How San Francisco Spent a Decade Falling Behind Barcelona and Singapore on Housing

San Francisco ranks 34th out of 40 major global cities on housing production efficiency, according to a municipal audit released Thursday by the Budget and Legislative Analyst's office — trailing not just European capitals but Singapore, Barcelona, and Vienna by margins that housing researchers called embarrassing for a city with the economic resources San Francisco commands.

The audit lands at a particularly raw moment. The city's Regional Housing Needs Allocation obligation, set by the state in 2023, requires San Francisco to permit 82,069 new units by 2031. Through the end of last year, fewer than 6,400 had been approved. At the current pace, the city would reach its deadline having built roughly a quarter of what Sacramento demands — a shortfall that triggers state penalties including loss of planning authority over certain approvals.

A Decade of Deferred Decisions

The story of how San Francisco arrived here runs through at least three mayoral administrations and a planning apparatus that critics have long described as structurally hostile to density. The Planning Department's environmental review process — which can add 18 to 36 months to a project timeline — was flagged in the audit as the single largest procedural drag on production, a finding consistent with complaints developers have lodged publicly since at least 2017.

The Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, adopted in 2008, was supposed to concentrate growth in the Mission, Potrero Hill, and Central SoMa corridors. It did not. Community opposition to specific projects on streets like South Van Ness Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street repeatedly stalled mid-density residential buildings that, in Barcelona's Eixample district or Singapore's Queenstown estate model, would have broken ground within months of approval. The audit cites the average San Francisco entitlement timeline of 4.2 years as roughly triple Barcelona's equivalent figure.

The Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development administered roughly $500 million in affordable housing funding between 2019 and 2024, yet completed fewer than 3,000 permanently affordable units in that window. The audit does not question the intent of programs like the Small Sites Program, which has preserved rent-controlled buildings in the Tenderloin and Excelsior, but notes those preservation efforts consumed capital that other cities direct primarily toward new construction.

What Other Cities Actually Did

Singapore's Housing Development Board produced 22,000 new units in 2024 alone, serving a population roughly comparable to the Bay Area at large. Barcelona's 2016 Urban Habitat Plan rezoned entire blocks of the Poblenou industrial district for mixed-income residential use, cutting permitting time through a consolidated single-agency review structure. Vienna, consistently ranked first or second in global livability surveys, has maintained a social housing stock — roughly 60 percent of the city's residential units — built over a century of continuous municipal investment dating to the Red Vienna era of the 1920s.

San Francisco attempted its own version of streamlining with AB 2011, the state law that took effect in 2023 allowing by-right approval of affordable housing on commercially zoned land. Early results in San Francisco have been limited. The Stonestown Galleria redevelopment in West Portal — a project that could produce up to 5,000 units under the plan submitted by Brookfield Properties — remains in environmental review. The Upper Market corridor, where a cluster of smaller infill projects qualified for AB 2011 treatment, has seen three proposals advance but none yet under construction.

The audit recommends the Board of Supervisors adopt a consolidated permitting structure by January 2027, eliminating redundant reviews between the Planning Department and the Department of Building Inspection. It also calls for a dedicated housing production office modeled loosely on Singapore's HDB, with statutory authority to override standard environmental timelines on projects that meet affordability thresholds.

Whether the Board moves on those recommendations before the 2026 state compliance deadline is the immediate political question. Three supervisors have already signaled skepticism about any proposal that reduces neighborhood input on planning decisions. For the roughly 8,000 people counted as unhoused in San Francisco's January 2025 point-in-time census, and for the workforce commuting from Stockton and Tracy because rents near their jobs hit $3,200 a month for a one-bedroom, the audit's comparative data offers context. The policy response is still unwritten.