Since 2018, Hiten Madhani has been trying to expand his modest Bernal Heights home to make more room for his aging parents and his wife and daughter. But six years in, he’s spent $70,000 on the proposed remodel and still doesn’t have the permits he needs.
In most other cities, his remodel would have been straightforward. His architect came up with plans that met the city’s many requirements. But in San Francisco, the project’s permitting process took so long that it stretched Madhani’s patience and finances past their limits. His story shows how the city’s Byzantine permitting process can turn a simple project into a multi-year, “heartburn”-inducing ordeal.
And it all started with what critics say is a huge sticking point in San Francisco’s already arduous permitting process: The ability of a single neighbor to block or delay a project.
Madhani’s story is typical across California, particularly in San Francisco, whose “regulatory apparatus makes it as easy as possible for anyone who opposes a project to intervene and block it,” California YIMBY spokesperson Matt Lewis told the Chronicle.
Hiten Madhani stands in the backyard of his home where he had hoped to renovate.
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle“If you’re really really rich, you’ll make it through the gantlet,” he added. If not, “you’re s— out of luck.”
San Francisco’s permit process
San Francisco’s policies may be most famous for how difficult they make it for developers to build new large multi-family housing projects. But they can also cause nightmarish scenarios for locals looking to do even simple remodels.
That’s because here, most construction projects are subject to a process called discretionary review, or DR.
Anyone hoping to legally change the size or shape of their home has to first notify neighbors within 150 feet and then wait 30 days. Any neighbor who objects to the project can then spend hundreds of dollars for the city’s Planning Commission to review the permit at a public hearing.
Supporters of discretionary review say it’s a way for neighbors to have input into how their community looks and feels. The Planning Commission encourages opponents to apply for DR only in “exceptional or extraordinary circumstances” if a proposed project would significantly impact “the public interest.”
In one recent example of a successful DR application, neighbors objected to a developer’s plan to convert an office building into a cannabis lounge, arguing Planning hadn’t considered its impact on nearby childcare centers. Planning agreed, later allowing the project to continue with additional health regulations.
But Planning doesn’t strictly define what falls under “exceptional and extraordinary.” As a result, critics say, the DR process has long been abused.
San Franciscans have filed nearly 1,300 “public-initiated” DR applications since 2006, more than one per week. Of those, only about one-third were taken up by the Planning Commission, and just 2% led to a permit getting rejected. Most DR applications are withdrawn or rejected, but the delays can still add costs and headaches for homeowners.
This process likely costs the city thousands of hours of taxpayer-funded labor and contributes to its status as the most expensive city to build in the world, but it may also further alienate residents who are already fed up with the city’s challenges — particularly families with children like Madhani’s, who make up a smaller share of S.F.’s population every year.
While San Francisco is not the only California city that lets neighbors apply for DR, the city’s process is “excessive,” said Corey Smith, executive director at Housing Action Coalition. A typical home-building project in San Francisco takes roughly 500 days — more than any other city reporting data to the state — to make it through the Planning Department’s initial review, which includes discretionary review processes like the one Madhani faced.
Hiten Madhani’s home is seen on the left next to his neighbor’s, Julie Kelner, who filed a discretionary review application against his planned remodel in San Francisco.
Jessica Christian/The ChronicleWhat caused the permit nightmare?
In January 2018, Madhani applied for a permit to extend his one-bathroom Bernal Heights home into his own backyard by some 20 feet, adding a bedroom and two and a half bathrooms.
That August, the Planning Department said that it would approve the plans after the 30-day period for neighbors to review. So Madhani paid Planning $600 to send out notices, and stuck a sign in his front yard announcing his remodel to passersby.
On the very last day of the 30-day period, Madhani’s next-door neighbor, Julie Kelner, filed a DR application. She argued that the Madhanis’ proposed extension would violate the neighborhood’s design guidelines by being too close to the height of their original roof. She also argued the new house would be too bulky, causing “unnecessary negative aesthetic impact to the block as a whole.”
