Whether you’re swapping windows or putting up new homes, SF’s red tape is notorious. Those in charge say relief is finally coming.

In SF’s new Permit Center, people with plans, literally, wait for their numbers to be called. (Photo by the author)

“It’s a simple project,” says John McDowell, a permit expediter who helps would-be builders untangle San Francisco’s legendary red tape. His current clients, who own an early 20th-century, mixed-use building on Market Street, want to replace wood windows with more durable materials that he swears will look “exactly the same.”

McDowell says SF’s planning commissioners, who must approve the swap, won’t be able to tell the difference, let alone someone walking by on the street. The windows “are on the second floor, even,” he adds. He wouldn’t disclose the specific address.

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Neither can McDowell say when the project will get on the Planning Commission’s agenda. So far, it’s been an eight-month wait. “They only have meetings once [a week], and you have to get into a queue, and then sometimes they won’t review certain things and sometimes they review other things,” McDowell says.

It’s not an uncommon predicament, even for seasoned expediters. Getting building permits in San Francisco, even for straightforward changes, can be a trial of months or even years, during which time, developers and property owners may end up feeling like the refugees in Casablanca, forced to “wait and wait and wait” with no end in sight.

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Plenty of people with experience developing in San Francisco — be they architects, engineers, developers, permitting experts, and property owners large and small — have a horror story to share, perhaps more than one.

In a March opinion piece in the SF Chronicle, SF YIMBY board member Bilal Mahmood estimated that the median time to get approval to build is 627 days. In 2021 and 2022 the city issued only 2,000 permits a year for new home projects. With a new state mandate to produce more than 10,000 new homes a year this decade, that kind of delay has the potential for disaster.

No secret: The SF Department of Building Inspection’s own presentation on permit reform highlights what’s wrong. You have to admit the melting clock is a nice touch.

Mayor London Breed, some supervisors, and the Planning Commission are pushing for reform — and surprise, so are the very city bodies whose practices are under the microscope. In interviews and recent public meetings, staffers at both the Planning Department and Department of Building Inspection say they’re eager to speed up the way things work.

So what’s taking so long?

Appeal anything

“We love permit processes in San Francisco,” Michael Christensen, one of the city’s principal planners, said at a joint Planning-DBI hearing earlier this month.

He was being sarcastic. Most San Franciscans who’ve had a taste of the permit bureaucracy hate it like bedbugs. Nevertheless it is true that SF is a very permit-happy city, which demands papers for virtually any change to a property, and sometimes dozens of permits for new construction.

Even worse, Christensen pointed out that every single permit in SF can potentially be appealed. Not every appeal prevails, but each one eats up precious time, and the city’s rules grant anyone with a few hundred bucks and a beef the right to file an appeal.

Let’s put new development in SF, broadly speaking, into two buckets. Start with entitlements, during which a developer must convince city planners that their idea is sound.

This is where most of the nastiness happens, including high-stakes meetings, contentious neighborhood outreach, long and indefinite waits like McDowell’s, challenges based on state environmental regulations, and sometimes dirty San Francisco politicking.

San Francisco engineer Daniel Barringer is fed up with what he calls the Planning Department’s “idiotic system”: “They make everything up, they have rules about maximum height and sidewalk setbacks and how wide your garage door can be, but they can change all that based on ‘Does this conform to the style of living unit in the city?’ or whatever. You submit drawings to the city and they sit there for months, could be a year, and then they get back to you with comments they just made up.”

Planning chief of staff Dan Sider admits the process can be bewildering. But his staff is beholden to the process, he says, and can end up as scapegoats when things go sideways.

Over 50 years, additions to the planning code have created “a package of controls so large that we no longer publish a paper version,” Sider writes The Frisc in an email. He notes that in recent years, the permit center has overhauled many processes. “We see roughly 60 people in person at the permit center every day, and fewer than one in five wait more than 25 minutes to speak with a planner,” he adds.

So that’s the front end of the process. But what about those hundreds of days to get various construction permits after city planners approve a project? That’s where the Department of Building Inspection bucket comes in.

Notorious DBI

“Shovel ready” in this city doesn’t mean anyone will pick up a shovel anytime soon. Yet Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for DBI, denies that it really takes the 600 days or more for the department to get builders their permits. In fact, he accuses Mahmood of misreading the data and not correcting his op-ed. What’s more, Hannan says that sometimes city agencies spend days or weeks waiting for applicants to get back to them, during which a project’s timer is running. (The Frisc repeatedly tried to reach Mahmood for clarification but was unsuccessful.)

