Sacramento City Council to vote on funding for 850 new affordable housing units

an exciting announcement that we are going to make over the next few minutes. I’m Darrell Steinberg, I am proud to be the mayor of Sacramento. There are so many people to thank and I know I’m going to miss folks, I want to start with Tiffany think and para transit for agreeing to host us here today and uh for your vision and you’ve got great vision along with you know, you have habitat for humanity and we’ve got so many CBOs here that represent represent hope and progress in Sacramento. I wanna thank my colleagues um who are with me here today, who have been really the council leaders on affordable housing. I want to start with Jason here who is leaving office in *** couple of months but who has consistently brought *** spirit of innovation which really is represented in this package here today. Came up with the idea of using our cities special funds to actually invest in affordable housing instead of Wall Street. Not *** bad idea, thank you jay for being here. We’ll hear from him in *** few moments. I want to thank council member Katie Valenzuela who is here with us as well. Um you know, the council leader around making sure that no one is forgotten in Sacramento and was part of *** very strategic shift that we’re going to talk about here today about how we choose to spend our city money and has some significant projects that are here uh in the package as well. Thank you, cancel council member mayor pro TEM eric Guetta, who along with J has led the revitalization of stockton boulevard from, from Aggie Square and that difficult tough process and negotiation that led to millions of dollars for housing to then insisting that we actually translate those resources into into what we’re going to announce here today. Eric great job to you too man. I want to thank of course our city manager, Howard chan, Michael Jackson and then Danielle Foster who was awarded as the segment of housing alliances uh advocate of the year or something like that. But uh it was *** high honor and deserving because we all know who brought all this together uh and pushed us forward here today. Danielle thank you so much and the same here too. Wendy Saunders from uh from the capillary Development Authority, one of the most important housing agencies in the region. Go in *** big part of this package as well. Thank you Wendy for your incredible career Kendra Lewis of the segment Housing Light you’re gonna hear from in just *** few moments. Thank you for all your leadership to insist that we do more and better and to your entire board uh to all of the CBOs to Governor Newsom to h C. D. Really, we would not be here today if it wasn’t for the leadership of housing and community values so many. Thank us and I will hear from many of you here today. If I left your name out, please know that what’s in my heart, it was in the heart of all of my colleagues. So I’m really happy here too. Make *** big positive announcement and this time with real backup, here’s where we stand here in Sacramento Despite 1100 temporary beds and safe spaces every night in Sacramento. And despite the fact that, you know, we’ve gotten 17,000 people as *** city and county off the streets of Sacramento since 2017 we know full well our struggles around unsheltered homelessness. We will never give up with more federal state and county partnership. We will endeavor to increase that number. Today. We announced *** deliberate, thoughtful and bold shift in our strategies to refocus our limited city dollars are limited city dollars towards more permanent affordable housing tomorrow at the city council at 2:00 or sometime shortly thereafter, hopefully, probably seven. But who knows, We will pass *** resolution to invest $35 million dollars To fund an additional 820 affordable housing units in Sacramento. That is on top of 2062 new units we have already funded that have not yet been built and that’s just over the last couple of years. That is *** total of 2,759 new units to be built in *** city that justifiably prides itself on being *** city, not just for those who have made it, but those working so hard and struggling to make it to. We have increased our production of affordable housing tenfold between 2021, compared to 2019 and 18. Tomorrow’s action Continues this upward trend we began in 2019 to make affordable housing our priority. And it will reaffirm our status as California’s first and only designated pro housing city. And thank you to Greg Sandlin as well. I see out here and the entire team from Community Development, you guys all deserve *** shout out as well. Thank you. Today’s strategy and tomorrow’s vote is especially important because getting to almost 3000 new units of affordable housing requires the kind of innovations and creativity that has not been tried in this community to scale before from new home ownership in Oak Park, two manufactured housing through *** R and Viv, from directly from directly investing our city’s special funds in housing. As I said earlier, instead of Wall Street, from saying yes to state surplus property, to enabling great nonprofits like para transit to set aside units in *** single development right across the street here for *** variety of worthy groups of people who need just *** little hand up to continuing to revitalize our long forgotten commercial corridors. This plan holds nothing back. Yeah, that’s where this clause, There is obviously not one answer to homelessness. Many need, many people need real services. *** subject we are currently negotiating intensively with the county, but *** permanent safe and decent place to call home is literally the key to sustained progress. It creates the path for people who are on the street to permanently end their homelessness. It creates the path for people to get out of the shelters and motel rooms, thus freeing up those same beds for people currently out on the streets. You know, we ask in sacramento as cities asked throughout California can housing become *** true human and legal right? 