The Folsom City Council’s only housing item this week was a vote on two years of state housing funds. The council considered formally accepting the city’s 2022 and 2023 shares of Permanent Local Housing Allocation (PLHA) funds and awarding that money to Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento, a nonprofit that builds homes for lower-income families to buy. The item appeared on the council’s November 10, 2026 agenda.
The PLHA is a state program that sends money to cities and counties every year for affordable housing. It is run by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the state agency that oversees housing programs and local housing plans. The money comes from a fee charged when certain real estate documents are recorded with the county. That fee was created by Senate Bill 2 in 2017, a state law meant to give local governments a steady source of housing money instead of relying on one-time grants. Each city’s share is set by a formula, so Folsom does not compete with other cities for these dollars. It receives an allocation and must spend it on approved housing uses within state deadlines.
The agenda title does not list a dollar amount. For a city Folsom’s size, though, yearly PLHA allocations are modest. They are far smaller than the multimillion-dollar budgets of large apartment developments and are generally enough to help pay for a handful of homes, not to build a new neighborhood. Combining two years of funds into one award makes the money more useful by giving a single partner a bigger pool to work with.
For residents, this is a step toward a small number of homes that working families can actually buy, which is notable in a city where median home prices are well beyond the reach of many teachers, health care workers, and service employees. Habitat for Humanity’s model is different from a typical affordable rental project. Families who qualify based on income put in “sweat equity,” meaning hours spent helping build their own home or other Habitat homes. They then buy the house with an affordable mortgage sized to their income. The result is homeownership, not a rental, and the chance for families to build wealth over time.
For neighbors and prospective buyers, the vote does not change zoning, rezone any land, or approve a specific building project. It deals with money, not land use. Any construction that Habitat pursues with these funds would still go through Folsom’s normal planning and permit process. Homes built with PLHA support usually come with income limits for the buyers and may carry rules to keep them affordable over the long term.
What’s coming up: The agenda title does not say which property or how many homes the money will support. Those details are likely to come in a funding agreement between the city and Habitat for Humanity, or in a future project application. Residents who want to follow where the money goes can watch upcoming City Council and Planning Commission agendas on the city’s website. The state also requires cities to report each year on how they spend PLHA funds, which gives the public another way to track the results.