Another dilapidated downtown Sacramento hotel set to be redeveloped into homeless housing
Another dilapidated downtown Sacramento single room occupancy hotel is set to undergo a major redevelopment.
The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved $3.5 million in mixed-income housing funds toward the project, to redevelop the Sequoia Hotel at the corner of 9th and K streets.
San Francisco-based John Stewart Co. plans to redevelop the hotel into 88 units of housing for homeless residents, including services.
There are roughly 36 residents there today, said Christine Weichert, of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA). Any of them who are still there when construction starts this month will get relocated at no expense to them, she said.
Residents will be able to come back to live at the redeveloped Sequoia after they are relocated, Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela said.
“This was beyond my wildest dreams and expectations for this property,” Valenzuela, who represents downtown, said during the meeting. “It’s an incredible opportunity site right in the central city and the residents there and the businesses around it have been calling for change.”
When a Sacramento Bee reporter visited the building Tuesday to try to interview the current residents, a police officer blocked her from entering. Windows visible from K Street showed broken plastic blinds, aging furniture, and a hot pink box fan.
One of the last downtown SROs
The six-story building was built in 1906, and opened as a hotel in 1910, according to a city staff report.
CFY Development bought the hotel in 1985 and used SHRA funds to offer low-income residents single room occupancy housing (SRO). The project went into financial default in 2005 and the state foreclosed on it last year, then took ownership, the report said. The John Stewart Co. has been property manager since then.
“The project has fallen into serious disrepair and is critically in need of extensive rehabilitation,” the report stated.
The project will rehabilitate the 88 units, including 15 studios with bathrooms and kitchenettes. The other 73 units will have access to shared bathrooms and kitchenettes on each floor. The ground floor, currently a vacant restaurant, will be turned into a community room and a laundry room.
The residents will have project-based housing vouchers, and cannot have an income higher than 50% of the area’s median income, which for a single person is $35,500, the report stated. They also must be homeless.
“Units will be restricted to homeless households,” Whitney Bonner of SHRA told the council.
Even if they meet those requirements, people who wish to get a spot at the Sequoia will likely face an uphill battle. The wait list for the new Mirasol Village housing mixed-income complex in the River District recently received 9,451 applications, SHRA spokeswoman Angela Jones said. It includes 487 units.
Dilapidated SROs like the Sequoia Hotel were often the last stop before homelessness, for people who could not get a market rate lease, due to prior evictions or cost. Some of the redeveloped SROs still serve the homeless and very low income residents, while others became housing for higher income earners.
Mercy Housing is currently redeveloping the Capitol Park Hotel, at 9th and L streets, into homeless housing, similar to the Seqouia project. Hotel Berry was also redeveloped for homeless housing. Ridgeway Studios reopened in 2014 as so-called workforce housing, intended for tenants like waiters and baristas. The Hotel Marshall was demolished in 2019 to make way for the Hyatt Centric.
The Sequoia project is expected to open in fall 2024, Weichert said.
This story was originally published June 14, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