2759 units is not *** bad place to start. Thank you. What’s that? Yes, let me now introduce my colleague, council member Katie Valenzuela. You know, I started my career as *** community organizer and when you’re an organizer, we talk *** lot about moving upstream, what does moving upstream look like. And here in Sacramento, when you have so many people in our shelters and on our streets who have income but can’t find *** place to go and we have an average of seven people *** day in this county becoming homeless every single day moving upstream means increasing our supply of affordable housing. So I’m really honored to be here today with my colleagues, I think to put in perspective what we’re doing today, this money might have opened *** shelter or two for maybe *** year or two for maybe 100 or 200 folks. This housing money that we are now dedicating will be leveraged with state money with federal money to create almost 900 units of permanent housing. This is *** one time investment that will ensure these folks are off the street for the rest of their lives. And I’m so honored today to be here in this moment to shift because this is something that we can do as *** city to really ensure that we are giving everybody *** place to call home and doing everything we can to move upstream. I’m really honored to have several of these projects in my district. We are not abandoning the shelter programs, the motel vouchers that are going to be included in this, the transitional housing that’s also in my district. That will be included in this. But I’m also so excited to be home to the second state surplus property projects that keita is doing in the downtown area, which we will revitalize what is now *** warehouse space to create multi stories, beautiful artistic space that will be permanent housing for those who need it. Right in the middle of our job center of our city. So I’m really super excited to be here today and I look forward to seeing each and every one of these projects come to fruition and I hope this is not the end of our conversation about not just how to build more units, but how to protect the units. We have. You know, our office has been researching *** lot the units that are available on the market. It looks like we might have over 5000 vacant units in the county of Sacramento. And we really need to think strategically about both ends of the spectrum. How do we build more and how do we protect what we have to ensure that our voucher holders that those that are lower income can access the units that are on the market and that we make sure everybody has *** place to call home. So this is what upstream looks like for those of you who are wondering, how do we solve this homelessness crisis? We move upstream, we build more housing, we protect more affordable housing and we continue on the trajectory of doing what works and in partnership with these amazing community organizations that we are very honored to have here in our city. So thank you for being here today. This is *** very exciting moment for all of us and with that, I’d love to introduce my colleague, Mayor pro tim eric era. Thank you. Council member, Thank you, Mayor Steinberg. And uh and thank you to our community partners here today. Let’s give bigger applies to all our community partners who are making this happen and also to our floor and road community of south side community that’s here for South Sac. It’s great to be here today. Also, you know, talking about 900 new affordable housing units that are permanent moving forward like that is the key thing here and to think about where the where this journey has started and what the conversation was like. Uh you know, I think back at my time as *** as *** neighborhood association leaders, President for the neighborhood association, I see two past neighborhood association presidents here Isaac Gonzalez back there and then Mayor Darrell Steinberg over here. You know the the the fight for our neighborhoods, the fight, what this action and this plan tomorrow is about takes me back to that point when we were looking at our areas like stock boulevard like Florence road, like franklin boulevard del paso boulevard, many in our county that have these same challenges. And we said to ourselves, how can we make things different? How can we address our local business issues and how can we support more housing? How can we address issues of vacant lots and areas where we’re having difficulty of illegal dumping. Well, that started the stockton boulevard plan and you know, oh hearing, seeing where we’re, where we started uh you know, *** few years back ago and saying we need to develop *** strategy and we realized, Sacramento realized that if we think about housing, if we think about our economy and our community, that we can make an improvement in forgotten neighborhoods. And because of that, the state has now said that they believe in our strategy. And so the state passed green means grow, grow, go for not just Sacramento County, but for also other areas. In fact, this last year, the state passed two pieces of legislation by Senator Cavallero, an assembly member Buffy Wicks looking at Sacramento’s infield strategy and saying this is how we’re going to provide more housing but provide more foot traffic for our community for our small businesses. And to make sure that we’re being responsible on how we grow in our environment. Tomorrow’s action is not about band AIDS, it’s not about, you know, just plugging are responding to an immediate issue that we see because people are suffering right now without the chance of housing. When some elected officials are voting down housing here in Sacramento, we’re saying we’re building more housing, you know, we need to build more housing for everyone because when we build permanent supportive housing and we build housing for our working class families, we’re also reducing the pressure for also many of our middle class families who are involved in this rat race right now, finding an apartment or buying *** house, it’s about every, every level of building housing. And this plan here today looks at every aspect to that. It isn’t myopic, it’s very thought out, and I’m proud to be *** council member