Sacramento County is expanding a program designed to help offset development costs that can make affordable housing projects difficult to finance and build.
Earlier this week, the Board of Supervisors approved an expansion of the County's Three-Year Development Impact Fee Offset Pilot Program, allowing eligible affordable housing projects to receive offsets for development impact fees for three separate parks districts.
The program was established in December 2024 to help reduce barriers to affordable housing construction by offsetting certain development impact fees for projects that provide housing to low-income residents. Eligible projects can receive up to $10,000 per affordable housing unit in fee offsets.
And the program is already being used.
So far, four affordable housing projects totaling 435 units have been approved for approximately $2.16 million in fee offsets. That leaves approximately $2.84 million available in the original $5 million fund to support additional projects.
The latest expansion allows for the offset of development impact fees for the Carmichael Recreation and Park District, Mission Oaks Recreation and Park District, and the unincorporated portion of the Sunrise Recreation and Park District.
The change does not reduce the amount of funding those park districts receive. Instead, for qualifying affordable housing projects, the County will use the existing affordable housing fund allocated for the pilot program to offset eligible park district development impact fees necessary to fund identified infrastructure.
Why does that matter?
Affordable housing developers face many of the same costs as other housing developers, while also being required to provide homes at rents or prices affordable to households with lower incomes. Reducing upfront development costs can—and as this program has already started to demonstrate, does—help make projects financially feasible and allow more affordable housing units to move forward.
The fee offset program is one of several tools Sacramento County is using to reduce barriers to housing development. With funding still available, the County expects the pilot program to support additional affordable housing projects in the year ahead.