The Housing Action Coalition

Why are 50,000 housing units entitled in San Francisco, but not breaking ground? In part, because it takes over 280 days to get permits approved after entitlement in SF - longer than any other major city. Last year, I authorized a first-of-its kind study from our city's analyst division: comparing our city's post-entitlement permitting system with other cities to understand how to fix this. Here's what we learned: 1. We have 5 different departments responsible for permitting post-entitlement, but no single point of contact. 2. That leads to bottlenecks in the process, where for instance the Department of Building Inspection has the longest step in the process at 30 days 3. The complexity of our building code (over 1000 pages long!) creates further delays with 3 rounds of review on average per project application To fix this, we need to streamline our post-entitlement processing through a mix of consolidation, consistency, and collaboration. We need to create a "one stop shop" for post-entitlement housing permitting. But because the responsibilities for each department responsible - like Planning and Building Inspection - are hard coded into our charter or city's constitution, this can be difficult to change. I will be accordingly introducing a charter reform measure for the November ballot to help fix this.