As affordable housing costs climb, Sacramento County balks at higher builder fees

Sacramento County supervisors showed little appetite Oct. 6 for raising the fee homebuilders pay to support affordable housing, even after staff found the charge has not kept pace with the cost of subsidizing affordable homes and a county-commissioned study concluded that homes now being built could absorb a modest increase.

Nor did any supervisor back reviving a requirement that builders include affordable homes in their projects. The one change supervisors firmly backed at the workshop, held to guide a rewrite of the county’s 12-year-old affordable housing ordinance, was narrowing an exemption for people who build their own homes. The county had already promised that change in its state-mandated housing plan. No vote was taken.

Since 2014, builders in unincorporated areas, outside city limits, have paid a fee on each square foot of new living space. The charge, now $3.91 per square foot, adds $8,602 to the cost of a 2,200-square-foot home. The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency uses the money to help close financing gaps on affordable housing projects. The fee-based system replaced a 2004 ordinance that required projects of 100 or more homes to set aside 15% of them as affordable.