Zoning Vote – Major Changes for East Sacramento

The City Council is expected to vote this Tuesday, January 19, 2021, on the Land Use designations of the 2040 General Plan, leading to neighborhood rezoning that could directly impact your home. This proposed key strategy is in response to California’s housing and affordability crisis. The attached Housing Policy Toolkit document explains many of the details. The proposed plan would allow for: 

• The building of duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes (the missing middle housing) on any residential property. These are cheaper to build and become rentals as they age. 
• The R-1, single-family zone designation protection would be eliminated for all residences.
• The building of up to two secondary homes (called Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) on any lot within 5 feet of the property line. The homeowner does not need to live in any of the units.  
• There would be relaxed requirements for height limits, maximum square footage, lot coverage, setback minimums and parking restrictions.
• Developers would be able to convert any or all single-family houses to multi-family units regardless of the impact on the neighborhood. 

Concerns and issues regarding the 2040 General Plan land use and rezoning proposal: 

• The addition of more sewage flowing into the current failing combined sewer system would cause overflows during dry and wet weather. 
• Additional traffic and parking problems.The streets are so narrow that two cars can no longer pass each other if there are cars parked on both sides of the street.  
• The SMUD electrical system will become overloaded – we experience outages now on a regular basis. 
• The decline of property values and the departure of single-family homeowners to outlying areas.    

 The elimination of the current land use designation code of R-1 in East Sacramento would cause an undue burden on our aging infrastructure and the sense of community in our neighborhood.  Many neighborhood associations (East Sac, Land Park, Elmhurst, Mangan, etc.) have concerns regarding this potential rezoning proposal for ALL neighborhoods in Sacramento. Instead, they recommend new housing on commercial corridors, underused commercial and industrial properties. The city had a chance to build affordable housing in McKinley Village and the new Sutter Park neighborhood – instead, the median home price is $875,000 and most of them cost over $1 million.   

We urge you to express your opinion on this particularly important issue before the city council votes on it this coming Tuesday, January 19th.  You can write to all the city council members (eComment) at the link/website below.  Thank you for reading this and making our voices heard.  

http://sacramento.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=21,

Select eComment next to the Jan19th, 5 pm council meeting, 

Scroll down to the bottom of page and select page 2, 

Scroll to item #15 discussion of 2040 General Plan

Select Comment on the right side of the page

You can write up to 1000 characters 

OR you can create a login ID and password and upload a document  

Jeff Harris’ email is:  jsharris@cityofsacramento.org