How North Sacramento NIMBYism almost duped City Council into rejecting affordable housing
Some of Sacramento’s most corrosive NIMBYism resides in Woodlake, a single-family enclave in North Sacramento that harbors rhetoric so toxic that the City Council almost fell for it and almost enabled the incomprehensible agenda of District 2 City Councilman Sean Loloee.
A slim council majority narrowly approved some paperwork last week so a housing nonprofit could apply for a $5.7 million grant and build a project without needing any city money. After a truly dumbfounding public debate over whether an affordable housing development would “destroy a community,” Loloee, the troll of the night, wondered aloud if Sacramento was “turning into a semi-dictatorship in the name of affordability.”
California’s Department of General Services is razing two buildings on one acre of surplus state land at the old armory site off Del Paso Boulevard and Arden Way that’s been vacant for decades. They’re building 124 apartments, a daycare and retail space at a light rail stop that’s minutes from the Amtrak station and downtown. The impetus was an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom, an authority well beyond the clutches of regressive local actors.
That wasn’t going to stop Loloee from trying his damnedest to derail everything. Between this project and a needlessly controversial city lease for a preschool that serves single moms, he’s spent months stoking tension in Woodlake.
Loloee has breathed life into a subset of North Sacramento residents who are understandably scarred from decades of disinvestment and neglect that they vehemently oppose every form of government intrusion — even when it may actually help people. The worst actors are a band of neighborhood association members and district activists, self-titled “All Eyes on Deck D2,” who congregate in various Facebook groups where neighborliness comingles with misinformation.
They once made a horror-style movie trailer to voice their outrage with the area’s tax-funded business district. When the city recently entered into a one-year lease with Single Mom Strong to provide clubhouse space for a preschool, a meme with four smiling children raising their hands started making the rounds.
“AS THE CITY OF SACRAMENTO CONTINUES TO CARPET BOMB DISTRICT 2 WITH ALL THAT IS UNWANTED,” it read, “THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO SIT BACK AND WATCH. THE PRESERVATION OF OUR COMMUNITY REQUIRES ACTION.”
The more sanitized strains of NIMBYism come from the Woodlake Neighborhood Association, whose members produce fliers riddled with tropes and disinformation. A leaflet encouraging residents to attend a community meeting last summer for a 75-unit affordable housing project on Del Paso Boulevard lambasted it as “a targeted Millennial development” that risked turning Southgate Road into a thoroughfare because it linked to the post office. The association rhetorically asked “what kind of store” people wanted in the retail space below the apartments, dubiously questioning whether “goodwill, vape, medical marijuana, 7-11, liquor” would be more likely than “a coffee shop, restaurant, dentist.”
Volunteers of America, developers of the 1212 Village project, face a $7 million funding gap. Despite having all the necessary approvals, the project site remains vacant as a symbol of the type of support Loloee provides when he does, in fact, have authority.
Loloee told me late last year that if “I feel it makes sense — yes, absolutely, I’ll go to bat and see if we can cover that gap.” But he also tried to be coy and said he didn’t “know what that amount is,” even though it’s been common knowledge within his district, among several local agencies, and even other members of the council that VOA needed a $7 million share of the city’s housing trust.
So while Loloee has been stalling behind the scenes on one affordable project, he’s spent much of his 18 months in office ginning up hysteria over the state’s armory development, making unfounded claims that its density will destroy Woodlake. In a meeting with the neighborhood association in March, he repeatedly misstated the number of units, parking spaces and income requirements.
During one of the more comical exchanges in last week’s council discussion, Loloee put his head in his hands before asking BRIDGE Housing project manager Jon McCall if he would be willing to cut 100 units.
McCall was stunned silent. “I’m not exactly sure how to respond,” he said.
“If you know it’s going to destroy the community, will you lower the units?” Loloee repeated.
“I guess we’re going to have to, sort of, unpack the term ‘destroy the community,’” McCall replied.
Loloee and outspoken Woodlake residents have repeatedly stressed their support for affordable housing, just not at this site and not at this scale. Their pleas for sympathy, checkered with the same concerns that have underpinned California’s housing crisis for five decades, are a carbon copy of the lines deployed in wealthier Sacramento neighborhoods. No matter the area, the people who own homes nearby will always hold up project critiques to mask their unwitting opposition to any affordable apartments that can help a lower-income household.
Despite everything Sacramento faces right now, council members Angelique Ashby, Jeff Harris and Mai Vang fell for this fact-free crusade and nearly sabotaged a quality affordable housing project.