You know why housing doesn’t get built in San Francisco? That office. 100% of the problem.
Fence higher than 6 feet? That's technically against the law and you need a special permit, but no one cares and contractors will build without one. We're talking about LA, where concrete walls over 10 feet around homes are common.
Pouring more than 30 square feet of concrete, or replacing a driveway? You need a permit. But guess what, yup, contractors will do that without batting an eye.
Replacing a sink or toilet? Yup, you need a permit. Installing a built-in book shelf that technically takes away square footage? You need a permit. New windows? Permit! New showerhead, that's a permit too – yes, actually. And all of these have fees (some of which are more than the cost of the change), inspections, and will be factored into the tax assessment.
These are requirements for both single family homes and multi-family developments. While LA has no shortage of laws on the books, I'm thankful that at least compared to San Francisco contractors have no hesitation cutting right through it. It might have to do with the fact that unlike SF, LA has the space to keep things out of site from overly-nosy neighbors.
I did a walkout basement years ago, the f'ing building inspector came to my house every single day. It got to the point he was stopping by for lunch simply to abuse my wife's hospitality.
we had enough and finally asked him what he wants. He basically told us to call the city and tell them what a great job he was doing.
We did this just to get rid of him.
I dont think the government has any clue what the lower level people are actually doing. It isnt about "building permits" but government empire building and control.
In SF and around the bay, it seems to be straight up we don't want to build in our city, so go away.
Do you think that candidate will succeed with SF’s voters?
Ironically some people complained about Hui from the perspective of opposing development (signing off on things he shouldn’t have). But it’s two sides of the same coin - making housing so hard to build is what creates the market for “expediters” and the opportunity for corruption in the housing bureaucracy
One of the person who testified in exchange for not being jailed was "Mr. 3%", a member of the office who approve (public) construction projects. He took 3% of the project total cost (in bribes) from the top 30 contractors in exchange for making sure their permits requests never got in these artificial rejection loops.
The bureaucracy, just like the old taxi industry, is about keeping smaller players out, not enforcing the codes.
See my post above.. it is also about feeding the bureaucracy itself as well.
Some places (like where i live) actually go driving around looking for construction taking place so they can issue "stop work" orders and force you to get permits.
they use these permits to ask for more federal/provincial money as they are 'growing'.
They also grow the bureaucracy machine, which allows them to hire more people to drive around looking for lumber on your yard, to make you buy more permits...
More corruption at this point would almost be a good thing. As things stand there's basically no personal incentive for inspectors to actually approve projects.