SF City Contractors Push to Fix Duplicate-Image Problem That Has Slowed Housing Permitting for Months

San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection confirmed this week that staff are working through a queue of permit applications stalled by a technical flaw that caused the same architectural drawings and site photographs to be uploaded multiple times — in some cases dozens of times — inside the city's Accela permit-management system. The glitch, which DBI staff say originated during a software migration completed in November 2025, has contributed to delays affecting at least several dozen active residential and mixed-use project files across the city.

The timing is awkward. Mayor Daniel Lurie took office in January pledging to cut housing approval timelines, and the Board of Supervisors passed a housing production emergency ordinance in March that set internal city benchmarks for permit turnaround. A permit portal clogged with duplicate image files undermines both commitments before the administration has a chance to show results.

Where the Backlog Is Hitting Hardest

Planning and building staff say the duplicate-image problem shows up most frequently in applications tied to Accessory Dwelling Unit projects in the Outer Sunset and the Mission District, two neighborhoods where small-lot infill has dominated the city's housing pipeline for the past two years. Applications processed through the San Francisco Planning Department's ADU Pre-Approved Plans Program — a program the city launched specifically to speed construction — have not been immune. Some applicants in those files reported waiting since January 2026 for a plan-check appointment that requires a clean digital record before it can be scheduled.

The SF Housing Action Coalition, a nonprofit that tracks residential permitting, has flagged the issue in correspondence with DBI. The group has urged the department to assign dedicated staff to manually audit and purge duplicated image attachments rather than waiting for an automated fix that has yet to materialize. DBI has not publicly committed to a staffing solution as of July 3.

On the ground, contractors working out of the DBI permit counter at 49 South Van Ness Avenue — the building that consolidated city permitting services in 2021 — say they have been told to resubmit corrected file packets but have received inconsistent guidance on naming conventions and file-size limits, which in some cases simply reproduced the original error.

What the Fix Looks Like, and When It Might Arrive

DBI's technology office is working with Granicus, the vendor that provides the Accela platform to dozens of U.S. municipalities, on a patch that would flag duplicate image hashes before they are written to a project record. Granicus has deployed similar patches in other client cities; San Francisco's version has been in testing since mid-June. Department staff told applicants in a written update distributed through the permit portal on June 30 that a production rollout is targeted for mid-July, though no specific date has been confirmed publicly.

In the meantime, DBI is asking applicants to submit drawings in PDF format rather than JPEG or PNG, limit individual file sizes to 25 megabytes, and use unique, project-specific file names. The department posted those guidelines on its website at sfdbi.org on July 1.

For homeowners and developers already stuck in the queue, the practical advice from planning attorneys familiar with the system is to contact the assigned plan checker directly — by email rather than the portal message function — and request a manual file audit. That audit can take five to ten business days but has successfully cleared several stalled applications in the Potrero Hill and Noe Valley neighborhoods, according to publicly filed project correspondence reviewed this week.

The broader stakes are real. San Francisco has a state-mandated obligation under its sixth-cycle Housing Element to permit roughly 82,000 new units by 2031. Every week a technical flaw keeps ADU applications in limbo is a week subtracted from a timeline that is already considered aggressive by most housing analysts. A software patch and cleaner file protocols are small fixes — but right now, they are the fix the city's housing pipeline is waiting on.