His simple project didn’t face the challenges from neighbors or long hearings before government agencies and legislative bodies that have made San Francisco infamous for permit nightmares. But it still took nearly a year to get the 13-by-3½-foot balcony approved, from the initial application to final sign-off from the city’s planning and building departments — all for a job that took less than 30 days to complete.
That’s because his project required an exemption from San Francisco’s extremely detailed planning codes, which added a series of steps — and months — to get it approved.
Dan Sider, chief of staff of the San Francisco Planning Department, said that while he sympathizes with the frustration resulting from extra hurdles in the home renovation process, Sakowitz’s timeline was “well within norms” for San Francisco.
But Sakowitz, who had anticipated the project could take several months because it required an exemption, said the Planning Department did not make clear the steps that would be needed to get the project done, and he called the entire process “absurd.”
What caused the permit nightmare?
Sakowitz began renovating the inside of his three-story contemporary home on Brewster Street, which he bought in 2009, in August 2021. The home had safety issues with its plumbing and electrical systems dating to its construction in 1988, he said, so he had it brought up to code, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a project that included redoing the structural support beams for the home’s third floor, as well as redoing the bathrooms.
He and his contractor decided that he could use a third-floor balcony because his kids’ bedrooms were on that side of the house, and he wanted them to have a place to escape to in case of an emergency. Instead of jumping out of a window to the concrete below, they could exit from the end of the balcony, which Sakowitz thought would be safer.
He said his contractors told him the balcony would have to be small because of regulations in Bernal Heights that require a certain amount of rear yard space.
“It’s so small, it’s hard to even sit on, or put more than two small folding chairs out there,” he said. Records show that he submitted an application for the project in September 2021. Sider said the Planning Department began reviewing the project in November 2021, when the correct fees were paid.
Because the footprint of Sakowitz’s house already violated the rules governing rear yard space, he had to apply for a variance, or an exception to the rules — which in San Francisco triggers neighborhood notices, meetings and a public hearing.
San Francisco’s permit process
While San Francisco allows for an unusual amount of community input in its development process, allowing neighbors to object to nearly any construction project through a process known as discretionary review, other Bay Area cities, including Oakland and San Jose, in some cases require a public hearing for a project that requires an exemption to the planning code, as Sakowitz’s did.
But other cities hear far fewer variance requests than San Francisco, which has received roughly 125 requests each year since 2021. For example, in San Jose, a larger and more populous city than San Francisco, variances are “relatively uncommon and are typically associated with there being highly unique physical circumstances with the lot,” said Cheryl Wessling, a public information officer for the city’s planning and building department.
In the past three years, San Jose Planning had only three projects with variances, she said, and each took three to four months to process, though she noted that factors such as the accuracy of submitted plans and responsiveness of applicants can affect project timelines in all cities.
In Oakland, variance requests take an average of 10½ months to process, officials said. Since 2019, the city has received a total of 324 variance requests, averaging fewer than 70 per year.
Sider from San Francisco’s Planning Department said he was surprised San Jose would receive an average of only one request per year, and that the definition of variance might differ between the two cities. Still, he noted that San Francisco’s planning code is “nuanced,” and the rules for Bernal Heights, where Sakowitz lives, were “crafted generations ago to be especially rigorous.”
“With that in mind, it wouldn’t be surprising if San Francisco had a greater number of variance requests, particularly in areas like Bernal Heights, than did other cities,” he said.
Sakowitz says he received a list of people who needed to be notified about the project: immediate neighbors as well as anyone who signed up to be informed about any projects in the neighborhood, which included neighborhood groups, the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District and even the Sherwin Williams paint store on Ocean Avenue.
Though some on the list didn’t make sense to him, Sakowitz complied, sending an email and paper notice about a pre-application meeting in early February 2022 and holding it on Feb. 19, a Saturday, at 10 a.m.
That day, Sakowitz and his designer bought bagels for any potential visitors and sat on his front steps for an hour. No one came.