However, Hannan and everyone else we spoke with at DBI acknowledge the process can indeed take hundreds of days. This is because in some regards, putting up a new structure in San Francisco is a lot like preparing for major surgery.

“You’ve got to talk to your doctor, yes, but there’s also nurses, administrators, specialists,” says permit expediter Dennis Lowery. To an outsider, SF’s permit bureaucracy has parallels to the American health-care system. “If you went to someone in the Amazon and said when you get sick, you’ve got to see 50 people, they’d ask why. And it’s because they all do different things.”

At his presentation earlier this month, SF planner Christensen outlined a cavalcade of departments that can get involved in a major permit — Planning and the DBI, as well as the Fire Department, Department of Public Works, the Public Utilities Commission, the Historical Preservation Commission, and the Bureau of Urban Forestry, to name a few.

‘I’ve never worked in a city quite like San Francisco before. Every project is political. Some people are convinced that things are working just fine the way they are.’ — DBI deputy director for permit services Neville Pereira

According to Hannan, a median housing-related project in SF last year spent 289 days in Planning review; 259 days with DBI; 137 with DPW; 43 with PUC; and for those that needed Fire Department review, another 127. The median length of time was over 620 days, and most projects that were approved in 2022 started in 2020.

Making matters worse, these departments have been bad beyond belief at coordination. As told by those who’ve run through the development gauntlet, permit seekers can feel like riders stuck on a carousel, unable to step off despite feeling queasy.

You get sent to one desk to review paperwork, only to be directed to another. Sometimes these desks will issue confusing or contradictory advice about next steps or timelines. Or someone might catch a discrepancy that should have been caught two desks back, sending you back to where you started.

Roll with it: Dozens of project plans are racked up at SF’s new Permit Center. (Photo by the author)

The new Permit Center, touted by the mayor in March, is supposed to change all that. During a recent visit, staff eagerly highlighted new solutions, such as a single intake desk that checks a permit seeker’s paperwork up front to make sure nothing is missing, rather than discovering an error or omission halfway through.

At this stage, permit seekers now receive an estimate of the duration of the review process. Although it’s a ballpark figure, it still gives both planners and permit seekers a better sense of a project’s timeline.

Also new: Incoming projects are assigned to the next available staff member. Previously it was a strict rotation, which meant a project application assigned to someone on vacation, on leave, or just too busy would collect dust.

These are all great changes, but they’ve been in place for less than a year.

A shocking amount of this work is still done in old-fashioned, analog form. At the Permit Center, you’ll see rolled-up plans piled every which way, like lost scrolls in the Vatican archives. During the pandemic, this analog “system” got so backed up that one permit expediter reportedly threatened to kill himself in protest, in front of the mayor. (The unidentified man ultimately did not harm himself.)

A new digital system has been in the works for years; planners tell us they’re finally getting ready to make the big switch.

A DBI employee displays the key piece of paperwork for most applications — Form 3/8, aka “the pink form.” (Photo by the author)

At DBI, it’s Neville Pereira’s job to cut permit times. The deputy director for permit services has been on the job for two years, part of a wave of hires and appointments meant to clean up the place after an FBI sting exposed corruption at the department’s highest levels. These dirty dealings also further fouled up the permitting process, where those who were favored got to the front of the line faster, while everyone else fell behind.

Even with the old guard gone, the department is still wading through a backlog of potentially crooked work. (The investigation ensnared popular permit expediter Walter Wong, exposing how, though many expediters are honest consultants, the need for them creates the opportunity for exploitation. Notably, of the dozen or so expediters we spoke to for this story, not one was worried that the proposed reforms would put them out of work.)

Pereira says now that we’re fully beyond the pandemic’s restrictions, he’s pushing to cut permitting time for new housing projects in half. Asked how that’s going over politically, Pereira chooses his words carefully: “I’ve never worked in a city quite like San Francisco before.” he says — meaning “a city where every project is political. Some people are convinced that things are working just fine the way they are,” but he declines to name names.

A major goal of reform is getting both of the big process buckets — entitlement and permitting — to happen simultaneously in a “bifurcated system” to chop months off the lead time for up to 97 percent of projects.

Of the dozen or so expediters we spoke to for this story, not one was worried that the proposed reforms would put them out of work.

