Elk Grove rejects Old Town affordable housing project. Advocates say city ‘has to do better’
A disputed affordable housing project planned for Old Town Elk Grove was rejected by city leaders before a packed Elk Grove City Hall late Wednesday.
City planners initially denied the Oak Rose Apartments project in June. The 67-unit, 1.23-acre project proposed for Elk Grove Boulevard between Kent Street and Waterman Road in east Elk Grove would have included supportive services for low-income and transitioning homeless tenants over its three stories. The site is located near a supermarket, a bus line and a planned library.
Housing advocates called the council’s no vote denying the developers’ appeal a missed opportunity to put more people in stable housing and close the city’s affordable housing gap.
“Elk Grove has to do better,” said Kendra Lewis, Sacramento Housing Alliance executive director. “The city of Elk Grove had the opportunity to take 67 people off the street and that project was killed not because it did not have enough funding or there were structural or design problems. It was because people didn’t want it.”
Elk Grove city leaders said the proposed project was too dense, said its plans for ground-floor residences did not comply with Old Town’s zoning requirements and called on advocates and project applicants Oak Rose LP to work with the city to find alternate sites.
“There is no shortage of compassion in the city of Elk Grove,” Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen said from the dais, before voting to reject the appeal. “You have a partner who wants to show a better way. We have these arguments all the time, but we work best when we work toward a solution together. We’re here to partner, to be part of the solution. We had one question: whether the objective standards had been met. They haven’t.”
Commissioners in June said Oak Rose LP’s plans for ground-floor residential units on the commercial-zoned land ran afoul of city zoning restrictions. Developers also sought to waive Elk Grove’s 30-unit-per-acre density limit to accommodate the 67-unit project on the city’s east side.
Oak Rose LP challenged the June ruling citing recent state law enacted to limit cities’ ability to deny affordable housing projects if they pass muster and called for a streamlined project review.
That set the stage for Wednesday’s hearing at Elk Grove City Hall, divided between Old Town-area residents opposed to the project and project supporters.
The council vote came under the backdrop of Elk Grove’s new ordinance clamping down on homeless encampments; the city’s ongoing affordable housing crisis; and its acknowledged need for more services to address growing homelessness and housing insecurity.
“The last thing I said was, ‘Please consider the alternatives,’” Councilman Kevin Spease said of talks with project developers before his vote. “There are better places (for the project) to be. We are trying to solve it.”
That work continues but the gap — and the demand — remains.
Rents have risen sharply in Elk Grove, as high as 30% compared to costs before the COVID-19 pandemic, city staffers told the council in June. The monthly median rent in the project’s 95624 ZIP code was roughly $2,900 in May, according to data from RentHub; and competition is stiff for the apartments that are available.
The city of Elk Grove has 18 affordable apartment communities with about 2,300 units, according to city officials. At least two of the communities have pacts with the city to accept tenants who were once unhoused, officials said.
But Elk Grove needs to build more than 4,200 units of housing for very-low and low-income families this decade, according to a regional housing needs analysis by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. Of cities in the six-county region, only Sacramento and Roseville have larger gaps, according to the analysis.
Recently opened affordable housing complexes Bow Street, Gardens at Quail Run and Poppy Ridge are meeting some of the demand, but applicants face long waits to get into the buildings.
An 84-unit transitional housing complex planned for Bruceville Road near Laguna Boulevard and approved by planning commissioners in June has yet to break ground.
The Cornerstone project proposed by Light of the Valley Church with nonprofit developer AbleLight and San Francisco-based affordable housing developer-manager John Stewart Co., will have a mix of apartments for working families, adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and tenants transitioning out of homelessness.
This story was originally published July 28, 2022 at 4:46 PM.
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