Supporting an end to exclusionary zoning in Sacramento

Sacramento 2040 General Plan

Let’s build a more affordable, sustainable, and inclusive city by welcoming more neighbors to Sacramento! 

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Sacramento, like many cities across the country, is exploring allowing a variety of housing types across the city through its General Plan Update. Currently, you can’t build more than a single-family house on most of Sacramento’s residential land. The General Plan would change that to welcome more housing choices like triplexes, fourplexes, and garden apartments. These changes would make Sacramento…

More Affordable

• The Sacramento region, like the rest of California, is experiencing an acute housing shortage that is driving up housing prices across the State. While multiple solutions are necessary, there is no solution to this shortage that doesn’t also include building lots of new housing. If we don’t, we will continue to have more people fighting over fewer homes and prices will continue to climb.

More Sustainable

• Sacramento must learn from the Bay Area and say yes to new homes in the core. If the City of Sacramento can’t accommodate the new demand, those people don’t just disappear; they are pushed to the urban fringe, where they suffer hellish commutes and contribute more to congestion and climate change.

More Inclusive

• Zoning that restricts certain neighborhoods to single-family houses has historically been used as a tool to segregate by race and class. High-demand neighborhoods are largely white and wealthy in part because the price of admission is a $100,000+ down payment. Allowing for more affordable housing types than a single-family home will allow for more rental housing and will help to give a more diverse group of people the opportunity to live in all of Sacramento’s great neighborhoods.

Let’s welcome these changes for a better Sacramento!

Here is more information aimed at addressing some of the primary concerns folks have voiced. Click the links below to jump to the info and find out why allowing more housing types across Sacramento will not only address our dire housing shortage, but also won’t affect (or will improve) other important issues.

“Will these changes really result in more affordable housing?”

“I like my single-family home.”

“I’m worried about parking.”

“What does zoning have to do with race and residential segregation?”

“I’m worried about tall buildings next to my home or privacy in my backyard.”

“I’m worried that this will cause gentrification.”

“I’m worried about more renters in my neighborhood.”

“I’m worried about the impact on property values.”

“I’m worried about the character of my neighborhood. It’s charming and I don’t want it to change.”

Single family homes on large lots are the most expensive type of housing because they use the most land and typically have the largest unit sizes. That’s why in the Sacramento region, the average income for households who live in single family homes are twice as high as more affordable housing types like duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes. While it’s true that subsidized affordable housing developments are typically built on larger lots than what exist in single family neighborhoods, small-scale multifamily housing is simply less expensive than new single family homes due to lower land costs per unit and smaller unit sizes. In addition to being comparatively less expensive, allowing for a greater variety of housing types will help to put a dent in the regional housing shortage, which is driving the overall affordability crisis. This is why progressive cities, states, and even the Biden Administration are taking actions to remove apartment bans across the country. Here is a conversation between Elizabeth Warren and HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge about how local zoning reform can make America more affordable.

image source: SACOG

The vast majority of the Sacramento region’s housing stock was built at a time when the nuclear family made up over half of households. This is no longer the case. Nuclear families are only 20% of households and half are either single people living alone or adults with roommates. This mismatch between our housing supply, which is reinforced and mandated by zoning, and our demand is at the core of the affordability crisis across the region. Allowing for more flexibility and housing choice is the first step to fixing it.

That’s fantastic! You don’t have to change a thing, nor will any other single-family homeowners. And if you or your neighbors want to build a new single-family home in the future, you could do so anywhere that you can build one today. That’s because the General Plan Update doesn’t prohibit new single-family homes and would not force anyone to duplex their home.  The new zoning rules would just allow small-scale multi-family homes to be built in areas where currently only single-family homeless are allowed. 

Parking requirements, which require developers to build a certain number of car parking spaces as a part of a project, raise rents and reduce the feasibility of building new housing. Eliminating parking requirements, as proposed in the General Plan Update, doesn’t mean eliminating parking. Rather, individual builders and homeowners would have the flexibility to decide how much on-site parking they need and want to dedicate property for, which may be less than what the local government currently requires, particularly in areas where there is more access to public transit. 

Minimum parking requirements apply a static ratio that does not consider the fact that travel choices vary drastically depending on peoples’ transportation preferences and the project’s location. This is particularly true for new housing near Sacramento’s core where residents are more likely to get around without a car or for residents who cannot afford a vehicle. Parking requirements sometimes result in households without cars subsidizing the rent of households with cars. In fact, over 70% of households without a car are forced to pay for a parking space they don’t need. These households are overwhelmingly lower income and non-white. In California, Black households are almost three times as likely as white households to not own a car. 

