San Francisco has had a reputation for decades as being too difficult to build new housing – despite a housing shortage that is contributing to a growing homelessness crisis.

But that is likely to change soon, as an expanded state law is now in place that is intended to reduce bureaucratic hurdles and speed up construction.

Officials expect the bill (Senate Bill 423) to cut the approval time for projects in San Francisco from two years to six months, streamlining housing construction that housing groups say is a much-needed course correction in a city where construction projects are plagued by delays and high costs.

Housing activists hope that San Francisco's new rules will lead to similar pressure in other major California cities with housing needs, including Los Angeles, to boost housing construction in the coming years as the state as a whole grapples with an estimated 2.5 million housing units shortage.

The state-mandated change will take the city by the bay from having one of the longest approval times for new housing to one of the shortest, said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who authored SB 423, the bill that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in October.

Wiener said the new rules would spare developers the “hyperpolitical mosh pit” of the building permit process in San Francisco, where regulations on where and how homes are built are notoriously strict.

The law now protects the majority of housing projects from Board of Supervisors scrutiny and allows developers to bypass the lengthy wait times, hearings and environmental review processes that add months, if not years, to a project's schedule – causing some projects to stall or be blocked entirely.

“We've spent decades in San Francisco wrapping one process after another in bureaucratic red tape,” Wiener said during a news conference Monday announcing the changes. “One process after another over the last 50 years, and we've systematically made it difficult or impossible to build the amount of housing we need.”

Wiener's bill extended a 2017 bill for another decade, allowing developers to skip much of the housing permitting process that often stalls construction in San Francisco.

The original law, originally set to expire in 2026, resulted in more than 18,000 planned housing units in California, according to a report released in August by UC Berkeley's Terner Center for Housing Innovation, which said nearly two-thirds of those would be considered 100 percent affordable, meaning all units would be reserved for low-income renters.

This law was in place in San Francisco years ago, but only for projects where at least 50 percent of the housing was deemed affordable. Since then, more than 3,600 apartments have been approved under fast-track construction, according to the San Francisco Planning Department, with about 88 percent considered “below market” housing.

Yet San Francisco has missed its housing goals by tens of thousands of units. Last year, the city passed a so-called “housing element,” a plan to build 82,069 housing units over an eight-year period. According to the Planning Department, the city has approved only 3,870 new housing units since 2023.

That slow start led to the enactment of the more comprehensive provisions of SB 423, which, among other things, include more frequent reviews of compliance with the city's housing goals.

In San Francisco, developers are now also allowed to speed up the approval process for market-rate projects as long as they reserve at least 10 percent of the housing for low-income families and comply with certain union-approved working conditions.

“It all starts with housing. And for decades, this city has said no to housing,” said Mayor London Breed, who is pushing for more development in the city to alleviate homelessness and reduce astronomical rents. “Enough is enough. San Francisco is not a museum where time should stand still. … We need to move this city forward.”

It is unclear what broader impact SB 423 will have in other California cities.

In Los Angeles, 3,587 housing units have been approved under the 2017 law, according to the city's Planning Department, but the simplification rules are limited to projects that include at least 50% affordable housing units.

An additional 50,000 housing units have been given the green light for construction under a number of other city programs to promote affordable housing near public transportation and in multi-family housing.

Los Angeles' housing plan will be reviewed again in 2026. If the city is found to have also fallen short of its market rate goals, projects that include at least 10% below-market rate units could be eligible for streamlining under the state Department of Housing's SB 423 rules.

However, a single housing law can only have a limited impact.

While state and city housing authorities have passed laws that are theoretically designed to speed up construction, construction costs have risen dramatically in recent years due to rising interest rates and expensive labor. Developers also pay additional fees that in some cases make the total cost of the project prohibitive.

There is also political resistance from the so-called NIMBY movement – ​​an acronym for “Not in my backyard” – which opposes increased development in traditional single-family home neighborhoods or sparsely populated areas.

Breed and Wiener hinted at that opposition on Monday by sharply criticizing their political rivals on the San Francisco City Council who have opposed multifamily housing projects, including Aaron Peskin, chairman of the Board of Supervisors. Peskin, a progressive Democrat, has expressed concerns that changes to zoning rules would make it too easy to build larger, expensive projects in certain neighborhoods, typically the wealthier enclaves of northern and western San Francisco.

Peskin is running against fellow Democrat Breed in the November race for mayor, a campaign that has brought many of the city's major issues into focus, including housing affordability and homelessness.

In a statement, Peskin said the “real obstacle” to building more housing is financing, and SB 423 could prove to be a “boon to speculators and developers who build expensive housing units that are unaffordable for most San Francisco residents.”

“I am not surprised by the mayor's enthusiastic support, as she has consistently supported the interests of speculators and developers at the expense of what is best and most necessary for working and middle-class San Francisco,” Peskin said.