Sacramento city officials and housing advocates celebrated progress on a 67-unit affordable housing development for seniors in Oak Park on Friday.
Donner Field Senior Apartments is located on 45th Street just off Stockton Boulevard. Once complete a year from this spring, it will house seniors ages 55 and older who earn 60% of Sacramento’s median income or lower. The project will reserve 17 units for those experiencing homelessness and include support services and case managers for those residents.
At a city celebration of the project on Friday, District 5 City Councilmember Caity Maple said many in the historically Black neighborhood fear being priced out.
“One of the things I hear most from residents in the Oak Park community is there are a lot of concerns and fears around gentrification,” Maple said. “It’s become really unaffordable to live in this community, despite this formerly being one of the more affordable communities for folks.”
Affordable housing developer Eden Housing is behind the project. They specialize in affordable housing across the state, with this project being their first in Sacramento.
Charles Liuzzo, the company’s director of real estate development, told CapRadio that Eden Housing provides both a home and enrichment opportunities for their tenants.
These will include spaces for recreational activity, such as a central greenspace, bocce ball court, as well as adult education courses, a computer room and community garden.
“ They’re intended to give our residents some new skills, but also bring them out of their unit so they can interact with each others,” Liuzzo said. “We found these kinds of things build the best kind of communities and they end up with the best results for our residents.”
Liuzzo said they bought the site in 2020. According to previous CapRadio reporting, the Sacramento Housing Redevelopment Agency (SHRA) previously owned the parcel for decades, which has sat vacant.
The complex costs a total of $36 million. The Sacramento City Council approved approximately $1.2 million in funding for the development last summer. According to Eden Housing, the majority of funding comes from state tax credits and grants, but SHRA is helping pay $12 million of the project.
Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said the community is another step towards boosting housing in the region, especially for the most vulnerable.
“ We want to get people off the streets into tiny homes or shelter facilities and motel programs,” he said. “Hopefully they can move from there to projects like this.”
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