AFFORDABLE HOUSING: Providing the Homeless with More Options In Sacramento

St. John's congregants applaud commitments made by City Councilmember Steve Cohen

On any given night in Sacramento, according to this year’s Homeless Count, 2,700 people are on the streets.

This troublesome data has called members of St. John’s Lutheran Church to action.  In July they convened over 160 community members at the church to ask City Councilmember Steve Cohn to lead the way in providing more affordable housing for Sacramento’s most vulnerable populations.

St. John’s Lutheran, an ACT member congregation, has a long history of working with the homeless.  In 1985 they started the St. John’s Shelter to provide emergency assistance to women and children sleeping on their steps.  Over the past year the pressure on families and individuals was becoming more alarming.  The line of individuals seeking groceries from the Downtown Food Basket wrapped around their block every Thursday morning.  St. John’s Shelter was increasingly turning away families on a daily basis because of a lack of space.
It became clear to St. John’s that in order to get at one of the root causes of homelessness, they needed to focus their efforts on increasing affordable housing.  One option they discovered in their research would be to expand Sacramento’s existing Mixed Income Housing Ordinance—one of the tools in Sacramento’s toolbox for creating affordable housing.

Here in Sacramento, under the current policy, the city requires new developments to include at least 15 percent of their housing units at prices affordable to low and very low income households.  However, this policy only applies to certain areas of the city—mostly on the outskirts.

At their local action in July, St. John’s won a partner on city council.  Councilmember Cohn committed to use his position to expand the policy city-wide and to set aside a certain amount of the affordable housing created through the ordinance for extremely low income households.  This move would positively affect numerous area families, the 300-600 youth who age out of the foster care system each year in Sacramento, people with special health care needs on a fixed income, and 20% of Sacramento’s seniors.

This fall, St. John’s will be working with Cohn to form a taskforce to work out the details of the expanded policy, coming one step closer to a city where everyone has a place to call home.