SF analysis: Drawn-out building permitting processes foster corruption

Vincent Van Gogh: The White House at Night, 1890. Image by Wikimedia Commons

The Independent Institute looks into San Francisco's widespread problem of developers bribing low-level bureaucrats to speed up the permitting process. On the other hand, cities like Houston that minimize red tape and quickly issue permits don't face such rampant corruption. The Institute connects SF's excessive building codes/permitting procedures to its escalated bribery scandals (and housing shortages).

Construction permits do not inherently invite graft. Cities with inexpensive, expeditious and transparent procedures for acquiring permits create little inducement for risky, under-the-table dealings. It is difficult to imagine a developer greasing Curran’s palms to hasten a permit application had he worked in Houston, where approval takes only 10 days. But the process of obtaining a building permit in San Francisco is among the most onerous in the nation—builders wait a whopping 627 days on average to receive a multifamily housing permit.

The city’s building code has swelled into “a package of controls so large that we no longer publish a paper version,” Dan Sider, chief of staff for the city Planning Department, told the Frisc news site. For perspective, Houston’s building code runs a manageable 77 pages. With excessive building codes regulating virtually every detail of construction projects, San Francisco’s city planners are swamped with more rules than they can track. As a result, builders are subject to a lengthy ordeal of modifying and resubmitting plans, compounding the burgeoning backlog of applications pending review.

Nor does approval ensure that a plan will see completion because the city’s discretionary permit review process allows citizens and lawmakers to challenge projects at any point during construction, threatening to derail even code-compliant developments. This creates enormous incentives to bribe officials who can move things forward.

Making the problem even more vexing is San Francisco’s housing shortage. In a city facing a state mandate to build 82,000 housing units before the end of 2031, grueling permit requirements make it challenging to meet this goal. The dismal reality is that permit bribes lower a significant barrier to construction.

The real problem, then, is not the behavior of a low-level bureaucrat, however unethical, but the regulatory environment that created corruption opportunities for him in the first place.

This article originally appeared in the Independent Institute. Read the whole thing here.

Related:

• Khamis' pro-business ideas validated—at long last—via streamlined permitting in SJ

• San Jose’s Housing Permits Fall Short -- Again

• Mahan on SJ's housing permitting fiasco: "a problem of accountability"

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