Drive down the Mission-Excelsior corridor and you can't miss it — one of the taller new buildings in the neighborhood, sitting there like a monument to San Francisco's unique ability to snatch dysfunction from the jaws of progress.

4805 Mission Street has been almost finished for close to a decade. Not abandoned mid-foundation. Not stalled at the permitting stage. Almost finished. Just... sitting there. Empty. Jarringly, insultingly empty, in a city where we're told the housing crisis demands billions in public spending and radical policy interventions.

Neighbors want answers, and honestly, they deserve them. In a housing market where a studio apartment can run you $2,500 a month and the city routinely lectures property owners about their obligations to the community, how does a near-complete building just collect dust for years without anyone in a position of authority raising a flag?

This is the kind of story that makes San Francisco's housing discourse feel almost surreal. City Hall will spend months debating inclusionary zoning percentages and affordable housing mandates down to the decimal point, but apparently nobody has the bandwidth — or the will — to figure out why a building that's right there can't get across the finish line.

We don't yet know the full story behind the stall. Maybe it's a financing issue. Maybe it's a permitting nightmare. Maybe it's an ownership dispute. But whatever the reason, it points to a deeper problem: San Francisco has built a regulatory and bureaucratic environment so complex that even projects that are physically constructed can remain in limbo for the better part of a decade.

Every month that building sits empty is a month of housing units not on the market, property tax revenue not fully flowing, and a neighborhood eyesore that signals to residents and businesses alike that this city can't get out of its own way.

The neighbors of the Excelsior deserve better. So does anyone who's ever been told the housing shortage is too complicated to solve quickly. Apparently, it's also too complicated to solve slowly.