set out to build an accessory dwelling unit on his family’s property in Mountain View, he did not anticipate that it would take two and a half years to get the permits finalized, largely because the process was so unfamiliar to him.
“I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into,” McCoy said. “Anyone who’s undergone any sort of project, be it an ADU or an addition, always runs into walls – specifically in Mountain View but also all over the place.”
Looking to ease the pain points, McCoy and two friends developed an app to help people navigate the city’s building process for single-family homes. Dubbed Buildability, the free app officially launched in January with the idea of providing quick answers to questions about what it takes to build and fix up a residential dwelling.
The app uses data from tens of thousands of Mountain View permit records for single-family homes from the past several years, McCoy said. Buildability provides information for users who have questions about what they can construct on their property, based on the permit histories for similar properties.
The process is facilitated by an artificial intelligence chatbot that can answer questions like how much square footage a site can accommodate or how long a project might take. It also can answer questions about fees and city regulations, including what is allowed or not allowed for a specific property.
“It pulls people in your same neighborhood that have done projects to give you a better idea of what you’re in for,” McCoy said. “You can put in any address in Mountain View and start to get insights on it.”
The tool comes as state leaders are looking to tackle California’s housing crisis by making it easier for developers and property owners to build homes. This includes ADUs, which are sometimes referred to as “backyard homes” and are seen as a naturally affordable housing option.
City spokesperson Lenka Wright told the Voice that the city welcomes innovative technology to help residents with building projects but also expressed some concern about the reliability of using artificial intelligence.
“The city anticipates more development of online tools using generative artificial intelligence in the local government space,” Wright said in an email. “While AI technology has great potential, concerns remain about the accuracy of information and the correct application of the city’s regulations.”
Wright encouraged residents to reach out to the city’s permit center to confirm applicable processes and requirements. She also noted that the city has streamlined various review processes for single-family home and ADU projects.
Who is using Buildability?
Buildability has reached a range of users so far, including homeowners, realtors, developers and architects, according to McCoy. Many of these users are particularly curious about ADUs.
“We can see that is by far the thing that people are most interested in,” McCoy said. “A lot of people are starting to take the first steps into seeing what they can do with their property.”
Plans to add more features to the app also are being developed, according to McCoy. The group recently launched a “buildability score” that helps users estimate the “unrealized equity potential” of putting an ADU on their property, as well as other kinds of additions.
It is also now possible to look up addresses in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Los Altos. McCoy noted that they are focusing first on the Peninsula and plan to add more cities over time.
“Ultimately, we want to do every city in California and hopefully in the United States,” he said.
Kudos to Stefano McCoy for creating this building permit app.
It show where private sector initiative, expertise, and practicality can focus resources where it is needed to solve a real problem.
Sour Grapes Award to the City of Mountain View.
Their response is entirely predictable. So funny.
The “AI can be wrong” argument is so expected. Ha ha.
And typical of an amateur grade, “not get the job done” response from the City of MV.
Sure, AI can be wrong. And interpreted incorrectly by people who don’t know anything about AI.
But AI is pretty good at going out and fetching data existing on the internet. Of course, it is up to the human to read the data, and do a sanity check on it, and generate questions. But fetching data is not reasoning, it is merely going out and finding the rules, regulations already published. These rules and regulations are not well documented by the City of MV. And if documented, they are created in a hard to read manner. So hopefully Stefan’s application can help all the regular people out there who just want to build an ADU but don’t have the time and experience to dig through the arcane documentation which is written in a user hostile manner. AI is not too good at reasoning right now, but Stefan’s app is not built for reasoning, it is just to find out about rules and regulations so a normal human trying to build an ADU can find out what the facts are so they can plan and meet those rules and regulations.
It is so expected that City of MV responded in such a Sour Grapes manner. Stefan should be applauded for doing the work which should have been done by City of Mountain View. Notice how City of Mountain View did not even acknowledge the difficulty in moving through the Building Permit process? And how it took Stefan 2.5 years to move through it. City of MV should have acknowledged that 2.5 years is a failure on their part, and how they plan to make it easier and faster to move through the permitting process.