HCD Expects Review To Be Confined To San Francisco For Now
- William Fulton
- Aug 11, 2022
- 4 min read
The Department of Housing and Community Development is planning to focus on its review of San Francisco’s housing approval processes for now and isn’t currently planning to do similar reviews of other jurisdictions – at least not in the near future.
“We’re not ruling out the possibility of doing this kind of review elsewhere,” David Zisser, head of HCD’s Housing Accountability Unit, said in an exclusive interview with CP&DR. “But right now we’re not planning to do that, in part because it’s prudent to see how this goes. It is a first of its kind, and it will take some real resources on our end, we want to give it the time it needs.”
San Francisco has come under fire for supposedly missing deadlines under the Permit Streamlining Act, and Zisser said the department has more open complaints about San Francisco than about any other city in the state.
Zisser also said he expects the San Francisco review to focus only on policy issues but the department will work with the attorney general’s office if it also finds violations of state rlaw.
“It is important to think the review as largely a policy audit, at the end of the analysis we will have hopefully a really good set of recommendations that are policy-oriented for the most part,” Zisser said. “That said, as we dig in we may find things that lead us to see a potential violation of state law. And where that happens, we will be consulting with the AG’s office as needed.”
On August 9, HCD initiated an unprecedented review of the City and County of San Francisco’s housing processes – the most aggressive move so far by a state government that is increasingly pressuring cities around the state to plan for approve more housing.
In a statement, HCD Director Gustavo Velasquez said: “We are deeply concerned about processes and political decision-making in San Francisco that delay and impede the creation of housing and want to understand why this is the case. We will be working with the city to identify and clear roadblocks to construction of all types of housing, and when we find policies and practices that violate or evade state housing law, we will pursue those violations together with the Attorney General’s Office. We expect the cooperation of San Francisco in this effort.”
The legal basis for HCD's move is Government Code Section 11180 et seq., which specifically gives state department heads the authority to "make investigations and prosecute actions concerning ... all matters related to the business activities and subjects under the jurisdiction of the department."
Zisser said the review was expected to take about nine months, once HCD puts a researcher under contract. HCD's press release said the review would be undertaken with UC Berkeley’s Institute for Urban and Regional Development – part of Berkeley’s College of Environment Design, which also contains the Department of City and Regional Planning, but Zisser did not say for sure that IURD would be the contractor.
