How Elk Grove has become a sorry example of why California has a housing crisis | Opinion

It’s nice that Elk Grove’s effort to block an affordable housing project in its Old Town neighborhood is at an end, even if the solution is for the city to spend lots of public funds to build it somewhere else.

And it’s nice that California Attorney General Rob Bonta may not need to sue the suburban city south of Sacramento anymore for blocking a needed project.

But did anybody win here?

Opinion

In public, Elk Grove officials are still acting as if they did nothing wrong by initially rejecting the Oak Rose Apartments, a move that resulted in Bonta suing them and Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly criticizing them.

On Friday, city officials broke ground on a new affordable housing project that will provide 236 units on eight acres of land on 8310 Poppy Ridge Road. That’s the right move for the city and region.

But Elk Grove hasn’t built nearly enough affordable housing overall, and that’s essentially why they were sued by Bonta.

The city has demonstrated how hard it is to build housing in town for people who can’t afford a mortgage, compared to what it takes to build homes for those who can afford the state’s outrageous costs.

California is in a housing deficit because of NIMBY behavior, perfectly exhibited here in Elk Grove. “Local control,” which Elk Grove demanded it retain is what has gotten California into a housing shortage, a crisis of affordability and it has fed the explosion of homelessness in California.

Bonta had to sue Elk Grove, he should sue more California cities as well because affordable housing is killed at the local level — just as Elk Grove tried to kill it.

The city rejected the Oak Rose affordable housing project in July of 2022. The ill-fated decision quickly created a slew of legal problems. The project was proposed for a perfectly workable location in the heart of Old Town Elk Grove. However aggressive resistance from inside and outside Elk Grove City Hall stalled the project for more than a year.

Now, according to a city press release, Elk Grove will “provide the project a $5 million grant using funds designated to support affordable housing.” The city will have to purchase the Old Town property at its appraised value, transfer ownership of the new property at no cost to the Oak Rose developer, reimburse the developer $850,000, pay damages of $860,000 and also the developer’s legal fees for another $600,000. Under the agreement, the city has until June 30 to approve the new site for the Oak Rose apartments. If, for whatever reason, that doesn’t happen, Elk Grove will have to pay the developer another $2.2 million.

“What a day for the city of Elk Grove,” said Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen at a press conference announcing the agreement.

What a day? A day for what? Shelling out millions in taxpayer dollars to move an affordable housing complex to the edge of town so that you don’t get sued for even more millions?

Look it up: The new site they had to hand over for free to the Oak Rose developer is mere blocks from the city limits, 8484 Elk Grove-Florin Rd., while the old site, 9252 Elk Grove Blvd., was a barely stone’s throw away from multi-million dollar housing developments. And remember: The new site the city is touting as a win isn’t even formally approved yet by the Elk Grove City Council. This isn’t over yet.

The result is that Elk Grove officials were successful in pushing this complex to the very edge of city limits while claiming it was a boon to the project and its eventual residents: Closer to grocery stores, transportation lines and “all those important items necessary for residents to thrive,” Singh-Allen said, conveniently omitting that the location in Old Town had valuable amenities as well.

City officials decided they’d rather continue pandering to locals who wrongly fear the poor (or rather, the stereotypes associated with them) living too near them.

The Bee’s Editorial Board visited Elk Grove last year and walked the contentious site in Old Town with the mayor and city officials. The city shared how it refused to buy the very land when it was on the market because of the asking price but they nonetheless had plans to turn the the land and a nearby abandoned pharmacy into a city library. The few affordable housing complexes they did show us were on the outer edges of town, much as the Oak Rose project will be if formally approved by the council.

So while city officials are patting themselves on the back today, they’re staying busy missing the point our board made to them that day and I’ll make here again: Poor people deserve to live in the heart of Elk Grove, too.

It’s as simple as that.

Elk Grove officials could have spared themselves a few million by simply refusing to economically redline their city.

Maybe it wasn’t the proximity to bus routes and a supermarket that the city was worried about, but rather the original location’s proximity to certain assets the city prizes more highly than ending the region’s homelessness crisis.

Don’t let Elk Grove fool you with a chirpy press conference: They lost, and the people of Elk Grove lost, too. Their city could have been a shining example of how to build affordable housing.

The whole ordeal, and the council caving to public pressure against a perfectly suitable site, suggests that Elk Grove is not on the right path, and that state intervention can — at times — serve a very necessary purpose.