We've got two documents on the desk this morning — one names the housing problem, one supposedly funds the fix. And they don't exactly seem to be talking to each other. If you're just joining us, San Francisco's been weighing whether cutting or deferring housing fees can restart stalled production. The tension's practical — fee relief could make projects pencil out, but those same fees pay for infrastructure and affordable housing. So City Hall has to prove a cut actually yields buildable homes, not just a hole in the budget. This is San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today — the Controller's housing math, Lurie's fifteen-point-nine-billion-dollar budget, and that small-business permit counter that still won't take yes for an answer. Let's start with the budget. If Housing fee reform and development feasibility matters to you, hit follow — we'll be back on it soon. Local media's been tracking this. Okay, this is the document. Daniel Lurie's proposed budget, for fiscal years 25-26 and 26-27, fifteen-point-nine billion dollars, and it's finally in my hands. And I open it up and what do I get first? Acknowledgements. Four pages of names before a single dollar figure. Greg Wagner, the Controller, the whole bullpen — fine, real people did real work. But where's the line that tells a builder the project pencils out? Mark, it's a budget, not a pro forma. The pro forma math is the Controller's housing feasibility report — the one that ran 80 development scenarios. Different book. Right, and that's my problem. One document names the cruelest bottleneck — financing — across 80 scenarios. This one supposedly funds the fixes. So show me the line where the fifteen-point-nine billion touches viability for builders. I'll wait. Structurally, the executive summary and the mayor's letter come right after this front matter — that's where the priorities land. Let's read those before we indict it. San Francisco keeps rolling out these pro-housing announcements, but rents just hit the biggest increase in the country — so what's actually blocking all these homes from getting built? It's genuinely all of the above, but the financing math may be the cruelest piece right now. The city's own Controller released a housing feasibility report — flagged by SPUR — that tested 80 development scenarios across low-rise, mid-rise, and high-rise projects. Only one of the 80 even broke even for a developer, much less made a profit. Then add the permitting delays: in a survey conducted for the Board of Supervisors, San Francisco's median building-permit processing time was about 280 days — nearly nine months — worse than Austin, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, and Washington D.C. There has been real progress here: KQED reports the city has cut that processing time roughly in half over the last few years, and that matters. But SPUR's permitting report points to a deeper problem: a lot of the structural inefficiency is baked into the city charter, so even incremental fixes may have to go to voters as a ballot measure. Meanwhile, roughly 20,000 homes are tied up in stalled megaprojects — places like Candlestick Point — while rents are climbing 10.6% year over year, the highest jump in the nation. If the charter is the root problem, does that mean City Hall basically can't fix this without going to voters every single time? Pretty much — SPUR's analysis says the city's hands are tied on the structural stuff unless charter reform goes to the ballot. So watch whether the Mayor and Board of Supervisors actually put a permitting charter amendment in front of voters, and whether the feasibility numbers get addressed through deeper fee and tax relief beyond the 2023 incentives. The SF Examiner reports those incentives weren't enough to reverse the decline in residential construction, even if they helped limit it. This one's from SF Planning:
If you are planning to start, renovate, expand a small business, or change the type of business operating at an existing business location, you may need a permit. Depending on the business type and zoning district of the property, your project may be approved and the permit may be issued at the Planning Counter.
So the SF Planning small-business page is back in front of me, and it still reads like a scavenger hunt. Gather your business name, your address, look up your zoning on the Property Information Map, then email pic@sfgov.org and pray. And here's what gets me — we just walked through the fifteen-point-nine billion dollar Lurie budget PDF this episode. I went looking for a line that fixes this exact counter: the pre-application reviews, the staff consultations, the multi-step approval depending on your zoning district. Show me the dollars aimed at that. For folks just tuning in, the Planning Information Counter is the front door. For a lot of small businesses, whether your permit clears there or gets bumped into months of review comes down to your zoning district. Right, and that's a lever City Hall fully owns. Nobody in Sacramento is telling us the corner sandwich shop needs three staff consultations. That choke point is ours to clear. If you follow local politics here, you might also like California Governor's Race — daily 2026 coverage of candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We'll be watching to see whether the mayor and Board of Supervisors move to put a permitting charter amendment before voters.
You'll find links to every story from today's briefing in the show notes, if you want to dig further into anything that caught your ear. That's San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.