that’s gonna be voting for *** pro housing city and *** pro housing solution, let’s go floor and road, let’s go south Sacramento, let’s go housing for California. Oh, and um you know, this, uh, this partnership. You know, this, all of these ideas, they come with teammates and I’m proud to introduce my next teammate who, when we were, when we started thinking about how do we deal with uh, two sides of ***, of *** corridor that has to count council members to supervisors and uh, and at that time, no one talking together, I want to welcome, you know, *** great partner in breaking down the parochialism and making sure that we create paths forward. Let me welcome council member Jason here. Good morning, everyone try. Good morning. So I’m gonna talk for *** few minutes because I think this is really important. I’m very, very excited about being here today because we’re doing something different. We know we have *** housing crisis and we know we have an affordable housing crisis. There’s no question about that. And if we just kept doing things the way we’ve always done, we would not solve or even mitigate the challenge that we have, we have to think differently about this and what we have here today is thinking differently. You know, one of the projects, the kind project, I’m gonna get you in *** second, julie Young is here from there. When we first toured julie said I’m not here to have meetings right. I’m here to get something done. Well. Here we are. We’re getting something done and we’re doing right. So I want to say *** few. Thank you’s first. Um, certainly to Danielle Foster, we would not be here without Danielle. She has *** treasure in the city. There is no question about that. Um Alison on my staff who is not here claudia on my staff who has been working with *** lot of the CBOs around the kind project to make that work. Um have done yeoman’s job on that. Um Mike Jaso and Laney Millstein in the city. We couldn’t have done it without their support to move this. You know, doing something different is not an easy thing. It is always *** challenge and *** heavy lift. Um And then dan, I want to thank you as well uh for hanging in with us. Uh you know, it’s been *** hard time between uh inflation interest rates and the supply chain, but you’re still here and we’re looking forward to partnering with you on many other projects or someone is looking forward to partnering with you on many other projects. I’ll come visit. Um And I want to thank john colville, our city treasurer, We couldn’t have done this without him because again, we’re doing something different. So three examples that I want to give. I’m gonna go in just *** little more detail than the mayor did, but he had it right first when we think about the kind project which is really built on *** model that julie and Mark Freedman from fulcrum uh did uh in west Sacramento and is now doing in downtown sacramento. Uh This is *** way to get what they’re calling attainable housing, where the rental cost will be actually less than our traditional housing, our traditional affordable housing, um, building units for under $200,000 each is really unheard of. When you think about our costs that we do now that we’ve always been doing, which are 5 to $600,000 *** unit. And if you venture to L. ***. Where dana’s from, it’s probably *** million dollars *** door that they’re, that they’re building for more than that now. Um, So we have to think differently. And I really want to give kudos to julie and Mark for sitting down and figuring out how do you build *** wonderful building with great amenities that fits into *** community that is affordable for people to move into and live there for as long as they want. So julie, thank you for what you’ve been doing, really appreciate. Uh, this will be *** kind project, this will have over 200 units and will be built at *** city subsidy of about $39,000 *** unit. So think about that. That’s how we build more. The second piece as Darryl said, as the mayor said, is really about where we invest our money. Uh, this was not an original idea. We have *** lot of philanthropy, California endowment spend some time with us Impact investing. So rather than put money into Wall Street or into the stock market, whatever that looks like we need to invest in ourselves and we need to invest in our own community. And so we took *** look at our funds that we have, this is gonna be coming out of our risk fund where we have more than we need in the fund and we will use at least $15 million dollars to put out loans to get projects built. And that again is *** few 100 units that will be made possible because of that. And then the third thing is really an investment that we’re making and I want to thank leah, where’d you go over there? There you are from habitat for humanity. We’re taking $500,000 and some funds that we had, um, kind of from old bond fund And saying, we want to invest in you to do rock the block in Oak Park to make units habitable. That maybe aren’t right now. The $500,000, we estimate gets us about 70 units that people can then move back into. Uh, I want to invest more in that. So anyway, we can get more units on the ground as quickly as possible. That’s going to be very important. So those are three examples that I think we’re being entrepreneurial. We’re being creative. We’re looking at the assets that we have, both the human assets who have the ability to think outside the box and then certainly our monetary assets, uh, to do some, Some cool things to build almost 3000 units, uh, to start to mitigate *** crisis that we have here in sacramento. So I just want to say thank you to everyone standing behind me. Everyone has had *** role in this. This has been *** collaborative, public, private partnership where we’re bringing the best knowledge that we have, both public and private into the fold to make these things happen. So I want to introduce now, Tiffany think, who runs Para Transit, who always also is willing to stand up and say we need to do something different here. We have *** piece of land. Let’s figure out how we can make this work, Tiffany, thank you for all your work.

