The Elk Grove City Council took on eight housing-related items on September 23, 2026, ranging from a new program to help middle-income families buy homes to a reshuffling of pandemic-era federal money toward a homeless shelter. Here’s what the decisions mean for residents and buyers.
Affordable Housing & Homebuyer Help
The headline action was the council’s creation of the Moderate-Income Homebuyer Assistance Program. This new program is aimed at households that earn too much to qualify for most low-income aid but still can’t afford Elk Grove’s home prices — typically teachers, nurses, and other middle-income workers. In practice, the program is expected to offer down-payment or closing-cost help to qualifying first-time buyers, filling a gap that existing programs, which mostly target lower-income households, have long left open. For prospective buyers on the edge of affordability, this could be the difference between renting and owning.
The council also held a public hearing on an ordinance changing the city’s Affordable Housing Fee chapters, along with a resolution adopting a new Affordable Housing Impact Fee Nexus Study — a technical report that legally justifies how much the city can charge developers to offset the affordable-housing need their projects create. In plain terms, the nexus study sets the dollar amounts developers must pay (or the number of affordable units they must build) when they construct new housing. Updating it can raise or lower those fees, which in turn affects both how much affordable housing gets funded and how much new market-rate homes cost to build.
On the accountability side, the council held a public hearing on the FY 2025-2026 CAPER — the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, an annual report card the city must send to the federal government showing how it spent its CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) and HOME dollars. These are federal housing and community-development grants that fund things like affordable-housing projects, home repairs, and services for low-income residents. The hearing lets residents see and comment on where that money actually went before the report is finalized and submitted.
Homeless Services
The council approved a resolution moving unspent ARPA money — leftover funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, the 2021 COVID-19 relief package — into the city’s Homeless Shelter Project. Because ARPA funds come with federal spending deadlines, reallocating money that would otherwise sit idle is a common way cities avoid losing it. For residents, this means dollars already in city hands will now go toward shelter beds and homeless services rather than being returned to the federal government.
Fees, Refunds & Impact Costs
In a move that directly benefits homeowners, the council authorized refunds of development impact fees — one-time charges the city collects on new construction to pay for roads, parks, and other public facilities — that were paid on building permits for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and office buildings. An ADU is a smaller second home on the same lot, like a backyard cottage or a converted garage. State law increasingly limits the fees cities can charge on these units, so the refunds correct overcharges and lower the real cost of building a backyard unit — welcome news for homeowners weighing whether to add one.
The council also approved a Credit Reimbursement Agreement with 60 Acre Construction, LLC for park and trail impact-fee facilities in the SEPA area, tied to the Telos Greens Project. Under this kind of agreement, a developer builds a public facility — here, park and trail improvements — and the city credits or repays the developer for the portion that exceeds their own project’s fair share. For future residents of Telos Greens and the surrounding neighborhood, it means parks and trails get built as the homes go up, rather than years later.
Project Approvals & Annexations
The council cleared several steps for the Dunisch Project, a residential subdivision. Members approved the Final Map for the Dunisch Subdivision (Subdivision No. 22-047) — the last map approval a developer needs before individual lots can be sold and homes built. They also approved resolutions annexing the Dunisch land into the city’s Street Maintenance District and Storm Water Drainage Fee Zone. Annexation here doesn’t mean adding new land to the city; it means the new subdivision is folded into the districts that pay for street upkeep and storm-drain maintenance, so the future homeowners there will help fund those ongoing services through their assessments. For buyers, these are routine but necessary steps that signal the subdivision is nearing the point where homes can actually be constructed.
What’s Coming Up
The affordable-housing fee ordinance received a public hearing this cycle, but ordinances in Elk Grove typically require a second reading — a formal final vote at a later meeting — before they take effect, so residents concerned about how the new fees might affect housing costs should watch for that follow-up vote. The city is also expected to release program details, income limits, and application timelines for the new Moderate-Income Homebuyer Assistance Program in the coming weeks; interested buyers should keep an eye on the city’s housing pages for eligibility rules and how to apply.