Earlier this year, the city of Bellevue, Washington, turned to artificial intelligence to help monitor pedestrian safety in an effort to cut down on traffic accidents. The tech hub is also employing AI to meet another goal: speeding up permitting.
In partnership with Govstream.ai, Bellevue is aiming to reduce its pre-application inquiries by 30% and cut application resubmissions in half using the Seattle-based company’s AI tools.
“This partnership reflects our vision as a city where people want to be,” City Manager Diane Carlson said in an August announcement of the pilot program. “The initiative will help reduce the turnaround time and complexity of permit applications — an objective Bellevue has prioritized for several years. We think it will reduce headaches for residents and staff alike.”
The three-phase pilot program includes 24/7 chatbots that can answer questions for city staff and provide real-time application guidance and reviews for applications. The parties believe the AI aid will free up city workers to focus on more complex issues.
Govstream.ai’s PermitGuide tool provides parcel-specific guidance and can draft responses for city staff via email, web and voice based on the city’s codes and policies, according to the company, which called permitting “one of the first, most fixable levers in the housing crisis.”
“Our goal is to give permit techs, planners, and reviewers an intelligent layer on top of the systems they already use, one that can reason over hundreds of pages of plans and regulations and surface the few things that really matter,” Govstream.ai founder and CEO Saf Rabah said in a recent press release. “That’s how cities move more homes and critical infrastructure from ‘submitted’ to ‘approved’ without burning people out on either side of the counter.”
An update on the pilot program for the Bellevue Development Committee is scheduled for Jan. 14, 2026.
Recent years have seen a wave of housing-starved local governments rushing to AI permitting tools that promise more efficiencies, including Los Angeles, Honolulu and Austin, Texas. Hernando County, Florida, this year incorporated AI into its zoning review process, enabling it to trim the process from 30 days to two.
“Cities are under intense pressure to add housing, support small businesses, and keep development sustainable, all while working inside permitting systems that were never really rethought for this moment,” Rabah said.
The effort is catching the eyes of investors, with Govstream.ai recently securing $3.6 million to grow its engineering team. The company said it is planning deployment into additional cities.
