Affordable housing complex opens at former south Sacramento homeless encampment
David Mogavero could only marvel Tuesday at what had occurred with San Juan Apartments, near the corner of Fruitridge Road and Stockton Boulevard.
Mogavero is principal of Mogavero Architects, which designed the affordable housing complex on the site of a former homeless encampment and, before that, the old San Juan Motel and an adjacent mobile home park. Mogavero was attending the grand opening of the complex’s first phase, comprising 113 units at 5700 Stockton Blvd. Another 70 units will be built in phase II.
“The construction quality is superb, and the buildings are beautiful, and it’s just set up for a nice community,” Mogavero said.
It didn’t come easily with Mogavero and others having to work together to transform a historically troubled site that included both city and unincorporated county land. The work they did might offer a blueprint for anyone looking to build on Stockton Boulevard, which has long been a corridor with many empty or underutilized parcels.
“This is exactly the type of plan that we’re looking at for all over the boulevard,” Sacramento City Councilmember Eric Guerra said.
How the site became San Juan Apartments
It has been more than three years since Danielle Foster worked for the city of Sacramento as its housing director, but like Mogavero, she worked on the San Juan Apartments.
“I’m just excited to see this come to fruition,” said Foster, now the director of the Capitol Area Development Authority, at the grand opening. “Because it took a lot of coordination from a lot of people across city, county, multiple districts.”
Sacramento County Supervisor Patrick Kennedy said that roughly 80% of the project site is county land, with the other 20% within city limits. This meant city and county planning staff had to work together. SHRA owned the land. “The magic sauce was really just everybody checking their egos and seeing we have to get this done,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy had seen troubled times for the former hotel while he was president of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association in the 1980s and ’90s.
While he spoke during Tuesday’s event, Kennedy drew chuckles by saying that while the motel was in existence, it had been “used for various other things.” He struck a more somber note when describing the 2019 eviction from the land of people experiencing homelessness as “probably the darkest day” of his 12-year board tenure.
Mutual Housing of California, which bought the land from SHRA, built the complex. The units are geared toward “families earning between 30% and 60% of Area Median Income,” according to Mutual Housing of California.
Mutual Housing of California CEO Craig Adelman said Tuesday that the debut of the San Juan Apartments was important not just for his organization. “It’s another really critical step of progress against the housing affordability crisis we’ve been fighting for far too long,” Adelman said.
Tuesday’s event included remarks from Kimberly Smith, a new resident of the complex who made people laugh by saying that the secret for getting a unit was by signing up for the waiting list at midnight.
Funding for the complex has come from a variety of sources. In April, Kennedy, Guerra and others gathered at the construction site to celebrate Health Net contributing $1 million to the project and $2 million to a funder of the first phase of the project, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.
Adelman said that the 70 units in phase II will be affordable senior housing. He hopes to break ground by the end of this year, with an approximately 18-month construction schedule to follow.
“We will treat them as one community once the second phase is open,” Adelman said. “This is not uncommon in affordable housing. It’s also not unprecedented in mutual experience to do multiphased developments, oftentimes because of programmatic limits on our funding sources.”
Other opportunities along Stockton Boulevard
Mogavero, who has a long history of developing infill projects, offered perspective on what the San Juan Apartments can bring to its area.
“It’s one more increment of increasing the density on Stockton Boulevard, which is a great resource for the community,” said Mogavero, who is a booster of the boulevard.
“One of the reasons I love this boulevard is that it is so incredibly multiethnic and that’s the root of its success,” Mogavero said. “Because you have so much diversity of ethnic background, it provides opportunities for merchants and retailers to be successful.”
It’s also a boulevard that local leaders have long wanted to enhance with investment, organizing a bus tour some years ago, according to Guerra. There are other signs of new life along the route.
Guerra noted that aside from San Juan Apartments, other projects in the pipeline along Stockton Boulevard include a mixed-income project near 10th Avenue, another housing project at 13th Avenue and potential town homes in a vacant lot near Long Island Ice Cream.
“We have really created a new way of thinking, so that people, property owners can look at their property and say, ‘How can we help the city meet its housing needs, but also make the best use of our land?’” Guerra said.
For San Juan Apartments, what it came down for Guerra was that people were stronger together.
“When we can create a shared vision, everybody gets excited,” Guerra said. “You see out there today, just the sheer joy and excitement of the project. It shows that against all odds we can actually do big things if we’re working together.”
