Sacramento council to consider funding 820 new affordable housing units. Here’s where
Faced with a severe shortage of affordable housing, Sacramento is poised to spend roughly $35 million to help subsidize 820 units of low-income housing across the city.
The City Council will vote Tuesday on what “may be the single biggest commitment to affordable housing in one action that the council has ever taken,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. The units would be located mostly in new apartment complexes in the central city and south Sacramento, as well as a controversial project in North Sacramento’s Woodlake neighborhood.
“We know, as we have known for a long time, that the issue of our time is affordable housing, and it’s obviously related to the issue of homelessness,” Steinberg said.
The new units, if the funding is approved by the council, would open in late 2023 through late 2024. The city also plans to use state, federal and private funding.
While roughly 2,000 new units of affordable housing are already planned or under construction in Sacramento, the city is far behind in meeting the needs of low-income earners. More than 16,000 units affordable to very low- and low-income residents need to be built in Sacramento this decade to keep up with demand, according to an analysis by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.
When the planned units open, many more people will be able to cycle through the city’s 1,100 homeless shelter beds and spaces and into permanent housing, Steinberg said.
One of the projects, on vacant land operated by Paratransit on Woodbine Avenue in south Sacramento, utilizes a unique model. All the units would be accessible to people with disabilities. The number of longtime homeless individuals who suffer from a physical or mental disability or substance use, so-called chronically homeless, has increased 162% in Sacramento since 2019, from 1,647 to 4,314.
A handful of nonprofits will be able to place unhoused people at the new complex, called The Kind Project, then send case workers to visit them and provide services on an ongoing basis. The complex will also accept Housing Choice Vouchers, previously called Section 8. As of February, about 1,250 voucher holders in Sacramento could not find housing.
“It’s a win-win-win,” said Tiffani Fink, Paratransit CEO. “It provides housing, ensures wraparound services, and leverages operational efficiencies.”
Another project, along Stockton Boulevard, will utilize a unique funding mechanism. The city plans to use about $8 million from its risk management fund, typically used for legal settlements, and investing it in the project as a loan, Steinberg said.
“We are innovating on the finance side in ways that are unprecedented,” Steinberg said. “By spending it on the highest community priority instead of the traditional instruments.”
That project also includes 69 market rate units.
Funding for affordable housing
In addition to the $8 million for the loan, the city would use some money from the Measure U sales tax increase, and shift about $18.8 million from its $100 million comprehensive homeless shelter siting plan, Steinberg said. After the council approved the plan in August 2021, it launched new services but did not open the 20 new shelters and designated camping sites it had planned.
At least one project may be controversial — 124 units planned near Woodlake Park on city and state surplus property. The council narrowly approved that project earlier this year on a 5-4 vote. Councilman Sean Loloee, who represents the area, opposed it, and said he was “not a fan” of affordable housing.
As part of the item Tuesday, the council will consider allocating $500,000 to help up to 100 Oak Park homeowners with repairs, including some repairs that could save them from costly code violations and receiverships.
Homeless activists in Sacramento have increasingly been urging the council to build housing instead of shelters. Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, said he is glad the council will likely fund housing in a significant way, but also encouraged them to open new shelters by this winter.
“Given that the deaths of our unhoused neighbors has increased every year over the last 20 years, and specifically eight deaths due to hypothermia last year, it is unforgivable that neither the city or the county are going to open any new shelters by winter,” Erlenbusch said. “It is shameful that both our city and county are telling our unhoused neighbors that they are expendable.”
New Sacramento housing sites
There are more than 9,300 homeless people in Sacramento County, and only 2,400 city and county-funded shelter beds. The city recently opened a homeless weather respite center nearly 24/7 on Auburn Boulevard with 50 beds.
The meeting will take place at 2 p.m. Tuesday. It will be livestreamed on the city’s website.
The projects include:
▪ 7141 Woodbine Ave.: 216 affordable units, including at least 10 for homeless people. To be completed in June 2024
▪ 3400 Stockton Blvd.: 230 units, including 92 low-income units, 69 moderate income units, and 69 market rate units
▪ 440 Arden Way: 124 units, including 31 extremely low income, 33 very low income, 60 low income, and 21 for homeless people. To be completed in fall/winter 2024
▪ 805 R St.: 242 units, including 24 extremely low, 49 very low, 167 low income, and 15 for homeless people. To be completed in winter 2024
▪ 4501 Ninth Ave.: 67 units, including 35 extremely low, 32 very low income, and 35 for homeless people. To be completed in fall 2024
▪ Oak Park scattered lots: 10 very low and low income units on lots scattered in the Oak Park area. To be completed in winter 2023.
This story was originally published October 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