It is theoretically possible to do this now, but few developers of major projects go for it because of a pair of the complaints we’ve heard. First, the capriciousness of Planning demands — a shorter building, a different unit count, an entirely different layout — could scuttle the construction review already done on the other side of the permit fence. Second, DBI might find a technical flaw that sends a project back to the drawing board, and back to Planning for reapproval. (These cases, which DBI says are rare, nonetheless can add a lot to those hundreds of days of waiting.)

But if Planning, DBI, and other agencies could communicate and work more closely together, that’s the promised land: Politicking and neighborhood appeals could still stymie building (reforming that process is a separate war), but parallel review would slash through acres of red tape, if they can pull it off.

This reporter asked Pereira how long he expects this to take. Five years? More? “Eighteen months,” he replied. The timeline laid out in this month’s joint hearing and presented to The Frisc again at the Permit Center calls for legislation to amend processes sometime this summer, although the specific language is still labeled “in development.”

In this city, it always pays to be skeptical of promises that this time things will be better. But if this is the real deal, then we don’t have long to wait to find out.

Adam Brinklow covers housing, development, and more for The Frisc.

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MORE HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT COVERAGE IN THE FRISC

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The Standard’s Joel Umanzor answers a reader question sent to Ask The Standard: Why do San Francisco businesses and residents rely on permit expediters?

San Francisco is famous for red tape.

The city’s construction permit system has a reputation among residents, contractors and engineers as being lengthy and complicated to manage.

Anyone who wants to do any work that goes “beyond painting, flooring, replacement of electrical receptacles, switches or light fixtures and repair or replacement of faucets” must obtain permits, according to the Department of Building Inspection.

The majority of commercial or residential permits are classified as “over the counter” while the remainder would be considered “full” or “site” permits, which require in-house reviews unlike “over the counter” due to the structural nature of the work.

Many people with complex projects opt to hire an “expediter”—“an individual who receives or is promised compensation to provide permit consulting services” on projects that would be classified as either major or minor, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. This can also include any person who is paid for time spent providing permit consulting services.

Currently, 107 permit consultants are registered with the city, with 87 of those registered consultants representing only one client, city data shows.

In recent years, corruption cases against top officials across city government have brought to light a history of favoritism and corruption that festered for years ahead of the indictments, according to a City Controller’s Office report from 2021. At the ongoing scandal’s center is businessman and permit expediter Walter Wong, who pleaded guilty in 2020 to federal fraud and money laundering charges, agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors with his testimony.

READ MORE: These Are the Players in San Francisco’s Corruption Scandal

The Standard spoke to former officials and experts about permit expediters.

Walter Wong leaves federal court in San Francisco on June 30, 2023. | Source: Isaac Ceja/The Standard

Most Famous Permit Expediter

The process of overseeing permit expediters who don’t fall within the “consultant” category, which requires registration, can be difficult, former Ethics Commissioner Larry Bush said. A lack of transparency in the disclosure of clients or projects differentiates the permit consultants from lobbyists, who must also register.

Without the information provided in required quarterly consultant reports, Bush said, all kinds of unregulated expediter activity can occur.

“It’s not like being a lobbyist, where you have to register and disclose specifically who you are doing this with and for how much money,” Bush said. “It is all pretty much under the radar.” 

Bush said he tried to pass a motion within the commission to require that information be publicly disclosed because he often found former city workers wanted to profit from their experience and offer themselves as knowledgeable consultants. The motion did not pass.

Wong was found to have received preferential treatment from Tom Hui, Department of Building Inspection’s former director, who had the opportunity to override the department’s control for Wong’s projects by “expediting permits and inspections and overlooking otherwise problematic issues in permitting and inspections,” the city controller’s report found. 

Hui stepped down from the position in 2020.

In 2021, Wong and his companies, W. Wong Construction Co. Inc., Green Source Trading LLC and Alternate Choice LLC, were barred from doing business with the city for five years, the maximum permitted by law.

Although Wong is barred from doing business with the city, his name remains on the Ethics Commission’s website as a registered permit expediter for Jaidin Consulting Group.

According to his settlement agreement with the city, Wong received an estimated $1,291,095.26 for “goods and services provided through non-competitive contracts, purchase orders, and/or grants that were improperly approved by City officials.”

He received anywhere from $1,000 to $75,000 from different clients, filings show.

