Work at SACOG to plan for a more compact and sustainable Sacramento region. City of Sacramento Planning Commissioner. Can also find me
@dovkadin
.bsky.social
This is my favorite fourplex in Sacramento. Four modest 1bd/1ba units with nice shared backyard in a beautiful neighborhood. 28 units an acre. Letโs make this legal wherever we allow residential.
Revised from 94 units and 15 parking spaces to 130 units and 0 parking spaces. Affordable at 80-120% AMI with no subsidy too. Folks, you love to see it.
So staff said the project would remove all the parking for a bike lane, council voted to move forward, then the exact number of removed spaces was revealed, council balked, killed the project, launched a $200k investigation into staff, and fired the boss?
Think your council is pro housing? Sacramento heard the staff proposal to scale back zoning reforms and impose 4-6 unit caps across 70% of the city last night.
Here were all five of the comments from the dais, each expressing a desire to increase density or do away with the caps
Tonight, the City of Sac took a REALLY big step to streamline housing approvals. All multifamily infill housing projects up to 200 units that comply with zoning will now be ministerially approved at the staff level. No CEQA, no delays, just NIMBY-proof approvals in 60-90 days.
BIG General Plan action at Sacramento City Council tonight gives the go-ahead for allowing at least fourplexes everywhere, eliminating parking minimums, moving towards all electric blds, right-sizing streets for transit/bike/ped, and prioritizing equity in infrastructure (1/9)
Davis is having a bit of a moment here with three big mixed-use projects within 4 blocks proposed using SB 330 and the City's new form-based downtown specific plan. It's an impressive example of how permissive, form-based zoning and by right approvals with no CEQA yields results.
Wow,
@anniefryman
just mentioned at
@yimbytown
that they can get an ADU permitted in an hour in San Jose thanks to their ADU permit day where once a week all departments can hop on a single zoom call to hash out all the department reviews.
Wild hearing from at
#yimbytown
from Taylor Morrison (one of the larger single family developers in the country) say they are replacing 15% of homes in their Oregon greenfields with triplexes in response to state legalization of missing middle. Imagining the possibilities in Ca..
Hereโs a clip from my comments last night at planning commission as we talk about the proposal to place arbitrary 6 unit/parcel caps (4+2 ADUs) across virtually all the R1 and R2 parcels where missing middle is actually feasible to build in sacramento.
"Several builders told us that the ideal building typology is between eight and twelve units, where more projects start to become financially viable. This โmagic numberโ allows for economies of scale while using less expensive, wood frame construction without elevators."
A bunch of new supply coming online (we are hitting multi-decade highs in multifamily production). Annual rent growth in Sac has fallen for 7 consecutive quarters and is now negative at -2%
Colliers' Q2 multifamily market report for Sacramento is out. Vacancy is back up above 5%, rents are stabilizing, and thousands of new units are still in the pipeline. As always, grain of salt with all this, but overall positive news!
Looks like Milwaukee is poised to allow 12 unit small apartments across most of the city (medium and dark green). No reason we canโt do this in sacramento.
NEW: Milwaukee, Wisconsin just proposed the most ambitious zoning code in the US. ๐จ๐ฐ๐๏ธ
-ALL residential parking mandates gone
-Small apartment buildings legal BY RIGHT in core (medium green)
-Triplexes, townhomes, & ADUs legal by right CITYWIDE
-Permitting FAST-TRACKED
๐งต๐งต๐งต
Iโve been owned lol
Professional sports context: this man is 33 itโs honestly a marvel heโs still playing what a veteran
Political context: wow what a refreshing young man, bright eyed and bushy tailed, very imprโฆ
We should be zoning for orders of magnitude over what we want to see built. This notion that we know exactly where to put capacity and anything we zone for gets built is a fantasy and unhealthy.
Some goalposts officially moved today. In 2018, California Gov.
@GavinNewsom
campaigned on the CONSTRUCTION of 3.5m new homes by 2025.
Today, four years later, his administration put out a report on a ZONING PLAN to support the building of 2.5m new homes by 2030.
