North Highlands leaders balk at housing plan for low-income, homeless

Three weeks ago, officials of the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association began making courtesy visits to North Highlands to talk about the nonprofit's plan to build a $23 million housing complex in that community.

But, according to North Highlands leaders who received the visitors, the association waited too long for the courtesy calls regarding the proposal for Freedom Park Drive and 34th Street.

"We should have been told about this project months ago … so that we didn't feel like it was being snuck in the back door," Jim Simpson of the North Highlands Visions Task Force said last week.

The plan – already approved by Sacramento county planners – calls for a 90-unit rental housing complex for low-income families and formerly homeless people on 4.5 acres on the edge of North Highlands.

Simpson and others on the task force, which works for a better North Highlands, bemoaned that their community "had no say" on the plan.

"We don't want that Loaves & Fishes feeling in our neighborhood," Simpson said.

In a phone interview Friday, Sacramento Mutual Housing Association Executive Director Rachel Iskow said it will be almost two years before the complex opens.

"We have (nearly) two years to work with the community in terms of the program, and how we run it," she said.

Simpson said he first learned of the plan on April 15, when he was visited by Iskow, in his dual role as chairman of both the Visions Task Force and the North Highlands Community Planning Advisory Council.

Iskow, Simpson said, announced that her agency was proceeding with a plan to build a housing compound across the street from McClellan Park.

"I wasn't really happy to hear about a plan that had already been rubber-stamped by the county," Simpson said.

On April 22, Iskow outlined the plan to the community planning advisory council board, whose members complained that her presentation came much too late.

The following week, Iskow made the same informational presentation to the Visions Task Force, where she began by explaining that the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association builds affordable housing or, in some cases, renovates dilapidated dwellings for the needy.

"We currently house 2,100 people at 11 housing complexes throughout Sacramento city and county," she said.

She then displayed architectural renderings of the dwellings proposed as permanent housing in North Highlands.

The sketches depicted attractive homes, including 12 three-bedroom town houses that would rent for about $800 a month.

Other, smaller homes and walk-up studios were surrounded by greenery amid an open-air ambiance.

Of the 90 units, 66 would be rented to once-homeless people, Iskow said.

She also said the complex would be staffed by the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association, which would ensure that tenants don't disturb the peace.

"There would be one full-time worker for every 10 residents," she said.

Because the project meets county zoning requirements, it has been approved by county planners, a county official at the meeting said.

County supervisors, however, must approve a small part – less than $1 million – of the financing mechanism, Iskow said.

Using a variety of funding sources, the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association hopes to begin construction next March, with completion 12 months later on land that the association bought four years ago.

"I have no qualms about the design, but what's wrong with other neighborhoods?" Visions board member Howard Bancroft asked Iskow, strongly suggesting she look elsewhere.

Some in the audience also spoke out, including Kay Dahill, administrator of the North Highlands Recreation and Park District. "Our district is about to go to bid on a 9.5-acre park across the street" from the proposed complex, Dahill said.

"Our district is concerned about the proximity," she said.

The fear, Dahill said, was that some complex residents would revert to old habits after crossing the street. "People who have nothing to do tend to hang out in parks … to drink and use drugs," Dahill said.

Dahill later said the complex plan "was well planned and is needed" but not at that location.

The complex would be less than a block from Serna Village, which provides long-term transitional housing at McClellan Park for 83 formerly homeless families.

Serna Village – run by Cottage Housing Inc. – has been "a good fit" for the community, Simpson said, partly because the people who run it have always been "up front" with the community.

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