Capstone Project: Leewayz Room Rental Service

Mark Mariscal, Christopher Piwarski, Wais Robleh

CST499: Computer Science Capstone

Cassandra Eccles, Brian Robertson, Eric Tao

24 March 2020
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Table of Contents

Introduction / Background

Project Name and Description 2

Problem and / or Issue in Technology

Solution to the Problem and/or Issue in technology 3

Evidence That The Proposed Project Is Needed 3

Project Goals and Objectives 4

Environmental Scan / Literature Review 6

Stakeholders and Community 7

Approach / Methodology 8

Ethical Considerations 10

Legal Considerations 11

References 12
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Introduction / Background​:

Project name and description​:

Leewayz is the name of the capstone project. It will be a Full Stack web application that

helps individuals find rooms to rent, as well as helps individuals post rooms that they are

interested in renting out. Users will interact with Leewayz through a web browser. Leewayz

wants its users to be able to maneuver the web browser easily and efficiently so an emphasis will

be placed on simple, intuitive design. Having a good user interface (UI) is a top priority when

creating the Leewayz web application.

Problem and/or issue in technology

Leewayz is a web application that will be developed in the Silicon Valley. The creators

understand first hand how the housing crisis in this area affects people. The housing crisis has

not only hit the Bay Area but other parts of the country. ​“We have systematic failures to create

adequate affordable housing for our hard-working families, and that is something we must

change,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf​ (Colorado, 2020).” Many people who want to rent

an apartment are actually unable to due to their credit score, not being able to afford a place for

themselves, financially unable to afford a place in a safe environment. These are just a few

difficulties that people face when pursuing housing and Leewayz wants to allow for all people to

have the ability to have a roof over their head.

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Solution to the Problem and/or Issue in technology

Leewayz understands that not everyone is able to rent apartments or housing of their own

due to their financial situations. Being able to find a room on a trusted platform will allow for

users to feel that they matter. There is a place for them to seek a safe living space. Leewayz

values every user and understands that for some users, being able to afford a room is most

essential. That is how this project will be different than any other web application out now. Users

will have to register on the website so that their contact information is credible and that users can

not access the website without signing up. This will help weed out users who take advantage of

users such as those who take advantages on sites where you do not need to sign up to access their

services.

Evidence that the proposed project is needed:

The percentage of households cohabited by roommates has increased over the years.

More people are moving to cities where housing has not increased in proportion to the increase

in population. This rise is such that about “30 percent of American adults aged 23 to 65 lived

with roommates.” (Volpe, 2018) These individuals are usually moving for a job opportunity and

do not have the necessary family or friend structure in place at the new city of their arrival. As

such, people are turning to shared housing or roommates in order to keep up with the demand.

These roommates also need to find a way to match up with each other. People have

different living standards, and lifestyles. As a result, some individuals make for better

cohabitation matches than others. Some websites like Craigslist have plenty of user engagement,
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but do not provide enough details into how an individual actually lives. Others may have some of

the details, but not enough to make a user want to use that platform. Providing a flexible

platform that can provide the details will help place more individuals into compatible roommate

housing (Volpe 2018).

Project Goals and Objectives

Leewayz Goals and Objectives

Goals Objectives

Create a fully functioning web application - Create a miniature monolith

room rental platform application as a working model

- Break application into microservices

to increase stability

- Polish application with user feedback

to prepare for market

Provide a unique room rental platform that - Outline features that competing

users find value in services are not implementing

- Select features based on improving

room rental based on user experience

and cohabitation considerations

- Survey feedback provided by test

group to better gear the application

towards achieving the original mission

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statement

Familiarize and implement cloud - Create AWS account for the project

infrastructure and grant access to all team members

- Have all Contributors take part in

infrastructure implementation

- Research how to launch a web

application on the AWS platform and

execute

Use React Framework and Javascript to - Contributors Research React

implement a website front end Framework

- Use React to create the web

application browser experience

- Incorporate test user feedback and

make changes to the UI if necessary

Communicate effectively as a team and use - Create application using Agile

productivity tools to provide a smooth and Development best practices with

effective development experience Pivotal Tracker

- Maintain version control using Git

repositories with feature branches

- Hold regular weekly meetings to

assign work cards, add new feature

cards, and organize for the coming

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week

Environmental Scan/ Literature Review

Room rental and real estate in general is a field that has seen a large amount of technical

investment. “If we follow the money, it’s clear that more and more leading VCs are turning to

real estate tech or proptech for ripe opportunities for juicy returns and disruption on a global

scale” (Tabatabai, 2019). Most likely due to the lucrative nature of real estate, numerous efforts

have been made to profit off of internet enabled renting.

