SF Planning Director Rich Hillis stepping down

Rich Hillis, San Francisco’s Planning Director, will step down at the end of the summer. His departure opens the door for a new leader who could accelerate housing approvals and overhaul the city’s sluggish permitting process.

The Facts

San Francisco Planning Director Rich Hillis will leave his role by the end of summer, according to reporting by the Chronicle. Hillis was appointed in 2020 under Mayor London Breed and oversaw battles with state housing regulators over permit slowdowns and zoning compliance among a total collapse of building in the City.

The Context

For decades, the Planning Department has been criticized for permitting delays and red tape that contributed to San Francisco's housing crisis. Hillis’s leadership coincided with a period where San Francisco had the slowest housing approval timeline in the state—averaging over 600 days for a multi-family permit, and over 800 for a single-family home permit. While Hillis isn't uniquely to blame for this, he also hasn't gotten us out of it.

The Planning Department is a powerful agency that controls what gets built in San Francisco. In recent years, it has been under intense pressure from state agencies, housing advocates, and home builders to streamline approvals and rezone the city to allow for more housing. The state’s Department of Housing and Community Development has been keeping a close eye on San Francisco’s progress in meeting its housing goals, and has threatened to impose penalties if the city fails to comply with state housing laws.

In his campaign, Mayor Lurie promised to fix the city’s broken permitting process and hold departments accountable for delays. The next Planning Director will play a critical role in implementing the Housing Element, a state-mandated plan to build 82,000 new homes by 2031.

The GrowSF Take

By all accounts, Director Hillis is likeable and competent. We hold him in high regard, but we think he could have done more to push back against the anti-housing forces inside the department and didn't do enough to fix the Planning Department's broken processes. The Planning Department is still one of the slowest in the state, and it is still a major obstacle to getting new homes built.

The next Planning Director should be someone willing to ignore politics and do the job they were hired to do: get homes built. This means abolishing things like the "Residential Design Advisory Team" (RDAT), which imposes itself on all building designs and often finds itself in direct opposition to architectural freedom and cost-conscious design, but which has no statutory authority to do so. It also means firing middle-management who are more concerned with fighting change than with getting homes built. And it means working with the Mayor's office to streamline the permitting process and cut through the red tape that has plagued the department for years.

If you think you'd be great for the job, or know someone who is, email us!