Most importantly, Sacramento is *officially* the housing king of California. Effing bananas considering how our rents are literally half as much of most of these other guys and still Sac is outbuilding the rest of the state.
The housing crisis is a choice! Your city could choose to stop doing it!
Researchers and NGO leaders — including a U.S. lawful permanent resident — have already been targeted for deportation or exclusion under a new immigration policy from the Trump admin. So, we filed suit with @knightcolumbia.org ⬇️
That's what you get for living north of the river 😜
Ya maybe that's just it. Decadence and entitlement of wealth...
Just a small example I notice: In SF, *so* many people walk their dogs fully off leash all around. In Sacramento I can think of maybe one time and it was a weird old dude with a chihuahua
I gotta say, I'm fascinated by the culture of anti-social-ism. Maybe it's just my bubble, but it feels very specific to a handful of coastal blue cities (NY, SF, LA) and I kinda think it's the nihilism and frayed social bonds from housing shortages.
That is an important question but not what you asked and not about housing! The average teacher at SCUSD makes $77,000–$78,000 per year. There are 1.14 million jobs in Sac metro area. The vast majority *can* afford housing here — we can and do need to do more, but it's a fixable problem.
I guess not really a surprise if you're a sicko who tracks specific projects — but it takes a lot of work to gather/report out these data, so not sure it'd be possible more regularly (and there's a ton of noise over e.g. month-to-month so not sure how useful it would be)
In Sacramento, you can rent an unsubsidized, market-rate apartment for less than $1,200. That is affordable for a fast food worker making minimum wage working full time (~$42,000/yr)
www.zillow.com/sacramento-c...
Most importantly, Sacramento is *officially* the housing king of California. Effing bananas considering how our rents are literally half as much of most of these other guys and still Sac is outbuilding the rest of the state.
The housing crisis is a choice! Your city could choose to stop doing it!
(2) ADUs continue being an absolute powerhouse. Turns out when the city hands you free plans and says "if you want to build one, this is pre-approved!" that people actually build them!
Interestingly, Sac is doing better on VLI, LI, and Mod affordability than anything else. Need more PSH and also, interestingly, more above moderate housing. (Condo defect reform could really help build the latter as most above-mod families are looking to buy, not rent)
(Suspect some of that is being driven by innovative new low-cost/low-subsidy programs, like CADA's workforce program which is great solvingsacramento.org/2024/02/cada...)
Digging in a little deeper, a couple thoughts:
(1) Despite most reforms focused on juicing market rate construction, we're still seeing big numbers of deed restricted housing. 930 units, or 34.0% of total. Turns out "more of everything!" is true and it works.
The fact that Sac's housing production is still strong — and rising again — comes down to how aggressively the city is working to boost production. Turns out, when a local government really wants to build, they can build.
I wrote about that lesson here: housesac.substack.com/p/to-end-a-h...
Just to put context on this:
-Housing production was down both statewide and nationally last year.
-Tariffs, interest rates, and economic headwinds all *huge* drags on production.
-In Sacramento in particular, new supply has pushed rents down quite significantly the past three years.
Big news! The City of Sacramento's 2025 housing production numbers are out and *significantly* beat expectations — up 14.7% over 2024 to 2,737 homes. sacramento.granicus.com/MetaViewer.p...
Big welcome to our newest @brennancenter.org colleague, @jessewegman.bsky.social, who joins us from the NY Times. I follow him and you should, too!
The common link across left and right in this country is that someone else should pay taxes instead
Anyway, I don’t blame Keller for the fact that his restaurant’s name is rooted in racial exclusion. (by that standard we’d have to re-name most of the state)
I *do*, however, blame him for actively working to perpetuate that exclusion.
If you don’t know the story of Hang Kie and Modesto’s legalization of racial segregation through the racially neutral mechanism of zoning, it’s one of the great untold American civil rights stories.
Which makes the whole dustup poetic considering that California’s housing crisis descends directly from the invention of zoning so as to ban Chinese laundries. From @yappelbaum.bsky.social‘s excellent “Stuck”
Fun fact: ”French Laundry“ was the racist, gold rush-era euphemism for a laundry run by white people. as opposed to a Chinese laundry
Also… “bread & butter”? “Peas & carrots”? “Beef & broccoli”? Christ, my man.
I love good food, but if you go to French Laundry at this point you might be a bad person
Thomas Keller is simply trying to protect the neighborhood character of Yountville from greedy affordable housing developers
Truly unknowable why this guy thinks studio apartments are “dormitories” and that no one would ever want to live in one
“Why won’t you all listen to my expertise on affordable housing!?” screams the increasingly agitated owner of a restaurant that costs $425/person to make a reservation
To illustrate @stephenjacobsmith.com‘s underlying point, what’s frustrating is *even on safety alone* there’s a potential argument for single-stair (no corridors means quicker egress), but instead of trying to study it, firefighters are throwing tantrums about people questioning their “experience“
Incredible how ideological and anti-empirical firefighters’ opposition to single stair has become.
“It’s not safe because we hate it and we hate it because it’s not safe”