Zoning is not inherently good or bad: it can both further or undermine policy goals depending on its use. Unfortunately, for much of its history, it has been used (both intentionally and unintentionally) as a tool of exclusion and segregation. The original forms of zoning explicitly excluded communities of color from white communities. In addition, racial covenants, which prohibited non-whites from purchasing or renting a home, appeared in the Sacramento region as early as the 1920s in what is now the Land Park neighborhood, but soon spread throughout other parts of the city. For example, the Elmhurst neighborhood in Sacramento had a covenant that read “No persons of any race other than the white or Caucasian race shall use or occupy any structure or any lot except that this provision shall not prevent occupancy by domestic services of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.” Racial covenants also applied to individual homes, such as a covenant written in 1944 for a home in South Land Park stating that residents of the property “...shall be restricted to persons of the Caucasian Race [sic] forever.”

These covenants were then further reinforced by mortgage redlining. As a means of stimulating easier access to home loans during the Great Depression, the federal government created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to institute a system for providing federally backed home loans to Americans. In each city, HOLC staff assigned color grades to residential neighborhoods that reflected their perceived loan risk, and thus, where loans should be given (see the Sacramento HOLC map to the right). To get a low risk grade of green (A) or blue (B), a neighborhood had to be “racially homogenous” (white), low density, zoned single family, and employ racial covenants. Higher risk grades of yellow (C) and red (D) were given to neighborhoods with multifamily housing, more polluting uses, and existing minority populations. In the Sacramento HOLC maps, red areas like the Washington neighborhood in West Sacramento were described as “racial hazards” where “infiltration of subversive races has occurred.” In this way, minority groups were not granted government-backed home loans with favorable terms in their own neighborhoods, but were also prohibited from moving to green and blue neighborhoods through covenants. As a result, people of color did not experience the same housing security nor intergenerational wealth created by appreciating property values in desirable neighborhoods that white families did. The few minorities who were able to secure loans for homes in redlined neighborhoods gained 52% less home equity over the last 40 years than outside those areas. This is partly why in 2016, the net worth of a median white household ($171,000) was 10 times that of a median Black household ($17,150) in America.

While racial zoning was outlawed in the early 20th century and government-sponsored redlining and other forms of housing discrimination were outlawed in 1968, the residential segregation created by these institutions is so structurally engrained in the community that it is still present today. To illustrate this point, the 2010 racial dot density map below shows that many of the A (Green) and B (Blue) neighborhoods highlighted in the HOLC redlining maps remain largely white today, even though the City of Sacramento is one of the most diverse cities in the country.

Part of why these neighborhoods have not changed in their racial composition is due to single-family zoning, which bans the construction of apartments and other more affordable rental housing. When explicitly mandating racial segregation became illegal, single-family zoning was used to segregate by income as a proxy for race. Looking at how Sacramento’s HOLC map colors are zoned today (below), the vast majority of the desirable A and B HOLC map neighborhoods remain zoned exclusively for single-family homes, which prevents lower-income families from moving to these neighborhoods.

How the Sacramento’s Original HOLC Categories are Zoned Today:

There is a robust body of research showing that where you live determines your chances of future success (see Robert Sampson’s 2012 book Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, Chetty et al.’s 2016 paper “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods”). The neighborhoods of Sacramento that give children the best chance of success are almost exclusively zoned for single family homes and are the same exact neighborhoods categorized A or B in the HOLC maps. The exclusionary origins of zoning that segregated cities by race were calcified by zoning that segregates by income. Public policy created a barrier to intergenerational wealth creation for non-white families and single-family zoning in high opportunity neighborhoods reinforces it. This means that the desirable neighborhoods that were predominantly white and wealthy 80 years ago are still white and wealthy today. 

Concern about high-rise developments is common in discussions about allowing homes beyond single-family housing. But allowed housing and height limits are two different local policy tools, and the General Plan Update is not changing the current 35 foot height limit in residential neighborhoods. Small-scale multi-family homes can easily fit within the height and envelope of an average single-family house. In fact, the General Plan Update is reducing the size of the building that you can build in single family areas. The only difference is that properties will be allowed to have more than a single home in the building.

