Local Housing Watch
A plain-language monitoring app for renters and residents that pulls new housing proposals from city planning departments, summarizes each project in everyday words, and alerts you when something is proposed within a radius you care about.
Renters and concerned residents in supply-constrained US cities who want to follow local development without reading dense planning PDFs
- Plain-English summaries of every new planning filing within a chosen radius, with photos and unit counts
- Deadline alerts for public comment windows on each project, with one-tap submission to the planning department
- Side-by-side comparison of who has spoken at hearings (affordable-housing orgs vs. neighborhood associations) so you can see whose voices are missing
- Personal impact view: rough commute-time and rent-band estimates for new units based on the project address and unit mix
The YIMBY/NIMBY fight is increasingly decided at obscure community meetings and streamlining approvals like California's AB 2011; a viral HN/HN-adjacent story about a Marina Safeway fight shows residents want a way to track and weigh in on these decisions.
Real demand validated by multiple paid/free competitors (DevTracker, ZoningAlert) and municipalities like Esquimalt launching their own opt-in notification service; NIMBYism stories remain in news, though source HN thread had only 7 points.Track City Development Projects & Applications | Development Tracker ↗Esquimalt to launch opt-in notification service for missing-middle housing ↗
At least two direct competitors exist (DevTracker covering planning apps/maps/renders, ZoningAlert monitoring zoning decisions), plus adjacent tools (AEDI) and governments building their own versions — leaving a contested, not wide-open, market.Track City Development Projects & Applications | Development Tracker ↗ZoningAlert: Monitoring Zoning Decisions For Your Property ↗
Target audience is renters/residents with low willingness-to-pay; ZoningAlert presents a free email signup and competitor pricing isn't visible; municipal/developer tools monetize via B2B but consumer monetization path is unproven.ZoningAlert: Monitoring Zoning Decisions For Your Property ↗
Structural housing shortage, ongoing YIMBY/NIMBY political fights, and state-level reforms like CA AB 2011 ensure sustained attention to local planning decisions for years.NIMBYism stalling housing projects in Waterloo Region ↗
Each city uses its own planning portal with different schemas, PDFs, and public-notice APIs; scaling across cities requires bespoke scrapers and a plain-language summarizer that works on dense legal docs — non-trivial build.Track City Development Projects & Applications | Development Tracker ↗