Fun fact: 100% affordable projects now get unlimited density and 33 extra feet of height in both the blue areas (1/2 mile from major transit stops by 2040) AND the green areas (very low vehicle travel areas, which are defined as 85% below regional or city average in Sac County).
Wow Fannie is lowering LTV thresholds for principal residence 2-4 unit buildings. Will only need 5% down for normal loans as well as homestyle renovation loans (which I used to finance construction of my ADU). Should open up opportunities for mom and pop missing middle financing.
There is something special happening in Sacramento right now folks. A confluence of prohousing leadership on council/planning commission/planning staff, governmental agencies like
@SACOG
and
@AQMD
, and incredible advocacy orgs like
@SacHsngAlliance
,
@ecosacramento
, and
@SacYIMBY
Sacramento is (slowly) moving forward with reforms to allow for a variety of housing product types in areas previously restricted to single family homes. The neighborhood associations from whiter and wealthier areas are organizing a formal bid to scale back those reforms.๐งต
"the project is subject to AB2097, which prohibits a public agency from imposing any minimum parking requirement on any residential, commercial, or other development"
Seen a few of these so I ran the numbers for City of Sac. As it stands, everything in yellow is restricted to housing for wealthy people. There is no world in which this is serving the public interest.
If you care about improving access to more affordable homeownership, you will need to legalize this everywhere you currently allow a single family home.
They are building midtown sacramento density in suburban seattle. This is on my walk to get coffee in a mostly residential neighborhood. No wonder seattle is cheaper than Sacramento despite massive demand and a booming economy.
It's very early still, but I'm loving the City of Sacramento's framing of their proposal to eliminate single family zoning. It's going to take strong advocacy over the next 10 months, but this is really promising language:
The part I find really frustrating about the "density isn't green if it's only rich people" argument is it doesn't care about the counterfactual. VMT is obviously correlated with income but households aren't just created by urban form they make choices about where to live...
I know Iโm supposed to be just enjoying the beach but what are we doing here folks? This is a 7 acre surface public parking lot. Put a damn garage up and build some housing.
I'm sorry but this is just wrong. The research is pretty clear: restrictive zoning in low-carbon areas is bad for the climate. You can prevent infill, but you can't prevent demand--those houses get built somewhere. Prevent them in infill areas and they happen in greenfields.
One of the underrated perks of AB 2097 is that cities that were ambivalently contemplating parking reform are now just saying "wow AB 2097 did most of the controversial work for us, let's just finish the job and eliminate minimums citywide"
Proposal for replacing a subway with a 31 unit, 5-story mixed use project at over 100 units/acre. Doesn't say how much parking but likely little to none given the density. You love to see it folks.
CA has seen a steady decline in housing permits since 2017 if you exclude ADUs. Steady increase if you include them. ADUs are a meaningful part of the State's housing production and the housing crisis would be worse without them.
Shouts to City of Sacramento for still being the only jurisdiction in the state to be awarded Prohousing status by
@California_HCD
. 16 more are in some stage of review including Placer County, Roseville, Sacramento County, Citrus Heights, and West Sac from the SACOG region.
17 of the 28 local governments in the Sacramento region require at least 2 parking spaces to be built on site for every 2bd apartment unit. These rules drive up the cost of housing, reduce how many units get built, and disproportionally penalize lower income/non-white households.
Paris is a third the pop of ca but building more housing. They use zoning reform, massive public subsidy for affordable housing, local override, and strong planning rules that concentrate dense housing around transit and jobs. Seems like a good plan.
There have now been metro-level studies on Sacramento, the Bay, LA, San Diego, Minneapolis, and Connecticut. Every single region zones 70-85% of residential land as single family. This reinforces racial segregation, makes housing more expensive, and accelerates climate change.
This regional report only encompasses San Diego County, but it includes 18 incorporated municipalities and unincorporated areas. With over 3 million residents, it is Californiaโs second most populous county, and the fifth largest in the United States.
