Lurie’s PermitSF overhaul stumbles as San Francisco permits stay slow

San Francisco homeowners trying to add a unit, builders trying to start housing and small businesses waiting to open still face a permit system that moves far slower than City Hall promised. A 2022 state-commissioned report found the city was the slowest California jurisdiction for approving housing permit applications, and even after a sharp recent improvement, the waits remain long enough to stall projects, financing and openings.

A city study published in March 2026 said the average timeline for new-housing permit approvals fell from 605 days to about 280 days between January 2024 and August 2025. That is progress, but San Francisco still trails places such as San Diego and Austin, Texas, and the city continues to work through years-old permit applications. For applicants caught in the system, the reform has not yet turned into the fast, predictable process the mayor promised.

Mayor Daniel Lurie launched PermitSF in 2025 as a multi-department effort to untangle the city’s permitting maze. On February 12, 2026, he unveiled a new PermitSF portal that initially handled five permit types online, so applicants no longer had to visit the Permit Center in person for those requests. The launch was billed as a first-year milestone for a campaign that Lurie said had already produced 20 ordinances aimed at reducing burdens on homeowners and small businesses.

The city widened that push in September 2025 with six more ordinances to speed approvals and loosen restrictions on driveway parking, historic-building use, sidewalk dining, temporary uses and entertainment permits. In January 2026, it also began a process to create a single centralized permitting organization by merging the Department of Building Inspection, the Planning Department and the Permit Center. City materials list Patrick O’Riordan, Katy Tang, Rebecca Villareal-Mayer and Liz Watty as part of the PermitSF leadership team.

But the overhaul has also become a political fight. In 2025, the city awarded OpenGov a $5.9 million, one-year contract to build the system even though internal evaluations gave rival bidder Clariti a higher average score, 4.42 out of 5 versus 2.88. Sixteen technical city workers scored the bids, and Supervisor Jackie Fielder called for a hearing to examine the deal, raising concerns about cost, quality and procedure. A PermitSF weekly status report dated October 31, 2025, said one requirement would delay a deliverable by about a week and noted knowledge gaps on the city side around data migration and integration.

Business groups including GrowSF have backed the effort and pushed for a permit performance tracker so the public can see whether the system is really improving. For now, the numbers show a city that has moved, but not yet enough to convince skeptics that City Hall has mastered one of its most basic functions.