In an effort to address the housing crisis in Los Angeles, house.LA proposes a future housing solution in the form of an app-based matching service, where a digital platform pairs owners and renters of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). House.LA utilizes the latest in AI technologies, employing neural networks and video game design applications. 

ADUs provide a viable solution to the problem of how to quickly and easily create more units of affordable housing in the city. California state law AB2299, made effective in 2017, streamlined ADU construction on existing single family lots, but homeoners still face challenges in regards to city planning, approval, and permitting. house.LA operates between the homeowner, the renter, and the city. It takes the responsibility for permitting out of the homeowner's hands, provides a kit-of-parts for ADU construction, and acts as a matching service between homeowners and renters. 

house.LA is set to meet demand created in response to new ADU policies by taking responsibility for ADU design, construction, and management. Favoring a kit-of-parts approach, we devised a system that accounts for both density and variety in ADU design. 

As of January 2020, California and Los Angeles policy builds upon the success of 2017 measures to create more flexibility around ADU construction. Critical changes include the allowance of two ADUs on a single property, lesser restrictions on ADU height and square footage, parking exception and setback reduction, reduction or elimination of impact fees, shorter approval periods, and ease of legalization. The continued trend towards ADUs as an affordable housing solution shows no sign of slowing, and new policy allows for greater backyard home density at the neighborhood scale.  

The house.LA platform protects a homeowner from risk, while creating possible long-term benefits for the owner by increasing property value. The question of risk in the assessment is absorbed in the platform by the company, and house.LA is able to create a safe and secure space for users on both ends.  

Our flat pack system is focused around a centralized utility core, a prefabricated and enclosed unit that saves homeowners the hassle of resolving how to connect existing city utilities to new units. Resulting diversity of communal spaces goes beyond the current scope of ADU design to create a new civility of backyard urbanism, using densification as a way to create community.

AI technologies, such as neural networks and video game design applications, are deployed throughout all stages of the design process and matching service: from sourcing lots where there is preexisting space for an ADU, to placing utility cores effectively while avoiding existing trees and foliage, to the tectonic arrangement of component parts around the core in configurations appropriate to site and user, as well as in the digital app as a way to match owners and users with particular quantitative and qualitative needs.