Local governments turn to AI to streamline housing development 

As local governments face mounting pressure to streamline the review process for residential projects, a wave of AI-driven reforms is revealing how modern tools can shave days or weeks off approvals, potentially speeding up housing development.

For 15-plus years, pressure has been growing on a shrinking, aging municipal development workforce to carry a heavier, more complex regulatory load. The result has been a de facto national underinvestment in permitting/inspection capacity, measured in tens of billions of dollars in missing labor and delayed construction value.

That’s unlikely to get better anytime soon.

However, on the city, county, and state levels, government agencies are increasingly turning to AI to streamline the development review and permitting process. Some municipalities, from California to Florida, are also leveraging AI to issue permits quickly in the wake of a natural disaster. 

Hernando County, FL, a suburban county north of Tampa, experienced extensive damage during Hurricane Helene last year. As a result, local officials faced a surge in permit applications from residents and developers eager to rebuild. To process these applications quickly, the county partnered with Swiftbuild.ai’s SwiftGov application. 

The platform, tailored to each municipality’s requirements, reviews lengthy application documents to ensure compliance with building codes and zoning standards. It automates many of the tedious tasks associated with the initial zoning review process, such as reviewing landscaping requirements and measuring setbacks.

Florida law mandates that municipalities determine the status and confirm or identify deficiencies in land use applications within 30 days, a tall task for a hurricane-worn county facing a surge in applications.

SwiftGov helped Hernando County officials provide feedback to applicants in 2 days on average, compared with the 30 days it took before adopting the platform. A spokesperson for the county confirmed that zoning review times have decreased significantly, in some cases by several weeks.

“There was a huge influx of permits, and they also had a lot of outdated systems. It was kind of the perfect storm for us to help them out, so that’s where we achieved the savings,” said John Mirkin, Co-Founder at Swiftbuild.ai.

A similar partnership is taking place on the West Coast. In April, months after multiple fires damaged homes throughout Los Angeles County, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of a new AI software, created by Archistar, to help Los Angeles City and County accelerate the approval process for rebuilding permits. 

According to LA County, the AI software will review and generate a report for many building plans in just one business day. 

More municipalities are turning to AI to streamline the review process

Altamonte Springs, FL, a suburban city near Orlando, launched a pilot program with AutoReview.AI in 2023, becoming one of the first municipalities in the state to implement automated review of site plans and landscape plans. 

The pilot program ran out, and the company is no longer in operation. However, city manager Frank Martz says that the technology made the initial site plan review process much more efficient. It even enabled the city to identify some errors in its code that could be confusing to an architect or engineer. 

“What we found was a highly accelerated review that became possible because of the software. What used to take us a week took us three to four minutes,” Martz said. “When you can cut days, in some cases weeks, off of site plan review, you have helped a developer save money.”

Many large municipalities announced similar partnerships with AI platforms just this year. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, for example, signed an executive order in June directing that all development applications in the city be reviewed and processed by an AI pilot program led by a dedicated Permitting and Customer Trust (PACT) team. Full rollout is expected in 2026. 

Bellevue, a large suburban city near Seattle, announced a similar pilot partnership with Govstream.ai. 

The City of Austin, TX, launched an AI tool in September, in collaboration with Archistar, that it hopes will expedite the zoning review process for residential developers. The tool is in a beta phase, but city officials expect that it could be adopted more widely soon. 

Earlier this year, the City of Honolulu also announced that it plans to speed up the permitting process with the help of AI.

The federal government is also getting in on the trend. A Permitting Technology Action Plan from the Council on Environmental Quality seeks to leverage AI to expedite the federal environmental review and permitting processes for a variety of infrastructure projects. 

AI is a useful tool, but not a magic wand

Sabrina Duga, Co-founder at Swiftbuild.ai, says that there’s been increasing interest in AI among government officials over the past year or two — a night and day difference from several years ago. 

“Imagine talking about AI to the government six years ago,” she said.

Despite this increased acceptance and implementation of AI, her partner, John Mirkin, says that they have to explain to local government officials that there is a lot of backend work that goes into a successful rollout. 

“Some of them are expecting that, once we have this, it’s just instant permits,” he explained. “It’s a way to enhance efficient operations, but it’s not an automatic fix. If you have inconsistent data and you throw it into AI, you’re just getting inconsistent output. There’s a lot of structure that goes into it.”

Implications for homebuilders

The main implication for homebuilders is quite clear. If more municipalities can successfully reduce review times and issue permits faster using AI, then builders can develop housing more quickly and efficiently. Increasing adoption of AI among local governments signals that this technology could become far more commonplace in the years ahead.

Mirkin’s words also offer some advice to homebuilders looking to implement AI in their own organizations. Whether a local government, a nonprofit, or a private-sector company, organizations across all industries must sufficiently plan before adopting AI.

“It’s not like you just click a button and it’s going to save time. You have to really take a look at processes and how it’s going to integrate into your systems,” Mirkin says.