Sacramento County Backs Housing for Poor
Policy shift requires developers to set
aside 15% of units
By Cameron Jahn -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, December 2, 2004
The Sacramento Bee
Approving what could be the most aggressive affordable-housing policy in the nation, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors gave a major leg up to the county's growing poor population Wednesday.
Developers will have to set aside 15 percent of all construction in unincorporated areas - tract homes in the suburbs and infill apartments alike - for low-income residents.
The policy, which takes effect in January after a few minor adjustments are made next week, will provide more than 300 units a year - based on current growth rates - that are affordable to those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Joan Burke, lobbyist for the homeless services organization Loaves & Fishes, said the policy will result each year in the equivalent of one new development like Quinn Cottages, a 60-unit North Sacramento housing complex that allows homeless recovering from addiction to turn their lives around with counseling, treatment and job training.
"Nobody has ever - anybody, no city, county or state - has targeted people in the greatest need," she said. For every unit this policy produces, she said "it means for me one less family that has to sleep in their car."
The new policy includes a hotly contested provision that 3 percent of construction be earmarked for the poorest of the poor, or "extremely low-income." For a family of three, that would mean earning less than $17,300 a year.
The rest of the affordable units will be split evenly between "very low-income" families that earn less than $28,850 a year and "low-income" families that earn less than $46,150 a year.
Sacramento County has had no such policy to produce affordable housing.
The change comes with its own price tag, about $10 million a year in subsidies from various sources, including the county. Each unit would require an estimated $155,500 in subsidies to bridge the gap to market prices.
For a county that's been haunted by state and local budget cuts in recent years, new spending commitments are difficult to swallow, Supervisor Muriel Johnson said before supporting the policy.
Supervisors spent more than two years crafting the policy, but it took a string of late nights and last-minute changes during the last two weeks to produce four "yes" votes - Roger Dickinson, Illa Collin, Johnson and Don Nottoli. Former Supervisor Roger Niello has left the board to take his seat in the state Assembly.
"This has brought us to the point of making a truly historic decision for Sacramento County since we have such an affordable-housing crisis in the county and region," Dickinson said. "And we know it's a work in progress with changes that will be required over time."
Developers first lobbied the board to abandon the policy altogether and later attempted to water it down with provisions that would allow them to write checks instead of build affordable units.
"This fundamentally ... is an inequitable policy because it clearly asks one member of the business community to fund a legitimate need for affordable housing when it doesn't go to the broader community and ask society as whole to contribute," said Phil Serna, a consultant working with the Building Industry Association of Superior California. "We understood which way the political winds were blowing when we started this, and that's why we stayed at the table."
County officials agreed to a few key provisions that will make the policy less "onerous" for home-builders, said Ardie Zahedani, a BIA lobbyist.
Those include allowing credits for affordable-housing units to be transferred to other properties within the same general area and giving bonuses for building at higher densities than required.
The rest of the policy works like this:
For projects of more than 20 units, the developer must build the affordable units or give the county enough land to cover the obligation.
For smaller projects, developers can pay $10,000 per affordable unit instead of building them.
County officials want to discourage the second option.
They prefer to see affordable housing units built to benefit people such as Joe Smith, who earns $9 an hour at a furniture shop and is trying to get his life in order while living at Quinn Cottages after a 13-month stint in prison for a hit-and-run accident.
"If not for the break of affordable housing, I would not be able to afford to live, and I would probably be back on the streets again," he said. The landlords "want you to earn three times my income just to get into an apartment."
About the writer:
- The Bee's Cameron Jahn can be reached at (916) 321-1038 or cjahn@sacbee.com.