Sakowitz was relieved, and thought he had that box checked.
“You hear about people that love to show up and make problems,” he said. “I was anxious that that was going to happen and it was going to delay my project, but it didn’t.”
Sider said that the completed meeting, with no objections, meant that the department could issue a neighborhood notice for a variance hearing, where neighbors have another opportunity to oppose the project. The hearing was held on March 23, 2022. No one objected.
The planning department received 118 variance requests citywide in 2022, Sider said. Its website notes that the process could take a while: “Due to the overwhelming number of Variance cases, decision letters may take up to
2 months to complete from the date of the hearing,” it reads.
But the neighborhood notices didn’t stop there. Sakowitz said the Planning Department told him he needed to post another notice, known as a 311 — a third opportunity for neighbors to weigh in — before anything could move forward.
Sider said that normally, the Planning Department would have combined this with the variance notice, but the applicant hadn’t submitted the building permit application, which is different from the project application. Sakowitz said no one told him about the 311 notice requirement before.
After that notice was posted and again went without complaints, the variance decision, which allowed Sakowitz to move forward with the project, was issued in late May.
“I was like, ‘Great, you guys can start working on the balcony,’ ” Sakowitz said. “I was totally wrong.”
He said his builders went back to the Planning Department several times before learning that there was a bill that he hadn’t paid, but he said he never received the bill. Finally, Planning said that it was misrouted, Sakowitz said, and he paid it as soon as he could.
“Every time they asked me to do something, I would do it that day or the next day if I could, because I was trying to keep this thing moving forward,” Sakowitz said.
Then, he said, Planning asked for the final drawings, which he said his contractor submitted in mid-July. Those plans were approved the day they were received, and they were sent to the Department of Building Inspection to review.
From there, the plans were bounced around the building and planning departments through August, records show, before arriving back to the building department for over-the-counter approval. But when Sakowitz’s contractors called to find out what had happened to the permit in early September, they discovered that it had been misrouted to the mapping bureau, which had nothing to do with the project. The building department had to ask mapping to approve it before it could come back to the building department, which they did the next day.
Contractors and architects who spoke to the Chronicle were not surprised by Sakowitz’s timeline and process, but noted that San Francisco’s complex bureaucracy is why many people doing projects in the city rely on permit expediters — people who are paid to navigate the city’s layers of red tape, getting permit applications to the right people and pushing the process along as fast as possible.
“People who don’t do it every day get frustrated,” said Ernie Selander, an architect with more than 40 years of experience in the city. “Once you open the application process, reason and logic no longer apply. … You need professionals that know what they’re doing to deal with this stuff for you.”
Where do things stand now?
Finally, on Sept. 23, the permit for the balcony was approved. The process exhausted Sakowitz.
“Several times I thought about canceling, just not doing it,” he said. “But I had this safety concern in my mind that the house really needed to have this feature.”
He said that while he’s glad the planning and building departments check projects for seismic safety and other reasons, he feels the process was convoluted, confusing and needlessly lengthy. He was surprised that a project with no opposition would still take so long to get approved.
Sider from the Planning Department said he understands Sakowitz’s frustration, and that the main reason his project approval took so long is that it required an exemption from the rules. He said the department is working on streamlining the vast city planning codes that give highly detailed requirements for each neighborhood.
However, Sider said the changes would not have helped Sakowitz — for example, by allowing balconies to count as open space.
Sakowitz said he thinks that some of the processes and notices, while they may have once had a good purpose, need to be cut down. At times, he said, he wished he’d hired a permit expediter. At other times, he said, he wished he had just gone forward with the project illegally, without a permit.
Either way, he knows he’s done with home building improvements in San Francisco.
“I don’t think I would ever try to do a project here again,” he said. “It’s just absurd.”
Keith Menconi contributed reporting.
Reach Danielle Echeverria: snipped-for-privacy@sfchronicle.com