City & County Of SF Planning Department

Have managed to stay away from this place for 5 years, and now I’m back.
I hope it goes better this time

I want to buy the building that the mint bar on Market St is in so I can erect an 8 story building up against the new glass façade of LINEA. That’d be OK right? It’s what LINEA DID TO US.

Clearly they have friends and anyone they don’t know is not a friend and to be distrusted. A chinese builder comes in with plans rolled up and speaks in presumably cantonese to the planning officer for 15 minutes over laughs and shoulder pats while the plans remain rolled up. At the end of the 15 minutes, the builder unrolls the plans, the planner stamps them, and he leaves. I come in with a simply query and am immediately shut down and referred off to records with a high unlikely added to. The same chinese planning officer as before doesn’t even want to look at my plans or hear any of my thoughts. I get 30 seconds and am sent off. Why the hell do I bother to live in this City or pay their taxes???

Let’s see… how would you like to spend a lot of money on an unfair, totally biased, convoluted, contradictory, and uncoordinated process? The City and County of SF Planning Department is quite difficult to navigate. It is not the workers so much — it is the processes, systems, and workflow.
The Discretionary Review process is quite nuts too. The Commissioners try to keep up with interpreting the regulations, and try not to be biased and swayed by peoples’ emotions. They try to help with some of the unique to SF parts of the Planning process such as Discretionary Review.
The City policies are set up so that these guys at the Planning Department, without knowing it or wanting to, are ensuring that the city keeps its run-​down buildings, and they encourage the whole Not In My Backyard phenomenon. By default, due to some whacky and unique City policies, they are discouraging improvements, and thwarting many attempts at expanding existing homes to accommodate multigenerational families. This drives residents and commerce out of the city.

Soviet union in san francisco, nightmare for any business owner trying to do simple building maintenance. Sent my contractor to get permit he was told he did not need one and ended up paying thousand of dollars in penalty fee’s for replacing a few bathroom tiles.

There would be no better way to stimulate the economy then streamline this process! It actually takes years to get a rather small project through this process! There was a guy who figured out how to get around this system and literally made millions and millions of dollars! Do you think the planning department thought wow maybe we have a problem with our process? Nope!
I actually left plans with someone who assured me 3 times this was the right place to leave them, 3 months later and 20 to 30 phone calls they told me I left them in the wrong place and that is was my fault because I should know where to leave them. They even date stamped it as received and told me good luck your all set!
It then took them one week to find the plans and they basically yelled at me when they gave them back to me! I have now brought them to the right place, paid my $ 6,500.00 for the first step of the process! They have now had the application for 5 weeks, 3 phone calls and I haven’t heard anything! How long would a non government Establishment be in business if this was how they ran their business?

The planners at the planning desk were friendly, knowledgeable and super friendly. Although they weren’t able to answer my question, they asked really good questions and worked out several options to resolve my problem. Most of the planners I’ve worked with in the past six years at the city are really just trying to do a good job while navigating the morass that is the city’s zoning codes while having to deal with the public at large– you couldn’t pay me enough! Okay, well maybe, but cut them some slack yo!

The most inefficient, bureaucratic amalgamation of BS I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Yes, the City and County of San Francisco will not let you improve your home if it has «historically» been a butt-​ugly, inconvenient mess. Attention preservation specialists, please choose your battles more wisely!