Here are the areas in the Sacramento region where AB 2097 eliminated parking minimums, based on our current MTP/SCS. Minimums are already gone in most of the areas in the City of Sacramento already, but this is a big deal for multifamily housing outside the City.
This is a BIG deal for reducing the cost of building housing. It's also huge for opening up high opportunity neighborhoods. Discretionary processes are often weaponized by older, whiter, wealthier neighborhoods whose residents have the time/money to show up to meetings.
To those fear-mongering about everything being 0 parking when parking minimums are gone, may I present this 100% affordable project 200ft from a light rail station that is still electing to include 0.5 parking spaces/unit despite the requirement being 0.
I'm a few weeks into crudely tracking Sacramento area ADU rentals and so far the average rent is ~$1,250 for 642 square feet. Affordable for a two-person household making 80% of area median income. Not a magic bullet, but not bad!
132 units on 0.6 acre lot proposed on corner of 12 and E (224 units/acre). 0 parking spaces, across the street from light rail, 24% of units are affordable (not required). Using density bonus to do what general plan update will allow: use FAR instead of unit density max. Love it.
The NIMBY oppo to Sacramento's bid to end exclusionary zoning has a website, which includes this galaxy brain take that allowing 4plexes would "Narrow living choices inside the city limits by removing the possibility for people to live in moderate-density predominantly SF neighs"
And whereas San Diego's ludicrous assumptions allowed it to claim that it has no need to rezone in order to accommodate its share of regional housing need, LA promises a massive rezoning program. 12/n
Cities, if you donโt like what ceqa is doing to housing, take it off the table by going fully ministerial/by right. CEQA only applies to discretionary approval processes. You have the power to do this today.
The biggest (imo) strategy is to do away with density-based restrictions and regulate everything with floor area ratio (FAR). In so doing, they will allow for at least an FAR of 1.0 (think fourplex) everywhere in the city. This is an absolute gamechanger. (3/9)
Ministerial approval means that if a project meets all of the objective standards laid out in zoning, there is no discretion on the part of a decision-making body to say no. Since the decision is not discretionary, the project is exempt from CEQA. Details:
ADU permits up 123% in the City of Sacramento in 2021. Up to 170. Small potatoes compared to LA and other markets, but I see no reason why this wouldn't keep rising.
Parking minimums, which drive up the cost of housing and prioritize homes for cars over homes for people, were already reduced a few years ago. Tonight the council acted to move forward with eliminating them altogether and pursuing parking MAXIMUMS in some areas. (4/9)
Who are these tweets to? Like 70% of ca residents think effects of climate change are already happening. Your constituents want to know what you are going to do about it.
But the number of new dwellings being built in NZ has increased *three-fold* in just the last decade.
So, only 10-years ago NZ was building houses at around the same miserly rate as the UK is now.
How did NZ make such rapid progress? Two things stand out ...
I understand concerns that missing middle reforms will direct growth to cheaper neighborhoods at risk of displacement, but time & time again, every indication is that under permissive and simple zoning, you will see the most change in high opp, high cost nbhds (this is good!)
Got a text from by buddy this morning. East Sac nimbys out here doing a racism bc we are considering allowing buildings the same size as the mansions that already exist there. Good reminder that for these people, itโs always been about the people and not the buildings.
When Sacramento started it's general plan update, one of the key strategies adopted by council was to eliminate parking reqs. We are still moving forward with that through the "rethinking parking" work but thanks to AB 2097, most of the work is already done.
These neighborhoods use zoning and discretionary review to push out POC and lower income households. We just fixed the discretionary process, now let's turn our attention to the zoning through the ongoing general plan and housing element updates!
To be clear, this action only allows staff to proceed with a series of key strategies and a draft land use/transportation map. The final votes on the whole General Plan Update will be later this year, but this was a big hurdle that will start the environmental review. (2/9)
Really awesome response from the public on this one too. 86% of the e-comments were in support, as were 80% of the formal letters (including support letters from HCD, SACOG, and House Sacramento). 71% of verbal comments were in support as well, including legend
@ansellundberg
Wow I didn't realize they applied the ADU parking provisions to SB 9. So if you are within a half mile of a high quality transit corridor you can build a 0 parking duplex (or double duplex if you subdivide).
