Newsom is demanding 82,000 NEW housing units by 2030 in San Fran. So far this year, the city has approved less than 1,000 new units—and that does not count the number of units DESTROYED to build these.
“Hannan added: “So far, in 2024, the Department of Building Inspection has only received four housing producing permit applications for new structures—three were for backyard cottage Accessory Dwelling Units and one was for a 75-unit affordable housing building.”
The San Francisco Planning Department told Newsweek that so far in 2024 they have authorized 530 units—another number contradicting federal data.
Joseph Politano, an independent writer at Apricitas Economics who first shared the federal data on X, commented on the data saying that “it’d be hilarious if it weren’t such a nightmare.”
In a written statement to Newsweek, Politano said: “In the short term, higher interest rates and a slowdown in the local San Francisco economy are hurting new permits. But more broadly, the city has a structural problem where its exclusionary zoning and planning restrictions prevent the construction of any new homes”
Why isn’t the Attorney General suing San Fran for their obvious violating of the mandate—he is suing Huntington Beach for refusing to try to meet their requirements.
San Francisco Has Only Agreed to Build 16 Homes So Far This Year
Newsweek, 6/5/24 https://www.newsweek.com/san-francisco-only-agreed-build-16-homes-this-year-1907831
Federal data shows that city authorities permitted the construction of only 16 housing units in San Francisco, one of the most expensive markets in the country, in 2024 as of June—a far cry from what demand would require and what Mayor London Breed has promised.
Preliminary 2024 data from the States of the Cities Data Systems (SOCDS) Building Permits Database shows that the total housing unit building permits for San Francisco between January and now was 16, split between seven single-family homes, six 2-unit and multifamily homes and three 3- and 4-unit multifamily homes. Among all types of units, six permits were given in January, one in February, seven in March and two in April.
The data will be subject to revision throughout the rest of the year and might change, but as they are now, they present quite a bleak picture for San Francisco.
City authorities contested these data, telling Newsweek that they are “not a complete representation of housing permitting in San Francisco as it only includes new housing that is part of a new structure, such as a new apartment building or backyard cottage Accessory Dwelling Unit, and excludes new housing that is not part of a new structure.”
For example, city authorities said, “the addition of Accessory Dwelling Units in the basement of existing homes is not included, nor is new housing resulting from unit legalization or commercial to residential conversions.”
The reason for these omissions is that these data are collected by the federal government (the Census Bureau) and “they have a narrow definition of housing that doesn’t account for all of the types of housing created in a dense, older city like San Francisco.”
Patrick Hannan, communications director at the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection, told Newsweek that, “that said, housing production in San Francisco has certainly slowed though it appears to be more related to economic conditions than the permitting process.”
Hannan added: “So far, in 2024, the Department of Building Inspection has only received four housing producing permit applications for new structures—three were for backyard cottage Accessory Dwelling Units and one was for a 75-unit affordable housing building.”
The San Francisco Planning Department told Newsweek that so far in 2024 they have authorized 530 units—another number contradicting federal data.
Joseph Politano, an independent writer at Apricitas Economics who first shared the federal data on X, commented on the data saying that “it’d be hilarious if it weren’t such a nightmare.”
In a written statement to Newsweek, Politano said: “In the short term, higher interest rates and a slowdown in the local San Francisco economy are hurting new permits. But more broadly, the city has a structural problem where its exclusionary zoning and planning restrictions prevent the construction of any new homes”
Home prices have been spiraling upward in San Francisco since the Great Recession of 2008-2009 followed the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble, making buying a home in the City by the Bay unaffordable for many. While home prices in the city dropped during the U.S. housing market correction of late summer 2022 and spring 2023, a chronic shortage of homes has kept them from totally plummeting.
As of April, according to the latest Redfin data, the median sale price of a home in San Francisco was $1,400,000, up 3.7 percent compared to a year earlier. It was considerably higher than the national median sale price, which in April was $432,903, up 6.1 percent year-over-year, according to Redfin.
Last June, Breed introduced legislation boosting the building of new homes in the city by cutting fees and removing laborious requirements for conditional use permits and mandatory public hearings, among other moves. The legislation was designed to help the city meet the state-mandated goal of building 82,000 homes by 2031 to meet the serious need for housing in the city.
But in 2023, the city issued permits for the building of only 1,823 new units, according to the data from San Francisco Planning Department mentioned by the San Francisco Standard. That was about 1,000 short of the units authorized the year before, for a total of 2,701 in 2022.
The number of total new units completed in 2023 was slightly higher, at 1,983, down from 2,893 a year earlier.
In an update in April, Breed didn’t provide concrete details about how many housing units have been authorized in the city, but said that she was “proud to say that over the last year, we’ve started to move San Francisco in the right direction on housing.”
The mayor admitted that “we are not where we need to be, and there is much more work to be done,” adding that her administration continues “to encounter obstruction and delay as we push these solutions forward, but we have made progress. We will continue to make progress.”
Newsweek contacted Breed’s office for comment by email on Tuesday morning.
But the slow pace at which the city has approved new housing units permits this year doesn’t mean that it won’t pick up later in the year. In an article published in April, the SF Standard highlighted how in 2023, the city had approved only 12 units in the first two months of the year—but the number spiked later in the year.
Time will tell whether something similar will happen again this year.
