SF ‘truly in a new era’ as it must fast-track housing projects

With San Francisco still lagging behind its state-mandated housing targets, The City has now become the first in California where a recently passed streamlining law will take effect — meaning that most new developments that meet planning standards will be allowed to move forward without additional public review.

State housing officials announced the determination Friday that San Francisco had missed its 2023 development goals, activating the streamlining provisions of Senate Bill 423, a housing measure written by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and passed last year.

Many more cities are expected to fall under similar requirements in the coming years as a result of the measure, but SB 423 specifically singles out San Francisco for early review because The City has the longest permit-review process in the state, clocking in at over two years on average.

The news has been met with jubilation from supporters of increased development in San Francisco, who have argued that state action is needed to bypass local opponents of housing, who are notorious for using every legal tool at their disposal to stymie projects.

“No discretionary hearings,” said Wiener, who opened a Monday morning press conference held inside the San Francisco Planning Department. “No CEQA lawsuits, none of the politics of the Board of Supervisors. You just get your damn permit — period”

The change is intended to remove the permitting process from the “mosh pit” of San Francisco politics, Wiener said. He said it’s hoped streamlining will peel back the layers of bureaucracy that have developed around permitting over the decades and pave the way for the construction of enough homes to reverse The City’s long-standing affordability crisis .

“This legislation is a game-changer,” said Mayor London Breed, also in attendance. “It is going to stop the obstruction, so that we can move housing forward in San Francisco for the people who are the next generation’s San Franciscans.”

For the past several years, San Francisco has already been subject to a less sweeping streamlining requirement under a 2017 measure that SB 423 extended. So far, the streamlining has applied only to developments made up of predominantly below-market-rate housing units, a distinction made because San Francisco was found to be lagging behind state targets for affordable units even as it was meeting its goals for market-rate units.

About 1,200 units have been completed in projects streamlined under the measure since 2021, according to The City’s Planning Department.

Now that state housing officials have determined that San Francisco is behind on both affordable and market-rate developments, the streamlining process will be expanded to include most predominantly market-rate developments as well, meaning that the share of new housing subject to the measure will increase from 10% to 75%, according to Wiener.

The requirements will not, however, apply to The City’s mega-projects such as the Hunters Point Shipyard or Treasure Island, which are instead covered by so-called development agreements.

For projects that are subject to SB 423 streamlining, The City will now face a deadline of either three or six months to offer a permit, and in most cases, projects will only be rejected if they fail to meet objective design standards set by San Francisco planning officials.

“We are truly in a new era,” said Planning Director Rich Hillis.

“Operators are standing by,” he declared, earning cheers from the assembled crowd. “Planners are standing by. You could come in today — online — and apply for a housing project that will be approved by the end of the summer”

San Francisco is now a year and a half into an eight-year housing cycle, during which The City is on the hook to approve more than 82,000 new units of housing by 2032. So far, though, San Francisco has approved only 3,870 units, according to city figures.

But it’s not just slow permitting and local opposition that have driven those numbers down. Over the past several years, San Francisco housing construction has sagged under the weight of high interest rates and spiraling construction costs.

As a result, it’s not entirely clear how many developers will take advantage of SB 423 now that it’s an option.

Most builders are just now becoming aware of the change, said Corey Smith, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition. All the same, with a new process that cuts down on time, cost and uncertainty for developers, he said he expects that “every single builder who’s looking to build housing in San Francisco is going to go back and look at the math and see how this might make a difference.”

If interest rates drop and economic conditions improve by the end of the year, as predicted by some economists, “that’s when we’re really going to see the quantity come in,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, Monday’s announcement was also met with horror by some, including critics of Wiener’s approach to housing who are skeptical of its focus on market-rate construction and worry about the consequences of the loss of local control over development.

“It forces The City to haphazardly make changes to zoning and planning that will be felt for the next 100 years,” said Lori Brooke, the co-founder of Neighborhoods United SF, which has been organizing opposition against The City’s ongoing upzoning process , a multi-year effort aimed at increasing density in The City’s western and northern neighborhoods to make room for the extra housing mandated by the state.

For Brooke, the streamlining requirements could mean “game over for local democracy and the public process as to what gets built and where.”

She also suggested that the housing targets were set unreasonably high, intentionally setting up The City to fail and all but guaranteeing that the streamlining would take effect, a charge that Wiener denies.

Opposition also poured in from housing-justice advocates. Dyan Ruiz of the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition argued that streamlining will do little to produce the kind of housing that average San Franciscans will be able to afford.

“Profit-driven developers get their approvals faster” under this change, she said. “Their land becomes more valuable, and what does the community get? We get a lot that sits there empty for years until maybe one day housing most of us can’t afford gets built.”

SB 423 has also become the subject of attacks from city supervisors. In January, board President Aaron Peskin and Supervisor Connie Chan asked City Attorney David Chiu to weigh in on what The City could do to defend against the measure .

Peskin’s office declined to comment on the new requirements, and Chan’s office did not reply to a request for comment prior to publication.

Even as SB 423 peels back some of the most potent tools for neighborhood advocates to block or reshape new developments, Laura Foote — the executive director of YIMBY Action — said that she does not expect the measure to bring an end to San Francisco’s housing wars .

“I think every time you pull away another layer, you discover three more,” she said.