Sacramento City Council to vote on funding for 850 new affordable housing units

Updated: 12:43 PM PDT Oct 24, 2022

On Tuesday, the Sacramento City Council plans to vote on a $35.4 million proposal that would fund 820 new affordable housing units and transitional housing beds, according to city officials. The new housing effort comes as 2,000 more units are already in the pipeline, the city says. “Today we announce a deliberate, thoughtful and bold shift in strategies to refocus our limited city dollars toward more permanent, affordable city housing,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said Monday at a press conference with councilmember Katie Valenzuela, Mayor Pro Tem Eric Guerra, and councilmember Jay Schenirer.Valenzuela said the projects are an example of leveraging city money with state and federal funds to help build affordable housing instead of temporary housing. Here are the projects that are listed on the council’s agenda item: Paratransit The Kind Project South at 7141 Woodbine Ave.: This includes 216 units for people with low income and 10 units set aside for people who are homeless. The project would offer on-site supportive services. The estimated construction completion date would be June 2024. BRIDGE Affordable Housing at 440 Arden Way: This includes 124 units on state and city surplus property along with childcare services. There are 31 units for people with extremely low incomes, 33 for very low incomes, 60 for low income and 21 units set aside for people who are homeless. The estimated construction completion date would be the fall/winter of 2024. CADA/Mutual Affordable Housing at 805 R St.: This includes 242 units on state surplus property. There are 24 units for people with extremely low incomes, 49 for very low incomes, 167 for low incomes and 15 units set aside for homeless people. The estimated construction completion date is winter 2024. Eden Housing Donner Field Affordable Housing at 4501 9th Ave.: This includes 67 units on surplus property. There are 35 units for people with extremely low incomes, 32 units for very low incomes and 35 units that are set aside for people who are homeless. The estimated completion date is fall 2024. Oak Park Affordable Single Family Lots: This includes 10 affordable ownership units on surplus properties. The units are for those with very low and low incomes. The estimated completion date is winter 2023. Home Repair in Oak Pak Area (Habitat Rock the Block Program): About 70 to 100 homeowners with very low and low incomes will get help with home repairs through Habitat for Humanity. The estimated completion date is March 2023 and 2024.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

On Tuesday, the Sacramento City Council plans to vote on a $35.4 million proposal that would fund 820 new affordable housing units and transitional housing beds, according to city officials.

The new housing effort comes as 2,000 more units are already in the pipeline, the city says.

“Today we announce a deliberate, thoughtful and bold shift in strategies to refocus our limited city dollars toward more permanent, affordable city housing,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said Monday at a press conference with councilmember Katie Valenzuela, Mayor Pro Tem Eric Guerra, and councilmember Jay Schenirer.

Valenzuela said the projects are an example of leveraging city money with state and federal funds to help build affordable housing instead of temporary housing.

Here are the projects that are listed on the council’s agenda item:

Paratransit The Kind Project South at 7141 Woodbine Ave.: This includes 216 units for people with low income and 10 units set aside for people who are homeless. The project would offer on-site supportive services. The estimated construction completion date would be June 2024.

BRIDGE Affordable Housing at 440 Arden Way: This includes 124 units on state and city surplus property along with childcare services. There are 31 units for people with extremely low incomes, 33 for very low incomes, 60 for low income and 21 units set aside for people who are homeless. The estimated construction completion date would be the fall/winter of 2024.

CADA/Mutual Affordable Housing at 805 R St.: This includes 242 units on state surplus property. There are 24 units for people with extremely low incomes, 49 for very low incomes, 167 for low incomes and 15 units set aside for homeless people. The estimated construction completion date is winter 2024.

Eden Housing Donner Field Affordable Housing at 4501 9th Ave.: This includes 67 units on surplus property. There are 35 units for people with extremely low incomes, 32 units for very low incomes and 35 units that are set aside for people who are homeless. The estimated completion date is fall 2024.

Oak Park Affordable Single Family Lots: This includes 10 affordable ownership units on surplus properties. The units are for those with very low and low incomes. The estimated completion date is winter 2023.

Home Repair in Oak Pak Area (Habitat Rock the Block Program): About 70 to 100 homeowners with very low and low incomes will get help with home repairs through Habitat for Humanity. The estimated completion date is March 2023 and 2024.