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> There are a lot of real issues here, but this article gives a skewed picture of the problems by focusing on a somewhat unusual example, in which the owner actively resisted the city's process with the intention of going to court.

The reason he can take the issue to court like this is because the city's "process" is illegal.

> Tillman has done plenty of media and activism, and it seems his goal was not just to get the project approved in order to proceed, but to use the legal system to clarify developers rights more broadly.

Good for him.

> Whatever you think of that approach, I think "sue all the way to a state judge and set a precedent" was always going to be slow.

Saying something is slow is meaningless if you don't compare it to something else. What avenue for reform in SF would be faster? The legal solution may not move as fast as anybody would like, but I think it will be faster than any idea anybody else might have (which seemingly mostly boils down to 'raise awareness' and 'fundraising for local politicians'.)

Yeah, I'm no lawyer, but there are many many cases of court orders leading what would otherwise be monumentally long legislative actions. Slavery, voting rights, eminent domain, asset forfeiture, and tons of others.

Housing isn't in the bill of rights directly, but equal protection is.

Basically, SF housing comes down to a battle of:

- I have a right to defend my housing equity/wealth (currently winning and will continue to win legislatively because the money is here)

- I have a right to a house (the moral choice, but far and away the less-monied, and therefore zero chance of legislative redress)

It isn't just SF, this is fundamentally a generational war across the entire US, practically everywhere.

It’s more a fight between “I want my area to stay the same” and “I want to develop my property” - those wanting housing have effectively no say at all.

> those wanting housing have effectively no say at all.

One of the points that William Fischel makes in Zoning Rules! is that when a developer responds to the profit motive from the market, he is representing the interests of future tenants who need housing. Conversely, when San Francisco Leftists oppose developments because they oppose developers making a profit, they are unwittingly opposing the interests of future tenants. This is part of what makes housing in San Francisco such an unsolved problem: those who claim to represent tenants seeking affordable housing (such as the trade group CCHO) actively fight private development.

> Saying something is slow is meaningless if you don't compare it to something else.

I think an obvious comparison is between Tillman's project and the (still abysmal) averages listed later in the article. I.e. Tillman's approach turned out to be slower (or a dead end) for his project; lots of projects are "faster" but still ridiculously bogged down relative to other cities.

> But eight years later and after countless community meetings, hearings, appeals, studies, a legal challenge and a court settlement—the site of the former laundromat at 2918 Mission St. still sits empty.

> That timeline is far from unusual in San Francisco, where it takes more than two years on average to permit housing projects—an unusually slow pace compared to peer cities, according to a draft study published last year.

So his approach was at least 3-4x slower than average.

> What avenue for reform in SF would be faster?

A legal challenge might be a pretty good way to achieve some reform! I also think criminal cases for corrupt city officials are appropriate. But the article isn't claiming to be about how slow it is to reform city government -- it's about how slow it is to build housing. But it picked a project to highlight which seems to have tried to do a little of both.

Per the embedded chart (1/2 way down, "CA Housing Development Average Permitting Timeline"), San Francisco takes an average of 975 days for a project to go from submitted to permitted.

2.6 years to get permitted is not a good faith effort on the part of the city.

That's 'if you're really serious about housing then cut NIMBY rights back to a reasonable level tomorrow' levels of fucked up.

Saying something is slow is meaningless if you don't compare it to something else. What avenue for reform in SF would be faster?

Huh? The article headline and the article are about the speed of housing approval, not about the speed of "avenues for reform in SF".

The reason he can take the issue to court like this is because the city's "process" is illegal.

That may be true but that's a different issue also. The original claim that SF's process is slow, not that it's illegal (even if it is illegal).

He's an activist. His objective is to affect change in the system, not to get something built. Trying to build something is the pretext for a lawsuit that aims to change the system. The proper comparison is comparing his method of activism to other methods of activism.

If he simply wanted to build something fast, then he'd bribe whoever needs bribing and nothing would change.

I mean, I think he did originally _also_ want to get something built. But your point is exactly why I think the obstacles to building in SF are better illustrated with a project that was just trying to get something built.

We can have separate opinions about whether Tillman's efforts were good versus whether he's a good illustrative example the obstacles in the system.

The "approval process" was that city officials demanded he bribe local shakedown outfits. So of course he resisted it.

The reason that Tillman is the only person to ever say no to the shakedown is that he isn't a developer, and he doesn't have other properties he wants to build, and he has no interest in maintaining a working relationship with the city.

> The reason that Tillman is the only person to ever say no to the shakedown is that he isn't a developer, and he doesn't have other properties he wants to build, and he has no interest in maintaining a working relationship with the city.

Sounds to me like the perfect person to expose it for what it is.

> in which the owner actively resisted the city's process

Resisted the city's ILLEGAL(under state law) process.

What you are doing here is a form of victim blaming.

I'm not blaming Tillman. My criticism is with the article author Sarah wright. I'm suggesting that the article could have picked a different, more representative project if it wanted to point out the obstacles to development. As the stats in the article show, the _average_ case is already very bad. Most projects don't become the target of this much focused attention from community groups. Most projects don't "set out to get the project denied at the Board of Supervisors".