Elk Grove council calls special meeting on controversial Oak Rose homeless housing project
Elk Grove City Council has called a snap special meeting for Friday afternoon on lawsuits surrounding the contentious Oak Rose apartment project — 67 units of housing planned for the formerly homeless in the city’s historic Old Town.
The decision just before noon Thursday comes after a standing room-only City Council meeting Wednesday, packed with incensed Old Town residents angered at what they see as the project’s potential implications for their neighborhood and at city leaders they said were cowed by the lawsuits and weren’t fighting on their behalf.
“One hundred percent of people who showed up here said, ‘Fight. Fight for us and don’t give up,” said resident Robert Patterson at the Wednesday meeting. “One hundred percent will vote you out if you don’t fight for this.”
Councilmembers will meet 2:30 p.m. Friday in closed session at the council chambers, 8400 Laguna Palms Way. The city panel will then reconvene in open session.
Elk Grove is defending against two lawsuits — one by Oak Rose’s developers last fall challenging the council’s July 2022 rejection of the proposed development that brought heavy criticism from local housing advocates and state housing officials.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta brought a second suit in May alleging Elk Grove broke state housing law in denying the project last year and repeatedly flouted Senate Bill 35, the law that compels cities to fast-track affordable housing projects.
Councilmembers were to consider approving Oak Rose at the Wednesday meeting after city staffers’ recommendation earlier this month to greenlight the 67-unit project — the city’s first permanent housing project for low-income families transitioning from homelessness.
The project on 1.23 acres is expected to be built in 2026, Sarah Bontrager, Elk Grove’s housing and public services manager, said Wednesday.
The staff’s conclusion: the cost of fighting the developers’ suit and Bonta’s May lawsuit was too steep. City attorney Jonathan Hobbs pegged the legal costs at the “high six figures,” costs that could triple or quadruple if Elk Grove lost in court.
But that didn’t convince residents at Wednesday evening’s meeting.
“Your job is to fight for us. The money you say you’re saving — that’s our money,” said Lloyd Wallace. “Let’s make the exception for Elk Grove residents.”
In the end, there was no vote Wednesday on the future of Oak Rose, which would be built at Elk Grove Boulevard and Kent Street on the eastern edge of Old Town. Elk Grove leaders tabled the issue until the council’s Oct. 11 meeting.
Following the council’s decision not to vote on the development, Bonta’s office released a statement Thursday evening decrying the latest delay.
“The Elk Grove City Council has been put on notice on multiple occasions that denying approval of the Oak Rose Apartments is unlawful,” Bonta’s statement read, in part. “Every single time, they have chosen to ignore those warnings, wasting precious time and public resources in the process. It is profoundly disappointing.”
Oak Rose developers a no-show at council meeting
Residents of Elk Grove’s Old Town who packed the city’s 300-capacity council chambers to standing room Wednesday night vented their anger at what they say is a proposed permanent housing project for the once-unhoused being built near homes, school routes and small businesses could mean for the city’s original neighborhoods. The residents also said councilmembers were too willing to roll over to state leaders and out-of-town developers.
For more than an hour, longtime residents and business owners one after another pleaded with city leaders to reject staffers’ recommendations to approve the project. Many told leaders they feared the apartments and its new occupants would bring violent crime and drugs to the city’s Old Town, putting the neighborhood’s eldest and youngest residents in harm’s way.
“This is a terrible idea,” said resident Jackie Perez. The Old Town flower shop Perez has owned for a quarter-century sits next door to the proposed site. “Try to feel what we’re feeling,” she said. “We’re scared.”
California cities are bound by law to lift barriers to fair housing. The Oak Rose site, close to shopping, a transit line and the planned new library next door at Elk Grove Boulevard and Waterman Road, is within a state-designated High Resource Opportunity Area — neighborhoods identified as able to “support positive economic, educational and health outcomes for low-income families, particularly children.”
Elk Grove leaders voted in May to fight the lawsuits, but also worked behind the scenes, offering a pair of alternative sites and hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial incentives.
Elk Grove also offered to take over the Old Town site as part of a deal, but the sides couldn’t reach an agreement.
“We understand there’s a homeless crisis all around California, but why drop this smack-dab in the middle of the community?” Brigit Naranjo said before the meeting. “We’re willing to fight. Just keep fighting for us. Keep fighting for your constituents. Don’t be bullied by the state. This is an item we want you to fight.”
The anger extended to the council dais, not the least after the project’s developers failed to show to the Wednesday meeting, a decision Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen called “disrespectful.”
“As Oak Rose has not requested and is not the applicant for this voluntary reconsideration, the Oak Rose development team has not been invited to participate in, nor do we intend to appear at, the September 27, 2023 meeting,” the developers’ attorneys wrote in a Monday letter to Elk Grove officials, adding, “we respectfully request that the City avoid creating new legal disputes through the adoption of conditions that violate state affordable housing laws.”
“It just really pisses me off, the attitude of the developer,” a normally reserved Councilmember Darren Suen said. “At this point in time, I’m willing to fight a little more. I can’t support this. It’s wrong.”
Elk Grove leaders on the dais were piqued at project developers who, the councilmembers say, rejected repeated attempts at compromise; at lawmakers who they say are wresting away cities’ local control; and at an attorney general they say is making an example of the city in civil court.
“I’m so angry and disappointed in a state legislature that has forgotten their local roots, from the Governor to state legislators,” Singh-Allen said. “You should be angry. I’m angry, too. This is no longer about affordable housing. This smells like politics. I’ll continue to say it: That location is terrible.”
“This issue will not define who we are,” Singh-Allen said later, adding that Elk Grove will continue to build affordable housing, “not because we’re being forced to, but because it’s the right thing to do.”
This story was originally published September 28, 2023 at 2:11 PM.
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