Some New Sacramento Housing Projects Fall Behind Due to Lack of Affordable Homes – CBS Sacramento

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — You’ve probably seen construction of new housing projects popping up all over Sacramento.

It comes at a time when the city is facing a critical shortage of affordable housing. Many people find it difficult to buy an affordable home.

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“Right now the market is so high and people are struggling,” said a Sacramento resident.

To meet demand, new housing projects are being planned in some unexpected places. The vacant lot south of the now-closed Sleep Train Arena was supposed to become a commercial park with 300,000 square feet of office space, but now developers say they plan to build more than 280 brownstone condos there.

“Housing is a necessity of life,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

The mayor says he supports building new homes in unorthodox neighborhoods.

“There are opportunities now to convert office buildings, underutilized office buildings, underutilized commercial buildings into apartments,” the mayor said.

In his budget proposal, Governor Newsom earmarks 500 million dollars to convert office buildings and shopping centers into apartments.

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“You have all these extraordinary malls, all these open spaces and just the parking lots themselves that are open now,” Newsom said.

Sacramento is also converting vacant land into new homes by building 150 new homes for low-income seniors at the downtown train station. Nearly 200 affordable apartments and townhouses have also just been approved along Stockton Boulevard.

But despite the apparent construction boom, Sacramento still lags behind in the number of new homes being built.

“We still have a lot to do,” Steinberg said.

State guidelines call for an average of more than 5,600 homes to be built in Sacramento each year, but just over 2,200 were built last year.

So why aren’t more new homes being built in Sacramento?

“There are so many obstacles, including ‘not in my backyard’, including high costs, including a lack of innovation, including sometimes too much regulation,” Steinberg said.

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Governor Newsom has announced a goal of building 2.5 million new homes by 2030.