Pretty cool 16 unit project on a 0.17-acre church parking lot in my neighborhood. 94 units/acre, small unit sizes (4 are ADUs under 720 sqft), 0 parking spaces.
Sac's proposed general plan is fantastic but it can be better. Here are all the parcels within 1/2 mile of candidate high frequency transit. All the red has a max FAR of 1.0, the lowest in the city and the lowest allowed by state law thanks to SB 478. These areas should higher!
This would be a potent combination with the ministerial approval process that the City already put in place last year. So all that missing middle would be by right with no CEQA if it is zoning compliant.
Tonight, the City of Sac took a REALLY big step to streamline housing approvals. All multifamily infill housing projects up to 200 units that comply with zoning will now be ministerially approved at the staff level. No CEQA, no delays, just NIMBY-proof approvals in 60-90 days.
Councilmember Maple has been THE driving force on council for the historic zoning reforms Sacramento just authorized last night. Thank you for your leadership!
โThis is our time to be bold,โ Maple said. โWe already are a city that leads in a lot of ways throughout the state, and weโre doing that once again.โ
The City is also pursuing road diets across the city to prioritize transit/bike/ped over automobiles and support low carbon transportation options/safety. (5/9)
State leg idea: standardize local land use designations so words like low/med/high mean the same thing. Like I'm in a master plan outside of Yuba City and medium-high density has a max of 36 units/acre. Hop over to Rocklin and medium-high maxes out at 15 units/ac. It's maddening.
It's my first meeting on the planning commission tonight and Sacramento is looking at some powerful stuff this year: Update to general plan to open up single family areas, a citywide rezone, missing middle design standards, reforming parking reqs, and more!
@Scott_Wiener
โs closing comments reminded me why heโs a generational politician. Incredible passion and clarity reminding the natural resources committee about the existential threat they ostensibly are there to do something about: climate change fueled by a housing shortage.
The Assembly Natural Resources Committeeโs decision to move SB 423 (Wiener) forward despite the Coastal Commissionโs desire for an exemption from the bill was a historic decision by the Assembly to END the Era of No. Monumental
Itโs wild how far the Overton window has moved on the intersection of race and exclusionary zoning in the last ~4 years. This is head of ca housing! Basically saying 70% of residentially zoned land in the state is perpetuating racial inequality!
โSingle family zoning today has replaced race-based zoning from the recent past,โ
@California_HCD
Director
@GVelasquez72
. Glad to see HCD understands the racist implications of single family zoning. Said during their affirmatively furthering fair housing training today ๐๐๐
This is a huge loss for Sacramento. I helped write the first permits that brought free floating car share to the Bay Area before Sac and itโs unequivocally a positive for folks who donโt want to or canโt afford to own a car. Iโve come to rely on it and am sad to see it go.
There was a lot of community support for this item (62% of ecomments, 83% of callers). It's far from a done deal, but this is a very promising start to what would be, for my money, a top 5 most progressive general plan in the nation. (9/9)
The City of Sacramento just released the latest iteration of analysis related to its bid to open up single family neighborhoods to missing middle housing. This one is called the Attainability and Livability analysis and it's 190 (pretty) pages.
If we are serious about climate change, affordability, and equity we are going to need a lot more projects like this that redevelop single family homes into apartments.
210 units/600 beds proposed on Newman Catholic Center site. 110 units/acre in high opportunity East Sac neighborhood next to Sac State. Yes in God's Backyard.
Completely reasonable take to me. How buildings feel is very subjective. We shouldnโt be in the business of mandating perceived preferences when people have different preferences. Especially when the preferences of some are prioritized over the NEEDS of others.
This proposed project in the Sac central city should be allowed in all infill residential areas. It's a fourplex + two 300sqft ADUs. Fourplex has two 520 sqft 1bds and two 832 sqft 2bds. 86 units/acre, 0.65 FAR, 60% lot coverage, 0 parking spaces. Love to see it!