Piping sits at a construction site at 198 McAllister St. in San Francisco’s Tenderloin on Sept. 26, 2022. | Source: Justin Katigbak/The Standard

Problematic Process?

Christopher Calton, a research fellow for housing and homelessness at Oakland’s Independent Institute, called permit expediters part of a larger discretionary process of local government that often restricts economic growth.

“These are officials who have some discretionary authority and can push things through some of the bureaucratic red tape ahead of the formal processes that are so drawn out and lengthy,” Calton said. “Permit expediter is an informal term we use because of stories like this corruption scandal, but it’s not an official position. It’s a service, kind of like doing your taxes with TurboTax.”

The bigger problem, Calton said, is not the regulatory code but that anyone can request a discretionary review—a second look at a development project—that often takes up lots of time and opens the door for possible favoritism and abuses of power.

Because of this, permit expediters—although not uncommon around the country—have a unique position within the ecosystem of getting permits in San Francisco.

“It means you have to give that discretion to somebody,” Calton said. “Once you do that, it is not just a matter that a permit expediter isn’t necessarily just somebody who helps someone navigate the intricacies of the law—we have that all over the country in all industries for better or worse—it’s that they then can sell their services in a roundabout way.”

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The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has launched a new investigation to get to the bottom of San Francisco’s infamously long permit approval times. Developers commonly cite approval times as a pain point in trying to build in the city, and the investigation will aim to understand and alleviate the problem, along with the high cost of building in the city.

Gustavo Velasquez, HCD Director, said in a press release that the state is concerned about the political decision-making in San Francisco that delays and impedes the creation of new housing. The investigation should last at least 9 months, and the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Urban and Regional Development will assist the state. The goal is to increase San Francisco’s housing supply and speed up the overall process for project approval.

San Francisco has been a frequent target of bad press lately, including its dismal return-to-the-office occupancy rates compared to other California cities like San Jose. But San Francisco isn’t the only city that has struggled with building permitting delays. Cities like Dallas and Portland, Oregon, have had similar problems lately, and many stakeholders in the real estate industry are hoping public pressure and new technology can speed up the permit approval process.

The post San Francisco’s Lengthy Allow Approval Instances is Below Investigation appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has launched a new investigation to get to the bottom of San Francisco’s infamously long permit approval times. Developers commonly cite approval times as a pain point in trying to build in the city, and the investigation will aim to understand and alleviate the problem, along with the high cost of building in the city.

Gustavo Velasquez, HCD Director, said in a press release that the state is concerned about the political decision-making in San Francisco that delays and impedes the creation of new housing. The investigation should last at least 9 months, and the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Urban and Regional Development will assist the state. The goal is to increase San Francisco’s housing supply and speed up the overall process for project approval.

San Francisco has been a frequent target of bad press lately, including its dismal return-to-the-office occupancy rates compared to other California cities like San Jose. But San Francisco isn’t the only city that has struggled with building permitting delays. Cities like Dallas and Portland, Oregon, have had similar problems lately, and many stakeholders in the real estate industry are hoping public pressure and new technology can speed up the permit approval process.

The post San Francisco’s Lengthy Allow Approval Instances is Underneath Investigation appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Luz Pena: “How much do you pay for these things?”
Angel Sanchez: “$7 for that. I sell it for $9.”

Angel buys his merchandise at the flea market and slightly marks up the price. He’s making between .50 cents to $2 per item.

Angel says he would never steal. He buys everything he sells, though he doesn’t ask where the items come from. With his profits he pays the bills, and the rest he sends to his kids in Mexico. One is going to college and the other one is in high school. Lately he says business has been difficult.

Luz Pena: “Two years ago, how many vendors were out here?”
Angel Sanchez: “Eramos as 6.” (We used to be about 6)
Luz Pena: “Now?”
Angel Sanchez: “20”

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Susana Rojas Executive Director of Calle 24’s Cultural District says many of the new vendors are coming from the Tenderloin following the state of emergency declaration in that neighborhood.

“I think they are coming from the United Plaza in the Tenderloin because they are being very strict,” said Rojas and added, “It is getting worse. Unfortunately, as things have been happening in other parts of the city, then people get desperate and they start moving around trying to find a place to be able to either set-up a tent to sleep or a tent to sale some supplies.”

Watching everything from afar is Diana Medina. She’s opened Diju Jewelry 14 years ago. She used to be a street vendor and understands the struggle. Medina wants street vendors to have a permit.

