San Francisco’s housing crisis demands real solutions, and bringing down construction costs alone will not solve all the complex challenges related to housing supply, displacement, and affordability in the city. However, focus groups and interviews with a range of practitioners revealed that this is an area ripe for intervention. Reducing housing construction costs would be of particular benefit for affordable housing, where every dollar saved translates into a subsidy for additional units.

Indeed, the key theme to emerge from the focus groups was that although city regulations and processes were implemented with “good intentions,” the layering of these requirements can undermine the goal of housing affordability and in some instances create a situation of “death by a thousand cuts.” As one interview respondent put it, “At some point, we have to decide whether we care more about housing people or the city’s pride at being the “best” at everything.” San Francisco has already taken some important steps to address local cost drivers, and there is a window of opportunity to build on this momentum and do even more to reduce construction costs. The consensus among the practitioners in this study was that the city should take even more direct measures to reduce permitting times and introduce more streamlined and predictable reviews and inspections. These inefficiencies rarely produce tangible benefits, but do increase both the hard and soft costs of development.