Full article by Graham Womack at Sacramento News & Review
Mai Vang is trying something new.
The first-term Sacramento City Councilwoman, who represents District 8, is working with city staff to develop the Clover Apartments, a 358-unit mixed-income project on Wainscott Way near public transit. The apartments could be built by AMCAL, an affordable housing developer. And with them could come a financing model popular in other parts of the world that’s known as social housing.
Social housing refers to housing that has public backing, if not full ownership, as well as a greater degree of control for tenants and price protections. At its best, it’s a highly-elevated form of public housing beyond what people might think of traditionally: blighted housing projects and, increasingly in recent decades, vouchers that landlords are often loath to accept.
To this point, social housing is rare in the United States. Even in a city like Sacramento where rents, home prices and rates of homelessness have all soared in recent years, social housing remains something of an unknown even to people otherwise highly knowledgeable of housing policy. But it holds promise for people like Vang.