Progress has been made but more funding is needed

For more than half a century, California has experienced a prolonged affordable housing crisis as the state’s population outpaced housing construction.

Earlier this year, the California Housing Partnership released a housing needs report stating that the state had funded over 23,000 new affordable homes last year. But despite the increase in new homes, it funded only 20% of what California needed in order to meet its goal of 119,287 funded homes.

A county-specific report was released earlier this month by the same organization, stating that Sacramento County experienced a 12% increase in state and federal funding for housing production and preservation in the 2024-25 fiscal year. According to data from 2024, Sacramento still had a housing gap of over 50,000 households.

Solving Sacramento spoke with Greta Soos, the senior planner for the City of Sacramento’s Community Development Department, on the city’s progress in addressing the housing crisis and what it’s doing differently.

How does your department relate to Sacramento’s affordable housing crisis?

Our department is responsible for reviewing development applications, entitling projects, issuing building permits and inspections. We’re part of the process of getting housing development projects approved and built.

My team is really focused on implementing housing policies and programs the city has committed to through the housing element, local initiatives and state laws aimed at increasing housing production, diversity and affordability.

I have a partner in the Office of Innovation and Economic Development who focuses more on the financing side with developers and our state housing manager. We work together on different policy decisions.

My role is more on the planning side: What ordinances can we pass? What policies can we pass, from a land use and regulation perspective, to incentivize more housing production and more affordable housing?

What do you see as the biggest factors driving the lack of affordable housing in Sacramento?

The biggest factor is definitely a lack of funding available to support affordable housing development. Affordable housing projects require large subsidies to support the rents that are below market rate. There’s a financial gap, and not enough money statewide to support the amount of projects that we have that are ready to go.

There are many affordable housing projects that already have approvals and are prepared to begin construction, but there isn’t enough money available to fund them.

Number two is cost. Construction costs, labor costs and borrowing costs are very expensive these days. Affordable housing developers can access government subsidies, but those resources are limited. The Terner Center has a great study that outlines development costs in more detail from 2023.

If we had more funding available, we’d be in a better place in terms of meeting our goals.

What has Sacramento done to encourage affordable housing?

One of our biggest tools is what we refer to as the “Zero-Dollar Rate program.” The city covers certain impact fees for affordable housing developments. We can cover up to $10,000 per affordable unit in city-controlled fees.

That acts as a direct subsidy and can significantly reduce project costs. The City Council funds the program annually, although we cap the amount each year because the city doesn’t have unlimited resources.

We also collect impact fees from commercial and market-rate residential development that support affordable housing. We collect about $1 million per year, on average, for each of those fees. Those funds go to the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, which distributes them to affordable housing developers through a competitive process.

The important thing about local funding is that it also helps projects compete for state grants and other financing sources.

Besides funding, what is Sacramento doing differently?

One thing Sacramento does very well is streamlining approvals.

We have a ministerial approval process for housing developments that allows many projects to move forward administratively if they meet objective standards.

Developers rarely have to go through lengthy hearings before commissions or the City Council. That’s important because time is money in housing development. Delays increase costs.

A lot of recent state housing laws are focused on forcing cities to streamline approvals. Sacramento already had many of those processes in place, so in some ways we were ahead of the curve.

Are there limits to relying on impact fees to support affordable housing?

Yeah. Those fees generate revenue when we see new development activity. If commercial construction slows down, revenue drops. The same is true for residential development.

There’s also a balance that cities have to consider. We want to generate funding for affordable housing, but we also don’t want to increase fees so much that it makes new housing construction more difficult to develop.

The bigger issue is scale. There are so many more affordable housing projects seeking funding, but there’s just not enough money to support them.

What additional solutions would help?

We need more state and federal investment in affordable housing. Local jurisdictions cannot generate enough funding on their own to solve a statewide housing affordability crisis.

There’s discussion right now about another statewide housing bond, which could help. There are also many conversations happening around new long-term funding sources for affordable housing.

Earlier this year you spoke publicly about “missing middle” housing. What progress has Sacramento made?

(Note: “Missing middle” housing refers to a range of multi-unit buildings of varying densities, in between single-family homes and large apartment complexes. They are “missing” because restrictive zoning laws have made them difficult to build.) 

As of February 2026, the city had received 32 applications under its missing middle housing ordinance. Nineteen had already been approved and nine were still in progress.

A majority of the projects have been duplexes. Once projects move to three or more attached units, they trigger stricter building code requirements that significantly increases construction costs.

That’s one reason why we haven’t seen more fourplexes and similar projects yet. I think there are still changes needed at the state level to make missing middle housing more financially feasible.

At the same time, this is still relatively new. We’re learning from the projects that are being proposed, and we’ve been working to support small developers by helping them better understand the city’s permitting and planning processes.

Several housing bills have passed in Sacramento recently. Which ones stand out to you?

Assembly Bill 130 and Senate Bill 79 were two major bills from last year.

AB 130 included major California Environmental Quality Act streamlining provisions designed to make housing approvals faster and easier. SB 79 established new statewide zoning standards for housing near transit.

Those are significant changes statewide, although Sacramento already has relatively permissive zoning and streamlined approval systems compared to many other cities.

Personally, I’m very interested in legislation dealing with building code reform, condo liability issues and additional affordable housing funding.

One provision in AB 130 that I found especially interesting was the creation of a statewide vehicle miles traveled mitigation bank. It’s a technical planning policy, but it could potentially create another funding source for affordable housing.

Note: In this story, we used AI to help us edit and shorten our interview with City of Sacramento senior planner Greta Soos. Using AI made the reporting process more efficient, giving us more time to fact-check this story for accuracy and fairness. Before publication, a journalist fact-checked and reviewed this content to ensure it met our standards for accuracy and responsible use of technology. Learn more about our approach to using AI here.

This story is part of a six-part series called “Solving California,” a project of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative that explores models to improve California. Our partners include CapRadio, Capitol Weekly, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Support stories like these here, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.