VIDEO: San Francisco public officials react to I-Team stolen goods investigation

Many street vendors we spoke to say they want a permit.

Rojas and her team are signing up vendors like Angel to a program introduced by Supervisor Hillary Ronen that will require street vendors to have permits starting next month.

“After May 7, if someone cannot prove where their items come from, they are going to be confiscated and asked to move,” said Rojas.

Rojas says it will be complicated for many vendors to reproduce proof of purchase even though they are paying for items.

“The problem is that they do go to the flea market. They get them legally, but they don’t give them any receipts. When they come over here, they won’t be able to prove where they get their items from,” said Rojas.

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More than 20 vendors have signed up for the program so far.

Rojas says the plan is to continue registering vendors to the program and assign them specific areas from Cesar Chavez to 24th street. Rojas says the city still doesn’t know how much, if anything, they will charge these vendors to set-up shop.

If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

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The development services department also has its own website for emergency repairs and permits.

AUSTIN, Texas – On Thursday, Austin City Council passed two ordinances to expedite repairs due to last week’s freezing weather.

The ordinances waive housing permit and development fees as well as certain requirements for sanitary permits.

The fees covered by the first waiver include permit, plan review, inspection, demolition, and deviation fees for repairing existing structures only and do not include re-inspection fees.

The second ordinance allows construction officials to exempt certain plumbing work from the permit requirements normally required by the city’s sanitary code. In addition, the deadline for submitting a permit application will be extended from one business day to five business days from the date of the start of the activity, and the registration requirements for work set out in the Sanitary Code will be waived.

Accelerated plumbing repairs: @ATXCouncil approves plan for faster repairs to plumbing damaged by winter storms – also by approving exemptions + extending application deadlines.

More information: https://t.co/K0IGoVOb7H pic.twitter.com/WYrNw2R67Z

– City of Austin (@austintexasgov) February 25, 2021

The Development Services Department has set up a dedicated website for emergency repairs and permits, including a live chat facility for quick responses and a hotline (512-974-1500) that operates Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In addition, the city of Austin launched a new website to help residents repair winter storms. The website contains information related to the safety of repairs, plumbers, electricians and other contractors. Code compliance and service requests; the city’s emergency approval process; Financial aid from the homeowner; as well as federal and local aid programs.

Governor Greg Abbott, who is weighing the end of mask order, other statewide coronavirus rules, says the announcement is “coming pretty soon.”

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There have been a number of incidents in the news where curious whites have summoned the powers of the state to deter blacks from everyday activities.

One of the most notorious was “Permit Patty,” a woman who called the police on a young black girl selling bottled water on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Twin entrepreneurs, seven-year-old Kamari and Camera, of Savannah, Georgia, had the legality of their lemonade stand questioned by a white woman on social media after a photo of their new business was posted.

Instead of celebrating two children with an entrepreneurial spirit, she tried to question the viability of her business.

via WSAV

“A lady came in and said, ‘I bet you don’t have a license.’ And other people said, “How do you know that?” And she said, “I seriously doubt it,” said the girls’ father, Quentin Lawyer said.

Lawyer believes the woman’s comment was an example of overt racism.

“I didn’t even comment on them,” he said. “What she tried really did the opposite. It helped us more than it hurt us.”

Instead of closing the store, a family friend helped the twins apply for a business license with the city so they can sell their lemonade without being bothered by law enforcement or nosy whites.

Now their business, Twin Monad, is fully licensed in the city of Savannah and they have added more flavors to their menu. “Our flavors are strawberry-kiwi, blue raspberry, cotton candy, coconut, banana,” said Kamari.

In a matter of days, they made over $ 5,000. “That’s the whole purpose,” said lawyer. “Create generational wealth.”

On June 19th they had a line down the block and it was an hour’s wait for the lemonade.

via CBS

“We talked today about it being Juneteenth and ways to support black businesses,” customer Aimee Baxter told CBS News. “So we thought this was the business we wanted to support today.”

The girls’ mother, Charnise Anderson, hopes this is just the beginning of something much bigger. “It’s really great and we just want to push it forward,” said Anderson.

On a deeper level, it’s a little ridiculous that young children should have to get permission from the state or city to serve a cold glass of lemonade to a thirsty customer. Lemonade has never killed anyone and anyone who comes by for a cold glass understands the risk they are taking.

In rare cases, the brain may momentarily freeze if the lemonade is too cold.

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