Solution Streamline Permitting

Make housing permits fast and fair, removing arbitrary barriers to both subsidized affordable and market rate housing.

Even where housing is technically allowed, complicated and arbitrary permitting can slow, shrink, or stop housing in practice. Complicated permitting creates opportunities for corruption to flourish and makes building housing take much longer. It further drives up the cost of new housing.

Improving permitting is especially important in exclusionary neighborhoods. In those neighborhoods, wealthy homeowners often use complicated permitting rules to block new housing in their neighborhoods.

Policies in this category include “by right” or “as of right” permitting, permit streamlining, California’s SB 35, and reform of environmental review processes.