Bay Area housing prices are high because we don’t build enough housing. And we don’t build enough housing because we’ve created a legal, political, and regulatory framework that doesn’t allow it. Our broken permitting system slows down or outright stops housing production region-wide. If we want more housing, and eventually lower prices, this system has to change.

Our permitting process is like the worst user sign-up flow you’ve ever seen. Projects have to comply with local zoning, pass an environmental impact review (EIR), survive discretionary permitting , and fend off legal challenges before they can come into being.

Zoning laws dictate the size, shape and permissible use for every building within a city. These laws are bad to the extent that they explicitly ban the multi-unit projects that would allow us to fit the amount of housing we need in the places we need it most. Relaxing these rules to allow taller, denser housing development would go a long way toward increasing supply.

EIRs are an assessment of a project’s environmental impact. While these aren’t the worst things in the world, they add time and cost when done on a per project basis. A better system would be to perform the EIR during the zoning process itself. If zoning allows a certain type of building, we should have already evaluated — and been ok with — the environmental impact of that type of building. Reviewing everything on a project-by-project basis increases cost and slows down housing production for zero added benefit.

Discretionary permitting is exactly what it sounds like; municipalities can, at their discretion, deny projects a permit…just because. In practice, ‘just because’ means homeowners don’t like a project and pressure officials to block it. Developers end up haggling with homeowner’s associations on what an ‘acceptable’ project might look like. And we end up with 44 single family homes in place of 315 apartments five minutes away from BART. Instead, we should have as-of-right permitting. If a project already complies with existing zoning, it should automatically qualify for permits.

And last, but not least, is the ever popular CEQA lawsuit. CEQA, the same legislation that mandates an EIR, also creates a special kind of lawsuit that allows interested parties to block a project on the basis that the EIR was somehow deficient. This kind of lawsuit is great for blocking development because the plaintiffs don’t need to win to get what they want; they just need to tie up development in court long enough to bankrupt the project or get additional concessions from the developer.

So that’s the meat grinder. Here’s what the sausage looks like.

In March, the City of Santa Clara killed off 450 apartments within 10 minutes of both Caltrain and a future BART location. In June, the Brisbane Planning Commission voiced skepticism about a plan to build 4,000 units of housing, proposing, instead, that building no housing whatsoever would be a better use of the land.

On the bright side, though, the City of Berkeley recently approved 302 new apartments a block away from Downtown Berkeley BART…after 3 years and 37 community meetings. There’s also a CEQA lawsuit trying to block the project. So maybe not so bright.

We need more housing. We need it faster. And we need it region-wide. The system currently in place is simply not going to provide. There’s too much friction and too many places for anti-growth NIMBYs to play gatekeeper.

We need to relax zoning restrictions, streamline environmental review, abandon discretionary permitting, and scrap the parts of CEQA that have created opportunities for strategic litigation. And what would a system thus reformed provide? Well, besides lower housing prices, probably something like urban Japan. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Given where we’re starting from, however, we have a long way to go. The most promising reform on the table is a plenty fine piece of legislation sponsored by none other than the Honey Badger of California politics himself, Governor Jerry Brown.

The Governor’s legislation would scrap the discretionary permitting process and preclude any CEQA lawsuits for housing projects that 1) conform to local zoning and 2) set aside some amount of units for lower income residents. Check out SPUR’s 1-pager for more details. The legislation is no silver bullet, but it’s a huge first step in the right direction.

The way we permit new housing is overloaded with minutiae and that’s exactly what you should take away. The process is too complicated, too full of friction, and too easily manipulated by folks who’d prefer not another unit ever got built (at least where they could see it). The funnel is jammed up. The hose has a kink. The process is broken. And it’s high time to get it fixed.

[Update 2/7/2017: Jerry Brown’s legislation got killed last session, but similar — and more politically palatable — legislation is queued up for this budget]