By The Numbers: What San Francisco's New Housing Data Reveals About the City's Planning Crisis

San Francisco's latest housing inventory report, released this month by the Planning Department, contains numbers that tell a stark story about the effectiveness of the city's boldest planning decisions over the past three years.

Consider this: of the 8,247 housing units approved since 2023, only 1,840 have been completed. That's a 22 percent completion rate, leaving 6,407 units still in various stages of development. Meanwhile, the average time from Planning Commission approval to groundbreaking has stretched to 18 months—up from 11 months in 2020. On Market Street alone, where the city has pushed aggressive zoning reforms, 340 units remain stalled in permitting.

The data on affordability is even more sobering. Of those completed units, just 312 are restricted to households earning below 80 percent of area median income. That's less than 17 percent of new supply. The median rent for a one-bedroom in the Mission District now stands at $2,895 monthly—a 6 percent increase year-over-year despite new construction adding roughly 2,100 units citywide in 2025.

The numbers reveal where policy intentions diverge from outcomes. The city's Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) program, heralded as a solution, has produced 890 permits since 2023. Yet only 156 have been completed, suggesting that zoning reform alone doesn't overcome financing barriers or construction costs averaging $385,000 per unit in neighborhoods like the Richmond.

Supervisorial District 6, encompassing the Mission and SOMA, received 3,100 new units of approvals—30 percent of the citywide total. But vacancy rates in these areas remain stubbornly high at 4.2 percent, suggesting a mismatch between what's being built and what residents can afford. The median home price in the Mission hit $1.47 million this quarter, up 3.8 percent from last year despite new construction.

Perhaps most revealing: the Planning Department's own analysis shows that environmental review processes now consume an average of 247 days per project—longer than the actual Planning Commission deliberation, which averages 89 days. That administrative timeline accounts for roughly seven months of project delays.

The data doesn't paint a simple picture of success or failure. Rather, it reveals an ecosystem where zoning changes, financing gaps, construction costs, and environmental processes operate at different speeds. Unless those velocities align, the hundreds of millions in approved projects risk remaining incomplete—and San Francisco's housing shortage deepens by the numbers.

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