From the Council of Economic Advisers [emphasis added]:
While some permitting requirements serve an important purpose, such as ensuring structural, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical safety and environmental protection, the rise of unnecessary and onerous permitting has contributed to housing shortages and housing unaffordability across the country. Permitting requirements directly increase the cost of building new housing by increasing soft costs, administrative burdens, uncertainty, and delays.
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Among large multi-family projects subject to discretionary permitting, the median time spent in the permitting process in recent years was 7.5 months in Boston, 8 months in Oakland, 13 months in Los Angeles, 16 months in Seattle, 30 months in New York City, and 33 months in San Francisco. These numbers may understate the burden since they exclude projects that never receive approval. In New York City pre-certification and environmental review alone often take nearly two years. In California, environmental review lawsuits sought to block the permitting of 48,000 proposed units — nearly half of all proposed units – in 2020 alone. Even for projects that are ultimately greenlit, construction cannot begin until litigation is completed, typically in four to five years