Planning staff: San Francisco housing pipeline is large but completion pace and construction costs raise concerns

Planning Department staff briefed the commission on economic trends and the city’s housing pipeline, presenting a mixed picture: a large pipeline but a significant gap between entitled projects and those being built.

Miriam Chon, the department’s housing policy program manager, said the city’s long growth cycle had slowed from about 5% to roughly 2% growth and flagged a construction-cost index more than double 2003 levels. "A median asking rent, dollars 3,500," she said, citing affordability pressures. Chon and Teresa Ojeda described the pipeline as nearly 70,600 net units (about 20% affordable), with roughly 7,460 units under construction and about 30,000 units tied up in a handful of major, multi‑phase projects that could take a decade or more to build out.

Commissioners used the briefing to probe causes of the entitlement-to-construction gap: Commissioner Richards pressed staff on zone capacity, entitlement rates, and why entitled units are not advancing to building permits; he asked for analyses on financing, cost breakdowns (land, materials, labor, entitlement costs) and the role of entitlements as an aftermarket commodity. Commissioner Koppel and others noted construction labor shortages and material scarcity as drivers of higher costs.

Staff recommended focusing on moving existing entitled projects forward and noted constraints such as infrastructure, financing complexity and industry capacity. Commissioners asked for follow-up data about entitlement utilization rates, financing bottlenecks and construction-cost breakdowns to inform policy choices and potential regional coordination.