Read the full commentary by Kevin Dumler at Sacramento Business Journal
Our failure to make sufficient progress toward the region’s housing needs — including 45,000 new homes by the end of the decade — is pushing the Capital area to sprawl outward, from the Delta to the Sierra Foothills, increasing how much we drive and jeopardizing our region’s climate goals. Meanwhile, on any given night approximately 10,000 people go without housing in Sacramento County, an epidemic with staggering human cost.
This crisis is foundational to every other challenge the city faces. It’s also an expensive problem to solve. According to City Manager Howard Chan, the city spends over $30,000 per shelter bed per year. And a single unit of subsidized affordable housing costs an average of $480,000 to construct. By those numbers, providing shelter to all the county’s unhoused residents would cost a staggering $300 million annually, and filling the region’s 2030 housing needs with subsidized units alone would cost more than $20 billion. While we need to commit more funds toward affordable housing, these sums are insurmountable for our local governments.
In spite of our current climate and affordable housing crises, the city is missing an opportunity to add thousands of new homes in transit-rich corridors and in high-opportunity areas over the coming decades.