How can we create more Indianapolises and fewer San Franciscos?
The Soviet Union famously churned out tens of thousands of new apartment buildings in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s — some assembled in as little as 12 days — together comprising tens of millions of individual apartments. Such speed is not unique to communist command economies, or even to grim concrete mega-blocks. In Sweden and […]
The Soviet Union built tens of thousands of apartment buildings in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, often in just 12 days. Modern, high-quality homes can now be factory-built and assembled in weeks, similar to the Soviet method. In the US, however, home construction takes significantly longer, especially in high-cost cities like San Francisco and New York.
Permitting processes can take up to five years, while in Raleigh, North Carolina, a 20-unit apartment building can be completed in a year—about as long as the permit process in San Francisco. Such delays result in housing scarcity, higher prices, and discouraged developers. Researchers found that longer permitting times correlate with higher housing prices and lower production rates.
Home permitting times have lengthened across the US over the past 25 years, from 0.6 years in 2000 to 1.5 years in 2023 for multifamily buildings and from 1.6 months in 2000 to 4.9 months in 2023 for single-family homes. The study, led by Leonardo D’Amico, Evan Soltas, and Audrey Wang, used data from 1.1 million permits and 2.7 million housing units to estimate how long an identical, standardized project would take in each city.
The findings suggest that we should be improving our housing construction processes, not slowing them down, especially during a housing shortage.
Written by urgent.news from Vox's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
