S.F. Mayor Wants to Speed Up Approvals For Housing Construction #investment #realestate #homeownership

Source:  KQED

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee on Thursday called on city departments to cut by nearly half the time it takes to issue building permits to developers constructing housing projects.  Lee said speeding up the production of housing would help add more stock to the market and help ease rising housing prices.  He said people who work in the city are communicating too far because of the housing crisis.

In a directive issued Thursday, the mayor asked city department heads to reduce entitlement times and ensure that building permits, subdivision maps and other permits are approved quickly to get construction started as soon as possible.  The mayor predicted that the new policy would lead to 5,000 new units built each year.

It's aimed at housing projects with as few as two units that have ground-floor parking or a bit of office space, but the main goal is to target large developments with at least 250 units, said Ken Rich, director of development for San Francisco, who helped write the new policy.

Check out the full story here:
https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/09/29/s-f-mayor-wants-to-speed-up-approvals-for-housing-construction/

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