If the billion-dollar price tag to fix it is accurate, this has to be the first public housing project in the Sacramento region, or perhaps anywhere in California, where the renovation cost would top $1 million per unit. Following the meeting, Pluckebaum reached out and asked the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, overseer of this project, one basic question \u2014 why?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gotten no responses to any of my inquiries about cost,\u201d Pluckebaum said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
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One of the buildings in the Alder Grove public housing complex off Broadway on Thursday. A recent report by SHRA estimates renovations to Marina Vista and Alder Grove could exceed $1 billion.<\/p>\n
Sacramento-area governments have long been focused on the ongoing homeless crisis, and rightly so, with an estimated 4,000 souls on the streets on any given night. But with only so much capacity for attention and action, less has centered on the condition of existing public housing that keeps residents living on the financial edge from falling into homelessness.<\/p>\n
Some of Sacramento\u2019s public housing has decayed to the point of costing an astronomical figure to fix. The solution, for now, appears to be to ignore the problem for as long as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is kind of hard to breathe in these units,\u201d said Angel Thomas, a 36-year-old hospice worker and mother of three. She has to remove the vent screen on the floor outlet of her second-story bedroom to get any circulation of air to her family. Most of the wooden cabinets in the kitchen have no knobs. Her bathroom walls have small holes from a mold test by maintenance two years ago, the results never disclosed.<\/p>\n
The complex is part of the city\u2019s New Helvetia historic district. Tucked off Broadway near Interstate 5, it feels like a land that time forgot. Garbage bags spill from full dumpsters. In Thomas\u2019 unit, stains show how the upstairs bathroom has leaked through to the ceiling below. \u201cI replaced my own toilet by myself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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Broken kitchen cabinet doors are among the repairs that Angel Thomas, a resident at the Alder Grove complex off Broadway, said need attention on Thursday. A recent report by SHRA estimates renovations to Marina Vista and Alder Grove could exceed $1 billion.<\/p>\n
SHRA is governed by two different political bodies, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and the Sacramento City Council. This sounds like a lot of oversight. But in practice, the reality is precisely the opposite.<\/p>\n
For decades, supervisors and council members have not met together to jointly oversee SHRA. Instead, they have tried to manage the agency separately. That has been a recipe for failure. And it helps to explain why, month after month, a slow-moving disaster like Marina Vista\/Alder Grove never gets the public attention it deserves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you saw how folks were living there, the community would be pretty disappointed that that\u2019s the condition that we\u2019re asking folks to accept in exchange for public housing,\u201d Pluckebaum said.<\/p>\n
This complex has a storied history embedded in what can only be described as some institutional Sacramento racism.<\/p>\n
What was then called Seavey Circle was built predominantly for retiring white members of the military at the successful conclusion of the second world war. But Sacramento\u2019s first Black attorney, Nathaniel Colley<\/a>, filed a successful court challenge to integrate the complex. This historic victory for the city\u2019s Black community has long since devolved into one of the most downtrodden neighborhoods in all of Sacramento.<\/p>\n \u201cThey aren\u2019t going to fix anything here,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n Angel Thomas, a resident at the Alder Grove complex off Broadway, on Thursday said her bath tub has been leaking and has created black mold on the floor without being replaced. A recent report by SHRA estimates renovations to Marina Vista and Alder Grove could exceed $1 billion.<\/p>\n SHRA did not respond to a request by the Bee to interview the interim executive director, James Shield. But the agency did respond to a request for records about the billion-dollar cost estimate. Basically, SHRA spit-balled this figure based on the cost of other projects recently completed in the city. \u201cThose numbers were not based off an official study or estimate,\u201d SHRA housing manager Mark Hamilton said in an internal email on Oct. 1.<\/p>\n There has been talk over the years of a complete rebuild of Alder Grove and Marina Vista. Pluckebaum remembers an idea nearly a decade ago to build new structures between the existing ones. But it went nowhere.<\/p>\n \u201cSHRA staff told me that there was a time they had as many as six full-time maintenance workers,\u201d Pluckebaum said. \u201cAnd now they\u2019re down to two.\u201d<\/p>\n The city and county created SHRA in 1982 in an era of far more abundant funds for both redevelopment and housing. State redevelopment funds have all but evaporated, a legislative cutback mandated by then-governor Jerry Brown. Funds to build and maintain complexes such as this haven\u2019t kept pace with inflation either.<\/p>\n Yet now SHRA, fortunately, is under the microscope.<\/a> Supervisors have commissioned an independent review of the agency. Long-time Executive Director La Shelle Dozier has retired rather than stick around to see what this audit finds. And on Tuesday, supervisors and city mayors hold the rarest of joint meetings<\/a> to discuss next steps on homelessness and if there are better ways to govern together.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though we are housed,\u201d said Thomas, \u201cwe need a little more help.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Angel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/149cd4cfba50df3a67b3fd0819a12bd3.jpeg\"\/)
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![\"Angel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/a28bf71cce78d66b84d4a8b84c954520.jpeg\"\/)
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