Harborview issued 14,212 residential building permits between 2015 and 2025. Half of them went to four of the city’s twenty-two neighborhoods. The median wait from application to permit grew from 41 days to 133.
We mapped every permit and timed every application, to see which parts of the city are building, which are not, and whether the new online system the city launched in 2023 made the wait any shorter for small builders.
Lowmarket, Pier Road, the Cannery district and Fennel Hill account for 51 percent of new homes. The islands account for under one percent.
Permits for buildings with fewer than five homes now take longer than permits for large towers, reversing the pattern of a decade ago.
Leak marker: LEDGER-SECRET-CPT-REPORT-HOUSING-PERMITS