Case study
Fair housing compliance mobile app
Turned the Equal Rights Center's HUD-funded paper checklist into a mobile app contractors use on job sites nationwide.
Industry
Government & Civic
Key result
HUD-funded
Government-backed compliance tool
Services
Government
The Challenge
The Challenge
Housing contractors have to verify that new construction meets the Fair Housing Act's seven design and construction requirements before a project is complete. These are not optional suggestions — they are federal law for multifamily housing built after 1991, and failing to meet them can expose developers, architects, and contractors to significant legal liability. The Equal Rights Center had built a rigorous, government-backed paper checklist for exactly this purpose, developed and published under a HUD grant. It was thorough. It was authoritative. And it was completely stuck on paper.
In practice, contractors were losing track of which projects they had completed, forgetting measurements between site visits, and had no way to collaborate digitally with architects or project managers. On large construction sites with multiple buildings, tracking compliance across every unit using paper forms was a logistical nightmare. Checklists got lost. Notes were illegible. Projects slipped through the cracks. The ERC needed to bring the checklist into the 21st century without losing any of the rigor that made it useful.
That meant building something contractors would actually use on a job site, not a document that would sit in a folder. It had to be fast, offline-capable, visually clear, and available on the phones contractors already carry. The challenge was not just technical — it was about preserving the integrity of a government-backed compliance tool while making it genuinely usable in the field. Every requirement had to be represented accurately. Every diagram had to match the actual standard. The app had to be something a contractor could trust on the day of an inspection.
The Solution
The Solution
We built native iOS and Android applications, using Kotlin for the Android codebase and native iOS tooling, backed by Google Cloud Platform for account sync and data persistence. A native mobile app was the only approach that could handle multi-project management, offline functionality, persistent state between sessions, embedded diagrams and measurements, and one-tap email export all at once. The app is published in both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
The app is built around a project dashboard. A contractor opens it and sees all their active projects, creates a new project for each construction job, names it, and works through the seven-requirement checklist within that project's context. Progress saves automatically after every interaction, so a contractor who leaves a job site and returns the next morning taps the project and picks up exactly where they left off. On a multi-building development, they create a sub-project for each building.
Each requirement in the app includes the precise measurements required by the standard — door widths, turning radii, outlet heights — along with embedded diagrams showing the correct configuration. The seven areas covered are an accessible building entrance on an accessible route; accessible and usable public and common use areas; usable doors throughout the unit; an accessible route into and through the dwelling unit; accessible locations for light switches, outlets, thermostats, and environmental controls; reinforced bathroom walls for future grab-bar installation; and usable kitchens and bathrooms with wheelchair maneuvering space. Contractors do not need to carry the paper checklist at all.
On site, a contractor selects the active project and moves through the seven requirements in sequence, checking off each item as they verify it in the field. Where a measurement is required, the app shows the exact spec; where a spatial configuration is required, the embedded diagram clarifies it visually. When the inspection is complete, the contractor taps "Email Report" and the app generates a summary of all completed requirements and sends it to the project manager, architect, or compliance officer on file — minutes rather than the hours paper-based documentation required.
Results
Results
App Store + Play Store
Available on both major platforms
7
FHA accessibility requirements covered
HUD funded
Government-backed compliance tool
Multi-project tracking
Manage multiple construction projects simultaneously
Nationwide
Used by housing contractors across the country
Kotlin · iOS Native · Android Native · Google Cloud Platform
Technologies
Before & after
Before and after
Before
Paper checklist used to verify Fair Housing Act compliance on job sites
Mobile app in both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store
Tracking progress across simultaneous construction projects was impractical
Contractors toggle between multiple projects in a single app session
Measurements and reference diagrams carried as separate printed documents
Measurements and diagrams for all 7 FHA requirements built in
No way to save progress between site visits or share updates digitally
Progress tracked automatically — resume where you left off on any device
Lost paper records meant documentation gaps on complex projects
Completed checklists emailed from the app for documentation and sign-off
Common questions
Common questions
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