Procedural hurdles can slow housing development and add costs because builders must pay for more staff, attorney, and consultant time, as well as interest on borrowed money, while they wait for local governments to approve proposals. These additional costs ultimately are passed on to buyers and renters, contributing to higher housing prices in markets with restrictive zoning and lengthy permitting processes, compared with places that have more flexible regulations.1
One study from California found that more than 80% of proposed multifamily housing developments required “entitlement,” the process for securing all necessary government approvals for a construction proposal.2 The research also showed that the entitlement process for similar housing developments can vary widely across jurisdictions. For example, a multifamily development in Oakland takes a median of six months, compared with more than 25 months in San Francisco. To address these disparities in entitlement timelines, spur housing production in more communities, and make affordable housing development a faster, less costly, and more predictable process, California lawmakers in 2017 passed S.B. 35.3
A 2023 study published by New York University’s Furman Center and sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts, suggests that S.B. 35 is helping to speed up affordable housing approvals.4 The findings indicate that well-designed efforts to speed up permitting processes can be effective, offering lessons for policymakers throughout the country who are interested in addressing the slow pace and high costs of housing development. And although the 2023 study focused only on the California law, other states are also increasingly passing legislation to remove barriers to housing development, such as eliminating unnecessary environmental studies; allowing builders to have their permit applications reviewed and approved by third parties when jurisdictions fail to complete reviews promptly; limiting the reasons for denial of permit requests; and requiring clear, predictable processes for reviewing permit applications.
Research also shows that Americans overwhelmingly support such policies. In a nationally representative 2023 Pew survey of more than 5,000 American adults about various law changes designed to improve the availability and affordability of housing, 86% of respondents favored requiring “local governments to use a quick and clear process for making decisions about building permits.”5 In California, which because of S.B. 35 arguably has the most experience with such a law, 87% were in favor.6
California enacted its Housing Element Law, also referred to as the state’s “fair-share” housing law, in 1969 to ensure that each locality plans and zones for a sufficient amount of housing for people at all income levels, as determined through the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA).7 Under RHNA, cities and counties are required to update the housing elements of their general plans every five or eight years. And the Housing Element Law gives the California Department of Housing and Community Development enforcement authority to bring communities into compliance with their obligations under the Housing Element Law.
Despite this legal framework, California communities have routinely failed to produce sufficient housing.8 One contributing factor is that some cities have imposed significant procedural obstacles that block or slow the construction of new housing even in places where zoning rules provide plenty of land for high-density housing.9 Common barriers include locally imposed conditions for approval of proposed developments, such as discretionary architecture, site development, and historic preservation reviews, as well as lawsuits brought to obstruct construction of new housing.10 Researchers have even demonstrated that litigators successfully invoked California’s Environmental Quality Act to impede housing projects in vacant or underutilized areas near transit that expressly aligned with the state’s environmental and climate policy goals.
S.B. 35 aims to promote affordable housing development, prevent displacement, and protect environmentally sensitive areas. It streamlines local discretionary and state-mandated environmental review processes in cities and counties that have not met their production targets under the Housing Element Law for housing projects that:11
The researchers examined S.B. 35’s impact on five jurisdictions: Berkeley, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, Oakland, and San Francisco. The Furman Center analysis also reviewed how officials in these localities explain the law to developers and how existing local laws affected S.B. 35’s implementation in each community.
In total, the researchers identified 49 proposed developments that could benefit from S.B. 35 and compared them with similar developments entitled from 2014 to 2017 in those same jurisdictions that probably would have met key S.B. 35 requirements had the law been in place at the time. The findings showed that housing developments moved more quickly under S.B. 35 than they had previously in three of the jurisdictions—Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Berkeley.
For example, in Los Angeles, the median approval time for 18 S.B. 35-qualified developments, including 16 that were 100% affordable housing, was 2.7 months, compared with approximately seven months for 11 earlier developments that probably would have qualified for the law had it existed. San Francisco approved 10 developments—nine that were 100% affordable and one group housing property with approximately half of the units below market rate—after S.B. 35 implementation. For nine of these developments, the median time to approval was about four months; no data was available for the 10th property. From 2014 to 2017, the city approved only one similar project, and that approval took more than a year. The results for Los Angeles County and Oakland were unclear because of limited information for certain proposals.
