Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty tours the 100 new tiny homes on the north campus of the Roseville Road shelter at a news conference on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, regarding their completion. The homes have individual heating and air-conditioning, and half will allow pets. Another 35 tiny homes have been added to the south campus.
RENÉE C. BYER
rbyer@sacbee.com
Sacramento City Council could expand a Roseville Road homeless shelter for dozens of people as the council will consider a proposal next Tuesday to build additional tiny homes at the site.
The Roseville Road homeless shelter, at 3900 Roseville Road in the city’s Del Paso Park neighborhood, offers tiny homes, which are 70-square-foot structures with electricity, heating, air conditioning and a bed. The site currently includes 196 total units across two campuses, north and south, each section overseen by a different nonprofit.
As of February, 75% of the shelter on the north side is filled, according to a staff presentation released Thursday ahead of next week’s council meeting. One hundred tiny homes sit in the north area of Roseville Road’s campus run by Placer County-based organization The Gathering Inn.
The council will vote Tuesday on a $435,157 contract with Boss Homes to purchase an additional 35 tiny homes to grow the north site from 100 to 135 and the total for the Roseville Road shelter from 196 to 231.
The $435,000 contract for 35 tiny homes works out to about $12,400 per unit. Each dwelling will have electricity, heating and air conditioning, wrote city spokesperson Julie Hall.
Boss Homes, a Montebello-based company, helped build the original 135 tiny homes for the Roseville Road location and completed constructing 100 of those spaces in January, according to a staff report. Sacramento County and the city of Sacramento have both contracted the company to build Stockton Safe Stay, another homeless shelter run by nonprofit First Step Communities.
A competitive bidding process for the 35 new tiny homes did not appear before the council for a vote, under an ordinance which grants the city manager authority to execute agreements up to $5 million for temporary shelters without a process to review other organizations’ plans. Typically, the full council must consider contracts worth more than $250,000.
The tiny homes would need to be delivered by July 31, according to the contract.
The expansion of the Roseville Road campus comes as the city grapples with a $66 million budget deficit. Throughout March, the council has heard budget-balancing measures such as slashing city employee vacancies, reorienting employees’ positions and cutting programs.
The purchase of 35 new tiny homes comes from savings the city secured in its initial purchase of miniature dwellings, according to a staff presentation. Staff wrote that the city negotiated an approximately $337,000 discount on the purchase authorized last year.
Mayor Kevin McCarty seized upon tiny homes as a cost-effective way to house Sacramento’s most vulnerable. He touted a plan to build three tiny home communities in North Natomas and south Sacramento for seniors.
Those three sites each contain 40 structures, each 120 square feet, with electricity, Wi-Fi, shared bathrooms and other services.
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Ishani Desai is a government watchdog reporter for The Sacramento Bee. She previously covered crime and courts for The Bakersfield Californian.