Sacramento City Council members spent the past two weeks moving on a wide slate of housing items, with the biggest impact landing on homeless families. The council approved new contracts paying five local hotels to house families with nowhere else to sleep, while also greenlighting financing for two affordable apartment buildings and reviewing a sweeping outside audit of the city-county housing agency.
Homeless services: hotel rooms for families
The council’s most immediate-impact decision was approving the Emergency Shelter Vouchers Program for Families, a set of contracts with five Sacramento hotels — Jibboom Hotels Inc., College Hotel’s Inc., Value Suites, Executive Inn, and Paul & Sons Northgate. Under the program, the city pays the hotels directly to put up homeless families in private rooms while caseworkers try to find them permanent housing. For families on the street, this means an actual room with a door and a bed instead of a shelter mat or a car — and it expands the city’s capacity beyond its traditional shelter buildings, which have been consistently full.
To go with those hotel rooms, the council also expanded its contract with Step Up on Second Street, a nonprofit that sends caseworkers into encampments and shelters to connect people with services. The supplemental contract covers street outreach, the city’s Safe Camping and Safe Parking sites (designated lots where unhoused residents can legally sleep in tents or vehicles), and the new hotel voucher program. In practical terms, every family placed in one of the hotels above gets a case manager from Step Up working on their next move.
In a related action, the council approved a contract with Habitat for Humanity for the Stockton Boulevard Housing Stabilization program. Habitat will do home repairs — roofs, plumbing, accessibility fixes — for lower-income homeowners along the Stockton Boulevard corridor, a historically underinvested stretch of South Sacramento. The goal is to keep longtime residents in homes they already own rather than losing them to deferred maintenance or displacement.
Affordable apartment financing
The council, sitting as the Housing Authority (the city body that issues housing bonds), authorized 501(c)(3) bonds — tax-exempt bonds issued through a nonprofit owner that lower the borrowing cost for affordable housing — to finance The Creek at 2645 Apartments. The cheaper financing translates directly into below-market rents that the project can sustain over decades.
A week earlier, the council also approved $4.1 million in construction and permanent loan documents from the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA — the joint city-county agency that runs Sacramento’s affordable housing and public housing programs) to Chelsea Investment Corporation for Scotty Station Apartments. A $4.1 million city loan is a typical “gap” contribution for an affordable project in Sacramento — usually the last piece of funding that lets a developer close on construction once tax credits and bank loans are lined up. For renters, it means another building of income-restricted apartments moves from paper to dirt.
Housing agency under review
The council received a status update on the independent assessment of SHRA being conducted by CVR Associates, Inc., a national consulting firm hired by the County Executive’s office. SHRA has faced scrutiny over its handling of Section 8 vouchers (federal rental subsidies that pay part of the rent for low-income tenants) and the pace at which it gets affordable projects built. The CVR review is examining staffing, technology, and how the agency processes applications — issues that matter to roughly 12,000 Sacramento-area households on Section 8 and the thousands more on waiting lists. No structural changes were voted on this week; the assessment is still in progress, and recommendations are expected later this year.
Separately, the council’s Personnel and Public Employees Committee reviewed applicants for open seats on the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Commission, the citizen board that advises SHRA. These appointments shape who has a voice on affordable housing decisions for the next several years.
General Plan and small-lot subdivisions
The council accepted the 2040 General Plan Annual Report for 2025. The General Plan is the city’s 20-year blueprint for where homes, jobs, and parks go. The annual report is essentially a report card: it tracks how many housing units got permitted, how the city is doing against its state-mandated housing targets, and which neighborhoods are absorbing growth. Sacramento is under pressure from the state to permit roughly 45,000 new homes by 2029, and the annual report is the public’s main window into whether that’s on track.
The council also received notifications of two parcel maps — formal lot splits — at 1412 U Street and 3000 T Street, both in Midtown. These are small infill subdivisions that let one underused parcel be split into multiple buildable lots, typically for townhomes or small-lot single-family homes. They don’t add hundreds of units, but they’re the kind of routine action that gradually adds density to existing neighborhoods without major rezoning fights.
Other action
In other business, the council adjusted the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan (NBHCP) fee for 2026 — a per-acre fee paid by developers building in North Natomas that funds preservation of nearby wetlands and farmland for endangered species like the giant garter snake. The fee adjustment, which required a four-fifths supermajority vote, gets passed through to homebuyers in new Natomas subdivisions and typically rises modestly each year with land costs.
What’s coming up
The CVR audit of SHRA is expected to return to the council with formal recommendations later this year, which could reshape how Sacramento delivers affordable housing and administers rent vouchers. Final appointments to the Housing and Redevelopment Commission are also pending after this week’s applicant review. Residents can track upcoming items and sign up to speak through the city’s Legistar agenda portal.