The city of Syracuse has turned to artificial intelligence hoping to speed up a key step in the process of housing development.
City officials applied for a federal grant in July that would integrate AI into the city’s permitting process, hoping to expedite the review of architectural drawings for commercial projects.
The grant, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could give the city $1.5 million to contract services that allow for review of design drawings, checking for compliance with state and local building codes. Councilors approved a measure to allow the city to apply for the grant at their July 13 meeting.
HUD officials have stated they want the grant to prove as a test for the viability, effectiveness, and cost savings that could come from automating permitting processes.
City officials’ efforts to speed up and streamline the blueprint review part of the permitting process come at a time when economic development experts in the region have given city leaders clear targets for housing production in anticipation of increasing housing needs.
The state anticipates that the region will need more than 30,000 new homes in the next 12 years to accommodate additional demand generated by Micron Technology’s $100 billion campus in Clay. Currently, the area is not on pace to meet that quota. Last year, the city on its own approved 14 permits for one and two-family homes, as well as 23 for multi-family buildings.
For economic development and housing developers in the region, a slow permitting process contributes to mounting housing costs already sky-high due to the rising cost of materials and difficult environment for financing.
Home HeadQuarters Inc. CEO Kerry Quaglia said permitting and potential delays in that process trigger a cascading effect that up the costs of development. Because developers hire planners and engineering specialists to shore up permit applications, a drawn out process that requires constant revisions adds up in the form of consulting costs, Quaglia noted.
“Time is money,” he said. “The amount of extra time that everything is taking, plus the fact that we need to house more people in our community, and we can’t do it because we can’t get the product out, it turns into a very frustrating process.”
CenterState CEO Director of Research and Planning Jared Shepard said speeding up permitting is one of the variables that municipalities have control over to facilitate the production of housing. Developers, Shepard said, will pass on the costs of production to the eventual renters or homeowners if a prolonged permitting process amounts to higher development costs.
“It goes into the cost of the housing to wait two, three years, sometimes, depending on the size of the project,” Shepard said.
Some city officials say they have been looking for ways to streamline and speed up the process since 2018. Jessica Brandt, the director of the city’s Central Permit Office, said it became a focus of her office at that time.
Brandt told Central Current the permitting process for construction of a new multi-family residential project takes on average around four to six weeks to be completed. That timeline varies from applicant to applicant and largely depends on the type of project, she added.
The timeline is a step-up from 2019, when that same process, on average, would take 70 days, according to Sol Muñoz, a city spokesperson.
City officials say they expect to continue ramping up toward that 30,000 new housing units figure, and a part of that is streamlining the regulatory permitting process. Last year, according to Michael Collins, Syracuse’s commissioner of neighborhood and business development, the region added about half of the yearly projection. Collins said the bulk of that is concentrated in Syracuse.
“I feel optimistic,” Brandt said.
‘That is a lot of money’
Jake Dishaw, the deputy commissioner of code enforcement and zoning administration, and Collins told the council that data protection and a closed-loop system that doesn’t use large-scale AI language models are lines in the sand the city can draw during the RFP process — if HUD awards the grant.
HUD has recommended that municipalities use platforms like PermitFlow, Blitz Permits, CivCheck and Permitify to develop the tool to track the permitting process. Six municipalities can be awarded anywhere between $300,000 to $1.5 million to track the flow of automated permitting for up to three years.
Syracuse officials have had conversations with Blitz Permits. Founded in 2020, the company has claimed up to 80% reduction in turnaround time, accelerating housing and infrastructure projects.
A Blitz senior manager demoed the product discussed in a pitch meeting with city Chief Information Officer Vincent Scipione for Central Current reporters. The presentation conducted by Brittany Griffin, the company’s principal planner, showed how the technology would work.
During the demonstration, Griffin, playing the role of the permit applicant, uploaded a residential permit application for a project in the city of Naples, Florida.
The file was then analyzed by the service, opening a new portal for Griffin to see a list of requirements both present and missing from the application. The requirements were crosschecked with local Naples codes.
Griffin said the product does not draw from prompts or internet searches to analyze the application the way a product like ChatGPT. Instead, it works with the instructions submitted and modified by city officials in charge of permitting.
“There’s a human in the loop with the AI,” Griffin said.
The system also allows for city planners to review the service’s AI analysis of the permit application. The city plans on having a planner review every application and provide feedback even if applications are processed by AI.
Blitz’s product can take between 20 minutes to an hour to analyze the application packet, Griffin said.
“If you weren’t using AI, that would take three to five weeks to get back,” she said. “You’re paying a contractor for his time to hold your spot. That’s a lot of money.”
Will AI recreate the harms of the past?
Lawmakers and racial justice experts have raised concerns about the use of AI in permitting — especially about data retention.
Some city councilors have also said they worry about replicating some of the injustices of past urban development periods like mass discrimination against Black prospective homeowners.
Councilor Patrona Jones-Rowser said she doesn’t want to see the technology used against underprivileged permit applicants. She said she worries the AI service will be used to validate and propagate exclusionary housing practices during the permit application process.
Councilor Hanah Ehrenreich said she would not consider supporting the use of AI in government operations unless the vendor would commit to a “lockbox” system that didn’t allow for the personal data of Syracusan’s to escape local containment.
The council cut ties earlier this year with Flock Safety, a company that is in the middle of experiencing national public blowback for the use of its automatic license plate reader technology. Civil liberties advocates say law enforcement’s use of the technology in deportation operations, harassment and stalking of women by municipal law enforcement, and law enforcement investigations on women seeking reproductive healthcare services is untenable.
To replace Flock’s technology, the city entered a contract with Axon Enterprise — a move that has been panned by civil liberties advocates due to Axon’s direct ties to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“I would need to know that this was a lockbox system similar to Axon and I don’t believe you can guarantee me that at this point. I am not interested in moving forward with this,” Ehrenreich said to Collins at the July 13 meeting.
The usage of AI in housing development has been met with concern from economic justice advocates. Fair housing experts nationally have warned government officials that AI use in processes like housing finance and leasing continues to replicate entrenched discriminatory practices.
Locally, Lanessa Owens-Chaplin, the director of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Director of the Racial Justice Center, shared concerns about the use of AI in permitting..
“My primary concern is that the algorithm will kind of mimic some of the laws on the books that we haven’t really vetted through a racial equity lens,” Owens-Chaplin said. “If we’re not having that conversation or thinking through ways to alleviate some of that abuse of power in the permitting process, it’s just going to continue to replicate.”
City officials, in response, have said that the potential AI service would be more akin to a checklist, exclusively analyzing blueprint designs and referencing state and local property codes to ensure applicant compliance.
A city official from Corona, California, who has overseen the adoption of this type of AI integration told Central Current the technology doesn’t typically make use of a personal criterion to decide on whether or not to approve a permit.
“It’s more about reviewing all of the policies before they’re entered into the system, making sure they’re nothing old or biased,” Chris McMasters, Corona’s chief information officer, said. Corona has been using Blitz’s AI service in its permitting process since 2024
Concerns about discriminatory practices should be aimed at local codes, McMasters said.
McMasters said Blitz’s tool has helped Corona expedite its permitting process.
For example, processing for an accessory dwelling unit permit would take up to two weeks. Now, it can be done within seven minutes, he said.
For city officials, the technology helps address a longtime problem.
“There is a safe way to do this efficiently, solve something that I’ve been talking to you all or different versions of the council since 2018 to improve the efficiency of permitting,” said Dishaw at the council’s July 13 meeting. “I think we can do it in the right way.”
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