The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors Tuesday decided to give affordable housing developers a new financial incentive.<\/p>\n
But one member strongly opposed the decision.<\/p>\n
The county has a $5 million fund to help affordable housing developers pay fees the county requires, such as library, water and roadway fees, according to a staff report. So far the developers of four projects, totaling 435 units, have taken advantage of the program, leaving about $2.8 million left in the fund.<\/p>\n
County staff proposed the supervisors now allow the developers to access the fund to pay certain park fees, starting with the developers of a motel conversion project at 5301 Howe Ave<\/a>., Dave Defanti, a deputy county executive, said during Tuesday’s meeting.<\/p>\n Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez said she preferred to put the $2.8 million back in the general fund. She said that the roughly $9 billion budget the county passed in June included about $54 million in cuts, including some that affected public safety.<\/a><\/p>\n “It’s not that I don’t support these (housing) projects,” Rodriguez said at Tuesday’s meeting. “Personally I don’t think taking the $5 million out of the general fund was a wise thing to do because we had a structural deficit coming down the pike … Isn’t it fair to say affordable housing developers will eventually get the funding someway somehow?”<\/p>\n ‘Sometimes things don’t get built’<\/p>\n Kris Warren, interim executive director of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, said that’s not correct.<\/p>\n “Sometimes things don’t get built that’s just the reality,” she said.<\/p>\n Supervisors Patrick Kennedy and Rich Desmond disagreed with Rodriguez.<\/p>\n “This is exactly where we should be putting our money,” Kennedy said. “It’s a fallacy to think that for these developers the money is just out there just for them to get. If that was the case we would have a lot more affordable housing. It is extremely appropriate for us as we look at housing needs in Sacramento County to be investing our own dollars in this.”<\/p>\n Before calling for a vote, Rodriguez said that Supervisor Pat Hume, who was absent, would have opposed the item.<\/p>\n “This project couldn’t have been waited to be heard until Supervisor Hume came back,” she said.<\/p>\n Along with Kennedy and Desmond, Supervisor Phil Serna also voted in support of the item.<\/p>\n To qualify for the fund, the housing must be reserved for residents who earn 80% area median income annually or less. For Sacramento in 2026 that means an individual living alone who earns an annual salary of $73,600 or less can qualify, according to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development web page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors Tuesday decided to give affordable housing developers a new financial incentive. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[380,16362,69186,121,123,17615,122],"class_list":["post-431312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-affordable-housing","tag-housing-developers","tag-rosario-rodriguez","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-housing-and-redevelopment-agency","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}