Recent evidence indicates that procedural rules continue to pose challenges. An audit published in 2023 by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development found that, even with the advent of S.B. 35, San Francisco still takes more than three years on average to approve new housing, the longest timeline of any jurisdiction in California.
Although the Furman Center study focused on California’s S.B. 35, other states, including Montana, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Washington, have passed laws in recent years to speed up the development process and address the shortage and high costs of housing. (See Table 1.)
In 2023, Montana policymakers enacted four laws to streamline and accelerate the development review process. S.B. 407 prohibits municipalities from requiring review by external boards as part of local design review, except for structures and places designated as historic. S.B. 131 requires municipalities to review land division applications within 20 working days of receipt, and S.B. 240 and S.B. 170 establish new exemptions for certain subdivisions.
Policymakers in Texas took a different approach, enacting a law in 2023 that allows permit applicants to use certain third-party reviewers and inspectors if local governments do not respond to applications promptly. Tennessee went a step further in 2024 by allowing builders to choose whether to have the locality or an accredited third-party professional conduct certain reviews and inspections. These examples show the range of strategies that state policymakers are using to help create more homes and address housing shortages and high costs.
Table 1
Summary of relevant streamlining legislation, by state, 2017-24
| State | Bill(s) and year | Legislative summary |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona | S.B. 1162 (2024) | Requires jurisdictions to determine within 30 days whether builders’ zoning applications are complete and to approve or deny applications within 180 days |
| California | S.B. 35 (2017) | Preempts local power and limits local discretionary review processes and state-mandated environmental review for certain housing developments |
| California | S.B. 423 (2023) | Extends the provisions of S.B. 35 by 10 years and expands them to encourage mixed-income developments |
| Florida | S.B. 102 (2023) | Requires jurisdictions to approve permit applications for multifamily housing up to a certain height on commercially zoned land |
| Hawaii | H.B. 2090 (2024) | Requires jurisdictions to permit residential uses on commercially zoned land |
| Montana | S.B. 407 (2023) | Eliminates most local design review by volunteer boards to streamline permitting |
| Montana | S.B. 240 (2023) | Exempts certain subdivisions from environmental review |
| Montana | S.B. 131 (2023) | Requires localities to review applications for land division within 20 days |
| Montana | S.B. 170 (2023) | Streamlines the review process and limits reviews for certain types of subdivisions |
| Rhode Island | S. 1032, 1033, and 1034 (2023) | Requires jurisdictions to use only specific and objective criteria as the basis for denying certain applications and to update their zoning within 18 months to match their comprehensive plans |
| Tennessee | S.B. 2100 (2024) | Allows builders to use certified third parties instead of local governments to conduct many of the required reviews and inspections |
| Texas | H.B. 14 (2023) | Allows third-party inspections and review of development documents if localities do not act promptly |
| Vermont | S. 100 (Act 47) (2023) | Allows developers to build specified types and amounts of new housing in certain areas without state land use review |
| Washington | S.B. 5290 (2023) | Exempts certain projects from review requirements and supports localities in reviewing permits quickly |
Source: State legislatures' websites
The early evidence from California’s experience implementing S.B. 35 highlights several lessons:
New research shows promising evidence that California’s S.B. 35 is having the intended effect of speeding up the pace of affordable housing approvals. Since the law’s passage, several other states have implemented laws to reduce procedural hurdles to development through a range of approaches and in a diversity of geographic and political contexts. Together, the findings from California and the demonstrated momentum to enact similar approaches in other states show that streamlining housing development is an issue with bipartisan appeal that has the potential to ensure a greater supply of housing at lower costs.
This brief was written by Pew staff members Ruth Lindberg and Alex Horowitz and was based on original research by Moira O’Neill, associate research scientist and affiliated scholar, the University of California, Berkeley, and associate professor of urban and environmental planning and associate professor of law, the University of Virginia, and Ivy Wang, graduate student researcher, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California, Berkeley. The project thanks Esther Berg, Jennifer V. Doctors, Carol Hutchinson, and Chelsie Pennello for providing important communications, creative, editorial, and research support for this work.