Sacramento (Aug. 17, 2021) The Sacramento City Council Tuesday adopted a plan laying out how the city will meet its growing housing demand over the next eight years. Each community in the state must periodically adopt such a Housing Element to demonstrate they have zoned enough land to build their share of the statewide need.

The housing element DOES NOT change City zoning to allow duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in existing single family neighborhoods. That potential change would come with the adoption of the 2040 General Plan, which is expected to go to City Council for approval in May 2022. After that, the City would still need to update its planning and development code. City staff will be conducting extensive community outreach in the months ahead.

The Housing Element does contain a variety of strategies and actions designed to promote the construction of more affordable housing, particularly in areas of the city that have better access to transit and higher performing schools, said Matt Hertel, the City’s Long Range Planning Manager.

“We are committed to doing what it takes to build housing for everyone in our community,” Hertel said.

The City’s goal is to accommodate the production of 45,580 housing units of all types over the next eight years. It has already taken significant steps to encourage housing construction, including making it easier to build accessory dwelling units, allowing for quick approvals of infill housing and establishing incentives for construction of housing near transit corridors.

The City has also waived all of the fees it controls for affordable housing projects.

Yet the need remains acute. In 2020, less than 40 percent of homes sold in Sacramento were affordable to a household making the median income, or $86,300 for a family of four. The median price of a home soared from $149,250 in 2012 to nearly $440,000 last year.

As part of an effort to encourage the construction of more affordable housing, the Housing Element directs the City to study whether it should revised its Mixed Income Housing Ordinance to reinstate an inclusionary requirement for developers to include affordable housing in significant housing projects. That requirement was removed in 2015 and replaced with an affordable housing impact fee that has generated $4.5 million since 2016.

Hertel said the City is trying to find the best way to get more affordable housing built without increasing the cost burden to the point where developers decide not to pursue projects.

Read Housing Element here

“Last year was our best year of housing production in almost 15 years,” Hertel said. “We don’t want to have undue barriers to development. We also know the market can’t meet the needs of the lowest income members of our community.”

Here are some additional highlights from the long list of strategies:

Off-the-shelf ADU plans
Reducing parking requirements for infill development
Working with community based organizations to develop new collective ownership models for housing.

Before the Council adopted the plan, Councilmember Katie Valenzuela included in the motion a direction that the City explore the possibility of establishing a public bank in Sacramento to help finance affordable housing projects.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg called the plan a “visionary and ambitious document” but noted that state law does not require the city to actually produce any of the housing it has planned for. “We should view this Housing Element as just the beginning of our work together toward meeting the housing goal.,” he said.