One of the major companies in this field is Zillow.com. Zillow is a web application that

allows users to search for homes via a map interface. Zillow offers the opportunity to complete

the entire application process online in order to expedite the rental process (Lee, 2018). They

have grown into a large corporation that hosts a plethora of websites and applications in order to

capture as many demographics as possible. This offers Zillow.com a strategic hold on the

market, as Kameron Lewellen states. “This brings Zillow full circle into the ability to search,

compare, and ultimately purchase your own home” (Lewellen, 2018).

Another competitor in the apartment rental space is Craigslist.com. Craigslist.com is a

well established company that serves a wide array of markets. Craigslist offers users the ability

to post their own classified ads to buy or sell, with a dedicated section for renting rooms and

apartments. ““Craigslist is the No. 1 classified advertising site in the world, both by revenue and

by traffic,” said founding principal of AIM Media Peter Zollman” (Salinas, 2019). While

Craigslist is an undisputed success in the property rental field, the website’s dated paradigm has
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fallen out of favor for some. Anonymity afforded by Craiglist’s basic design has hurt public

perception of the platform by enabling illegal activity. Monetary and identity theft are a real

concern for potential renters on Craiglists (Craigslist Scams to Avoid When Apartment Hunting

in San Francisco, 2019).

Both of these giants of the rental industry fail to address whether potential roommates

would be suitable for each other. Addressing this consideration is what will differentiate

Leewayz from the rest of the market. The Contributor’s application aims to understand the

factors that contribute to a successful cohabitation and enable users to consider these factors in

their selection process.

Stakeholders and Community

New tenants to the area are a major stakeholder in Leewayz. Especially those cautious to

using an online service. Moving to a new area and having to share an apartment/house is

difficult. It is especially difficult if you do not know anyone in the area. Even those who already

live in the area can take advantage of Leewayz. The service would make it easier to connect

rentees with prospective housing situations.

Another stakeholder is the leaseholder or landlord of a dwelling that is interested in

subletting their property. Letting someone into your property is a serious consideration. These

renters are cautious because of how much they can be liable for if they welcome the wrong

roommates into their homes. If they pick the wrong option, they may be on the hook for

hundreds to thousands of dollars. Roommates usually sign leases by themselves or with other

renters to a landlord. Anyone rooming with a bad roommate can be forced to stay the entire
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option of their lease. To break it they will usually be liable for the entire amount of the lease, up

to a year’s rent. If it is not paid, not only will a landlord have to fight to receive owed rent. But

also lose money for each month that a unit is not being occupied by paid renters. (O’Connell,

2014)

Another stakeholder is the apartment complexes that usually see a wave of customers

going to their website first and reaching out to rent a room from them. They could be negatively

impacted and see less consumers on their websites due to Leewayz having lower prices set by

their users who are trying to rent a room on the Leewayz website.

From The Contributor’s viewpoint, stakeholders would gain more than lose from this

program. By introducing a system that both sides feel comfortable with, Leewayz can reduce the

tension involved with rental and help a community grow. Having information readily available

would save all parties involved time and bring about faster housing placement. It will also be

convenient as entering information and responding to information on a website is a lot less

time-consuming than spreading information through word of mouth or applying to new situations

on their own. The same can be said for leaseholders.

Approach / Methodology

The contributors intend to develop the proposed software in accordance with software

engineering best practices. The codebase will be stored in an online hosted Git repository, and all

new features will be submitted via a branch merge request. Github is the chosen platform to host

the repository. Progress will be tracked using the kanban board system Trello. All proposed

features will be converted into individual cards and assigned to members of the contributing
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team. Users will be responsible for managing cards as they complete feature requests. Google

Hangouts / Meets will be the primary communication platform, and G Suite will be used for

productivity software. The contributors will communicate via phone in the event of any

emergencies.

The infrastructure platform for this project will be cloud based, in order to maximize for

reliability and cost. The contributors intend to use Amazon Web Services (AWS) in order to

learn how to operate infrastructure on the current largest cloud platform. The front end for the

application will be crafted using Javascript with React. Node.js will be used as a backup option

should it be needed. Throughout the development process, all contributors will become familiar

with every level of the technology stack so they can contribute meaningfully in all areas.

The first phase of the project will be the creation of necessary accounts and granting of

access. Each contributor will be responsible for administering at least one service in the

productivity stack. Where applicable, these responsibilities will be assigned based on predefined

roles and specialties. This process should only take two days, and by the end, all contributors

will have access to every service needed for the entire project development.

The second phase is the first phase of development. Infrastructure will be purchased and

configured through AWS, while the initial front end development will be conducted on local

development environments. The architecture of the first design will be a small monolith. The

objective is to create a functional application with the base set of features completed. This phase

will be completed when the contributors have a small working application that can be deployed

onto the server.