Kelner further claimed the remodel would make her home “experience a significant reduction in light” and hamper her views. And she said Madhani’s family would reduce her privacy by giving them a view into her main bedroom.
Madhani’s architect, Gregory Smith, rebutted Kelner’s claims by noting that with the addition, Madhani’s home would be roughly the average depth of the two homes on either side of it, the requirement for a home according to city code. (Kelner said this was technically true, but unfair, because the house on the Madhanis’ other side is also bulky.)
The architect also refuted Kelner’s claim that Madhani’s remodel didn’t meet neighborhood design guidelines, saying the home “exceeded” such guidelines in every respect. For one, the height guidelines she cited apply only to homes on sloped lots, and Madhani’s home isn’t on a sloped lot, according to the Planning Department.
Paint is seen chipped on the exterior doors of Hiten Madhani’s home that he had hoped to renovate in San Francisco.
Jessica Christian/The ChronicleBernal Heights has a special, all-volunteer permit-reviewing board that specializes in the neighborhood’s design guidelines. Smith wrote that in addition to notifying this board about the remodel, he’d twice called senior member Terry Milne. Milne, who passed away this June, “took no exceptions” to the proposed design and declined to review the project, Smith said. Despite this, the review board ended up filing a letter supporting Kelner’s DR application in October 2018, because they said Smith had never specifically contacted them to set up a special meeting — a standard practice for projects in the area, the current board chair told The Chronicle.
In an interview with the Chronicle, Kelner stood by her DR application. She’d filed it for two reasons: One, she hadn’t been able to air her concerns at the standard neighborhood meeting chaired by the neighborhood review board, because that meeting never happened. Two, when she met with Madhani and his wife to discuss her concerns, they refused to alter their plans.
Had Madhani listened to her and changed their plans — or had he and his architect hosted a meeting with that neighborhood board where she could voice her concerns — “there’s just no way I would have pursued (DR),” she said. Madhani didn’t want to change the plans, partly because it would have been an expensive, time-consuming process, and partly because he felt he was being “coerced” to change plans he knew were up to code.
Where do things stand now?
In December of 2018, Madhani got some positive news: The city’s Residential Design Advisory Team recommended the Planning Commission reject the DR application against his project.
He then waited another month for the final verdict, which the Planning Commission issued at a public hearing on Jan. 10, 2019, when they agreed with the advisory team and rejected the DR.
In total, the DR process took the Madhanis 16 weeks, a month longer than the maximum time frame outlined in Planning Commission guidelines. By the time the hearing took place, it had been almost exactly a year since Madhani’s architect had submitted his drawings to the Planning Department. And their permit still hadn’t been reviewed by the Building Department, another process that can take years.
Missing panels are exposed on Hiten Madhani’s home that he had hoped to renovate in San Francisco.
Jessica Christian/The ChronicleThe DR-caused delay had a domino effect. Madhani’s permit made it to the Department of Building Inspection shortly before the FBI began investigating some of its senior employees for corruption, which he thinks may have slowed their review process. Soon after, COVID hit, and construction costs for Madhani’s remodel soared; disheartened and aware he could no longer afford the remodel, he and his architect stopped responding to DBI comments on their permit applications. His final construction permits remain in limbo.
Kelner also isn’t happy with how things shook out. She felt the Planning Commission focused too much on her personal complaints and overlooked her broader concerns about the project’s impacts to the neighborhood.
“It seemed very perfunctory in terms of the only thing they heard was, ‘blocking my view,’” she said, later adding: “For the money we were asked to provide, we expected an impartial and thorough review. And we did not feel like we got that.”
In an interview, Planning Department representatives Dan Sider and Annie Yalon told The Chronicle the department has taken DR process complaints “seriously” and that they had instituted significant reforms to their review process, like streamlining the work of different teams inside the Planning Department. The department will also work with new statewide laws like SB 423, which will eliminate discretionary review for many multi-family housing projects — but not smaller projects or remodels.
For his part, Madhani is frustrated and has given up on his project for now.
Just a few weeks ago, he finally took down that plywood sign he made advertising his permit — five years since he’d stuck it in the ground.
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