A delayed permit can wreak havoc on a development project. Delays can be financially costly, and a bad experience can make a developer think twice about following the rules rather than skipping permits altogether.

City permits cover the full life cycle of a housing project, from demolition and rehabilitation to occupancy and use. A permit is needed to build on empty land, as well as to redo an existing home. Every contractor who works on a given home, from electricians to plumbers, needs a permit to perform a job.

One City Council member has called the permitting situation an “abomination,” and City Council President Zeke Cohen said he wasn’t confident Baltimore’s housing agency could fix the problem.

Last week, at a meeting for South and Southwest Baltimore neighborhood groups, community leaders used their two-hour window with the mayor and other cabinet members to speak frankly about what they consider a fiasco.

“We’re just getting pummeled,” said Kim Lane, former director of Pigtown Main Street, who continues to work with business and property owners in the neighborhood. About 100 permits have been issued there through May 29, less than half as many as the same time last year. She asked how city leaders planned to course-correct.

Baltimore housing commissioner Alice Kennedy asked Lane and other attendees experiencing difficulty to be specific with the department about their experiences. Justin Williams, deputy mayor for economic development and the city’s official “permit czar,” acknowledged the “clogs” in the process that “unfortunately need some nudging to get loose.”

“Short term, overall, we’re focused on it,” Williams told attendees. “It’s keeping me up at night. I’m working on shaking it loose.”

The city pledged at least $3 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to fix the problem, and has paid more than $2 million to Accela, the software developer behind the new online system.

Republicans and Democrats around the country have acknowledged the need for more efficiency in permitting, citing it as a factor in increased home and rent costs that get passed on to consumers. Kamala Harris put a spotlight on the issue last year during her unsuccessful run for president, calling for more “streamlined” processes to eliminate barriers to home construction.

The Trump administration has not been as forceful on the subject. Instead, the White House has called for budget cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which would undoubtedly strain local housing agencies and programs across the country as they seek to modernize their processes.

As Congress considers those cuts, city and state leaders have pledged to go all in on reducing Baltimore’s vacant housing count, starting with 5,000 homes over the next five years.

Still, developers small and large say that without a better system, the needed blight reduction may not happen.

It appears that no project type has been spared. The team behind the restoration of the B&O Railroad Museum had been kept waiting for building and grading permits for months, keeping them from moving forward. Large organizations remediating whole blocks and mom-and-pop shops tackling just a few homes at a time are all reporting the same difficulties. A homeowner trying to secure permits to rebuild after a fire reported delays that began late last year.

Then there’s ReBUILD Metro, a key player in the city’s vacant housing fight, which has been unable to remove the “coming soon” banner off its Mura Street project. The team declined to comment for this story.

The kinks in the new system are varied and vast, according to an internal City Hall memo reviewed by The Banner.

The memo outlined three core concerns with the system: extended delays along various steps in the process; a lack of timely communication from staff members; and limited transparency about why the permits are delayed and who customers should contact for help. It also shared six examples of complaints raised by consumers, including one instance where someone called “upwards of twenty times” before getting a permit.

In another example from the memo, a May 16 tornado damaged the roof of a building awaiting a permit.

“The delay in obtaining the permit prevented work from taking place that would have secured the structure and may have mitigated the extensive damage,” the memo reads.

In March, probably in response to preliminary feedback on the newly launched system, city officials unveiled a 40-page plan to reroute permitting once and for all. It received immediate skepticism, though: Cohen, who has voiced the need for more urgency about the problem, likened the changes to trying to “boil the ocean” — doing too much, instead of tearing off smaller bites.

Kennedy, the housing commissioner, spent months publicly playing down the permitting difficulties. She has said that consumers aren’t taking enough advantage of the free, online trainings available, and Accela, the software developer, continues to make changes to the product in response to feedback.

On Friday, as she stared down an angry City Council during a budget hearing, Kennedy changed tone, accepting responsibility for the failure of the rollout and acknowledging that more testing of the system could have been done. The city also severely underestimated the number of people who would flood the permit office needing assistance with the new online system, she said, citing a 200% uptick.

“This is not how we want to do business,” she said. “We are not there yet, and I believe you all know we are not there yet. We know this has been an extremely frustrating transition for many permit applicants.”

Even City Administrator Faith Leach, typically a strong defender of the Scott administration’s agenda, said she “echoed” the feedback of council members. A rapid response team from her office has been deployed to address the situation, she said. She agreed to present a plan to the council in June to fix the issue.

“The technology is only as good as the data that goes into the new technology,” she said. “We need to do a better job and completely reimagine how we are implementing new systems within Baltimore city government.”