A new single-family home in Sacramento

They look pretty similar, right? So why are we only allowing the one on the left to be built in the majority of Sacramento while the one on the right is illegal to build almost anywhere? We can’t afford to arbitrarily restrict new housing in this way amidst a historic housing shortage. We can allow more fourplexes and small apartments, like the one on the right, that look and feel like they fit just right in our neighborhoods and communities.

Merriam-Webster defines gentrification as “a process in which a poor area (as of a city) experiences an influx of middle-class or wealthy people who renovate and rebuild homes and businesses and which often results in an increase in property values and the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents”. UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project defines gentrification similarly.

Gentrification can lead to displacement, where long-term residents are forced (e.g. evicted) or priced out of their homes and cannot afford to stay in their neighborhoods. The 2019 American Housing Survey shows that in California forced displacement is especially prevalent among renters, whose housing costs are not fixed by long-term mortgages and are subject to evictions by landlords. Forced displacement is most prevalent among low-income renters and non-white renters; poor women of color face the highest risk. Watch the Urban Displacement Project’s “Displacement Explainer” video for more information.

Zoning can certainly affect housing affordability and where economic change, gentrification, and displacement occur. When cities prohibit or limit homes in opportunity-rich neighborhoods, housing demand does not disappear but rather moves to other neighborhoods. The scarce parcels that are available for new housing are often in areas with high shares of renters and communities of color, i.e. in areas particularly vulnerable to gentrification and displacement. Because of the scarcity of those housing-friendly parcels, there is more pressure to build those parcels intensively (and thus, often more expensively).  

We can allow for more homes and minimize the potential for gentrification and displacement by relaxing zoning in areas where renters are least likely to live: amenity-rich single-family zones. The 2019 American Community Survey shows that over 70 percent of people in detached single-family homes in Sacramento own their home. And most renters in Sacramento – nearly 70 percent – do not live in detached single-family homes. 

This doesn’t mean that relaxing single-family zoning will prevent all gentrification and displacement. These phenomena are complex and need to be addressed by strong renter protections and anti-displacement policies. But relaxing single-family zoning is indeed an important part of undoing the exclusionary zoning laws that create “barriers to entry” in high-opportunity neighborhoods (as the Biden Administration describes). These exclusionary zoning laws result in fewer homes and create more expensive housing, driving displacement of low-income residents.

Renters are just as much a part of a community as homeowners. In fact, many of Sacramento’s oldest residential neighborhoods -- like Elmhurst -- are occupied by a high percentage of renters. It is obvious from a walk around Elmhurst that those neighbors are taking good care of their rented properties. WIth housing prices as high as they are, most Sacramentans (including six figure income earners!) cannot afford the downpayment on a home, particularly in high demand single-family neighborhoods. A city only works if it can house all economic segments of the community and in a growing region, that means welcoming a diversity of housing types.

There is no research that indicates allowing for a diversity of housing types will reduce property values. In fact, some of the highest value neighborhoods in the City have a wide range of housing types. Midtown Sacramento has some of the highest property values in the city and has the most duplex, triplex, and fourplexes in the entire region. Even high demand inner ring neighborhoods like East Sacramento, Curtis Park, and Land Park have a variety of existing plexes from before they were banned by zoning. These buildings enhance the neighborhood by creating housing options for people in different life stages who also serve as a customer base for local restaurants and cafes.

People often move to neighborhoods because they like them, so it makes sense to wonder how they’ll change.  In fact, many of Sacramento’s neighborhoods have had numerous changes to their zoning designations since they were built.  If you live in one of the city’s older neighborhoods like Elmhurst, Curtis Park, Land Park, or East Sacramento, the chances are quite likely that the current “R-1” zoning is relatively new and that small-scale multi-family homes are indeed part of your neighborhood’s fabric and character. 

The Elmhurst neighborhood is a great example of the past zoning designations contributing to the character of the neighborhood.  From 1923 to 1929, multi-family homes were allowed throughout Elmhurst. The neighborhood’s zoning designations changed in the early 1930s and by 1936, the entire neighborhood was zoned for duplexes with the exception of properties facing T Street. The neighborhood wasn’t zoned exclusively for single-family homes until 1956, when about 70 percent of homes in the neighborhood had already been built.

In fact, duplexes are still allowed in Sacramento’s single-family residential zones, but they are limited to corner lots.  If you walk around an older neighborhood and look closely, you will surely find duplexes throughout the neighborhood. They are an inextricable part of the neighborhood’s character and part of what makes it so charming.

The takeaway – a mix of single- and small-scale multi-family homes is the character of Sacramento’s older neighborhoods, not a change to it.