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The next phase is to break apart the application into distributed services in accordance

with the microservices model. The back end and front end of the application will be separated

into numerous applications which communicate via api calls. Creating a microservices based

application will provide numerous advantages. The main being that a part of the application can

fail without the whole project becoming inoperable.

The last phase is to finish feature completion to bring the project to the specification

outlined in the Project Description. Emphasis will be placed on polishing Leewayz into a high

class application. This will be achieved by refactoring code with an attention to response times,

and eliminating bugs. At this time, users will be invited to use the platform. Improvements will

be made to the application based on their feedback. Suggestions will be converted to feature

cards on the Trello board which will then be acted upon by the development team. Through this

method The Contributors hope to provide a polished, world class web application.

Ethical Considerations

Housing is a human necessity, and as such it suffers from the same potential abuses as the

rest of society. Historically, housing rental has been an arena in which social injustice has been

perpetuated. “More than 90 percent of all housing discrimination occurred during rental

transactions, even though renters are often in greater need of affordable housing than

homeowners” (Thomas, 2017). It is vital for Leewayz to maintain an equitable renting platform

for people of all race, gender, sexual orientation, and creed.

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Some underprivileged groups that may be negatively impacted by Leewayz may be

individuals who are able to afford to rent a room but are not given access due to having multiple

individuals in their family. For example, a mother who is working to afford a room for her and

her two children has found a room on our application to rent, but the person renting the room is

only allowing two individuals in the room. This could negatively impact a vast majority of users

who are trying to find reasonable rent to accommodate not only themselves, but their families as

well. One way to mitigate this ethical concern would be to have Leewayz establish a way for

users to search rooms by number of occupants per room. This would help users to filter out the

appropriate searches that they are looking for.

Legal Considerations

Renting rooms is a complex legal matter. In order to lease a space, the property owner

has to adhere to a set of obligations to avoid legal repercussions. Among these obligations are

maintaining the property, monetary exchange, and contract cancellation (Stewart, 2014). For this

reason, it is critical that Leewayz differentiates itself from the Landlord - Tenant relationship.

Should Leewayz be released to consumers, language would have to be provided that

characterizes Leewayz as the platform with which landlords and tenants find each other, and not

an active participant in the landlord - tenant relationship. While some competitors have more

active participation in this relationship, that is an auxiliary service that is currently out of scope

for the Leewayz project.

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References
​

Colorado, M. (2020, February 10). Making It in the Bay: How the Bay Area's Housing Crisis

Spiraled Out of Control. Retrieved March 29, 2020, from

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/making-it-in-the-bay/making-it-in-the-bay-how-

the-bay-areas-housing-crisis-spiraled-out-of-control/2230410/

Craigslist Scams to Avoid When Apartment Hunting in San Francisco. (2019, August 13).

Retrieved March 24, 2020, from

https://www.rentsfnow.com/blog/craigslist-scams-to-avoid-when-apartment-hunting-in-s

an-francisco/

Lee, D. (2018, July 31). Zillow now lets you apply for apartments and pay rent online. Retrieved

from

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/31/17634762/zillow-apartments-rental-application-pay

-rent

Lewellen, K. (2018, September 4). What companies does Zillow own? Hint – there are a bunch.

Retrieved March 24, 2020, from

https://theamericangenius.com/housing/corporate/what-companies-does-zillow-own-hint-

there-are-a-bunch/

O’Connell, A. (2014, April 15). When a Roommate Moves Out. Retrieved from

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-roommate-moves-out-29520.html
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Salinas, S. C. (2019, January 24). Craigslist is raking in $1 billion a year, according to one

researcher's estimates. Retrieved March 24, 2020, from

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/craigslist-posts-annual-revenue-of-1-billion-study.htm

Stewart, M. (2014, March 10). Overview of Landlord-Tenant Laws in California. Retrieved

April 11, 2020, from

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/overview-landlord-tenant-laws-california.html

Tabatabai, A. (2019, November 14). Where top VCs are investing in real estate and proptech

(Part 1 of 2). Retrieved March 24, 2020, from

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/14/where-top-vcs-are-investing-in-real-estate-and-propte

ch-part-1-of-2/

Thomas, K. E. (2017, April 20). This Is What Housing Discrimination in the U.S. Looks Like.

Retrieved April 13, 2020, from

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/housing-discrimination-us-report

Volpe, A. (2018, August 15). The Strange, Unique Intimacy of the Roommate Relationship.

Retrieved from

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/the-strange-unique-intimacy-of-the-r

oommate-relationship/567296/