According to a recently issued report from Mayor Newsom’s “SF Stat” project, in the last six months of 2006 it took 287 days for an application for a construction project in San Francisco to even be assigned to a planner. It took over 500 days for initial environmental studies to be completed, a period that precedes the often lengthy public hearing process. Since these figures include small 2-3 unit projects, the larger for- profit and nonprofit projects can take two years just to receive the basic environmental review. Mayor Newsom vowed to bring efficiency to the Planning Department when he ran for mayor in 2003, but his own statistics show the problem has worsened despite the overall construction slowdown. It’s no wonder San Francisco is reaching the point where only luxury housing developers can afford to build, and where nonprofit groups get less bang for the housing dollar due to costly procedural delays.

As activists fight against market-rate condos in the Mission and for more affordable housing money, there is an 800-pound gorilla in the room that is ignored: Inefficiency at San Francisco’s Planning Department increases the cost of all housing projects, preventing developers from providing more inclusionary units and reducing the number of nonprofit units that are built due to costly project processing delays.

Consider how much advance work---architectural, engineering, financial--- goes into a housing project before it is even submitted to Planning, the fact that the project application then sits in a file for over nine months without even being looked at by a planner is quite astounding. And while the project application gathers dust in a file cabinet, builders must still pay interest payments on the land, and cope with the rising cost of materials.

Mayor Newsom was not envisioning delays of nine months to two years before projects are assigned for review when he vowed to bring greater efficiency to the Planning Department.

Ironically, Newsom’s SF Stat program has provided critics with the most complete evidence of Planning’s failures. Otherwise, it would be hard to believe that Planning could take an average of 194 days---over six months---just to complete the filing of certificates confirming that projects are completely exempt from environmental review.

While Newsom has spent the past four years deeply preoccupied with perceived problems at the Department of Building Inspection, he has said barely a negative word to say about Planning. Yet statistics show that Planning, not DBI, is responsible for nearly all of San Francisco’s widely-complained about construction delays.

Why has the Mayor not castigated Planning for its delays? After turning the agency over to former Feinstein Planning Director Dean Macris, Newsom refused to find fault with Macris’ performance. Three years after taking the position as a “temporary” appointment, Macris will finally be replaced by a “permanent” Planning Director in the coming weeks.

Of course, Macris accomplished the same goal for Newsom as he did for Feinstein: he kept the downtown developers happy at the expense of everyone else.

Opponents of market-rate housing may be cheered to learn that projects are being delayed and even abandoned by San Francisco’s bureaucratic delays. But before blowing off the champagne corks, consider two critical points.

First, nonprofit, affordable projects are subject to the same delays. And unlike many private developers, nonprofits do not have the financial resources to cover the cost of these delays from other funds.

This means that construction of desperately needed affordable housing is delayed while the developer seeks additional funding. And the most available source of funds, tax credits, involves an application schedule that can further delay affordable projects.

So as the Board of Supervisors and Mayor fight over how much the city should spend on affordable housing, the city’s Planning Department makes such housing more costly and more financially tenuous. While Board President Aaron Peskin has seemingly spent seven years as a Supervisor trying to improve Planning Department efficiency, SF Stat show that his efforts have fallen short.

A new Planning Director might change this scenario. Considering how long it has been since a self-proclaimed “world-class city” had a Planning Director commensurate with this vision, the lack of media attention to the selection of this new Director is surprising.

But only a vibrant, new Director can change the culture of a Department whose planners have been shortchanged by the lack of dynamic and creative leadership.

Market-rate housing opponents should also be concerned about the bureaucracy-caused housing slowdown because it costs the city money. Money used to fund millions of dollars in Board of Supervisor addbacks to the mayor’s budget, and that funds vital nonprofit services.

I don’t think progressive anti-development activists fully understand how the Brown-Newsom construction boom has enabled San Francisco to raise funding for services while cities across the United States have faced cuts. San Francisco is heavily dependent on federal housing, health, and social service funds, yet has prospered despite a Bush Administration that has savaged federal programs.

But Planning Department gridlock means that city property tax revenues will not continue to sharply increase as in past years. And with Bayview-Hunters Point a Redevelopment Area, new property tax revenue generated in the biggest unbuilt area in the city will not go to the general fund, but will instead by swallowed by the Agency bureaucracy.
There once was a day when San Francisco progressives aggressively promoted new revenue-raising measures, such as downtown assessment districts and increases in the real estate transfer tax. But we saw no push for such measures this year, and even housing activists promoted a housing charter amendment that did not raise city revenue, but instead reallocated it.

It is a measure of Mayor Newsom’s hold on the development community that project sponsors angry over delays have not complained publicly. But even strong backers of the mayor are privately furious, and have all but given up hope for improvement.

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