Good evening, welcome to the uh planning and design commission meeting of Thursday, March 12th, uh 2026.

Meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the roles or establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Lee?

Here.

Commissioner Tao.

Commissioner Lamas?

Here.

Commissioner Nybo?

Here.

Vice Chair Caden?

Here.

Commissioner Hernandez?

Here.

Commissioner Masias Reed?

Here.

Commissioner Young?

Here.

Commissioner Ortiz.

Commissioner Blunt?

Here.

Commissioner Rushke?

Here.

Commissioner Thompson?

Here.

Chair Chase.

Here.

Thank you.

We have a quorum.

I would like to remind everyone in the uh audience that wants to speak on any item uh to um please turn on a speaker slip uh before the item begins.

You'll have three minutes to speak once you are called upon.

After the first speaker, we will no longer be able to accept speaker slips.

We'll now proceed with a land acknowledgement followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please stand to the original people of this land, the Nissanon people, the Southern Maidu Valley and Plains of Miwok, Patwin Wintone peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous peoples' history, contributions, and lives.

Thank you.

Please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America.

Under God, invisible liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Chair.

I have one item for the director's report this evening on Tuesday, March 3rd.

City Council approved the Enclave Residential Project at 3600 Airport Road.

This is a project that the Commission recommended approval of at its meeting on January 22nd of this year.

And that's all that I have.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Director.

Are there any commissioners that wish to speak or comment on the director's report?

Seeing none, we'll now move to uh the consent calendar.

Um we will proceed to approve to approval of the consent calendar.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on the consent calendar thank you, Chair?

I have no speakers for this item.

Thank you.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on the consent calendar?

Seeing none.

Um is there a motion and a second for approval of the consent calendar?

Uh Commissioner Hernandez?

Motion to approve.

We have a motion.

Um Vice Chair Caden.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Uh Clerk, could you please take a vote?

Yes, thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Lee?

Aye.

Commissioner Towel.

Commissioner Lamas?

Aye.

Commissioner Nybo.

Aye.

Vice Chair Caden.

Aye.

Commissioner Hernandez.

Aye.

Commissioner Messias Reed.

Aye.

Commissioner Ortiz.

Commissioner Blend?

Aye.

Commissioner Rushke.

Aye.

Commissioner Thompson?

Aye.

Commissioner Young.

And Chair Chase.

Um.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

Uh before we'll now proceed with the public hearing uh calendar.

Uh item two is the Title Five Business License and Regulation and Title 17, Planning and Development Code amendments related to short-term rentals.

Before staff presents, I'd like to ask Commissioner if there are any disclosures or recusals.

I don't think that's that relevant here, but I'm sorry, Mr.

Commissioner Nybo.

I do have disclosures.

Okay.

Um I spoke with uh a couple of neighbors about this item for and against.

I accidentally ran into uh someone at Airbnb, the state lobbyists.

We discussed this a little bit.

Thank you.

And Commissioner Hernandez.

Maybe Courtney first.

You're all very conscientious.

I just want to point out it is a legislative item, so you don't need to do your normal disclosures.

There's no individual property right at stake.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Did you still want to speak?

Okay, we got a question.

All right, thank you.

Um staff, please proceed with the presentation.

Thank you, Kevin.

Good evening.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, Scott and Colin.

I'm the zoning administrator for the city of SAC.

And I'll be given be given, thank you, and I can hear us.

I'll be giving today's uh presentation.

However, I am not alone.

I am um if you've noticed from the staff report, I'm joined by our friends in the finance department.

So Brian Howard, our finance manager is here, along with Pete Coletto, our finance director.

If you have any questions once we get into that portion of the hearing, um we have all the staff here to hopefully get the answers you desire.

With that introduction, uh, by way of an overview, I'll first uh provide some background for you to help frame the context of this ordinance.

I'll describe uh prior uh meeting we had with the law and legislation committee of the council.

I'll go through uh the category of amendments one by one to summarize them, and then I'll conclude with the staff recommendation this evening.

First, I thought it'd be helpful if we frame this conversation within a definition, and that concerns what is a short-term rental.

So for our purposes in terms of regulation in this ordinance, a short-term rental has two basic components.

It is lodging, it is less than 30 days of being in a dwelling for a commercial purpose.

That's distinguished from dwelling, which may be through ownership or through a rental, either through an agreement or a lease or other contract.

Um, those are subject to a separate body of state law and they're not covered by this ordinance.

Um we've heard some conversation about certain professions that might need to be in the area or creative individuals.

If they're here for more than 30 days, they're not subject to a short-term rental if they if they're residing in those.

Um, and secondly, is where are short-term rentals by a current definition today, they need to be in a dwelling.

And a dwelling can simply be defined as a structure that has a bathroom, a kitchen, and a sleeping area.

Okay, all right.

So, with that definition, I'd like to provide an overview of the city's overall regulatory approach to short-term rentals.

There are two separate titles of city code that address this topic.

We have Title V, which we would call our business regulations.

So if you think uh of a business license, is that if that's familiar to you, that is a separate regulatory process from zoning, which would be under Title 17, which this commission has jurisdiction over.

In terms of thinking about where is my role today, we are encouraging you to participate in commenting on the entire ordinance, regardless of the title of city code.

Your your codified um area of responsibility is Title 17, the planning and development code, or also known as zoning, and we do require a recommendation from this body to get to the city council.

So it's all fair game.

Um if it concerns taxation, how the city should spend its revenues or allocate those, um, you know, by all means help yourself, but just know that it's not literally within your purview, according to city code.

All right, so with that overview, first um I like to describe title five of the business regulation side.

It it operates differently than zoning.

There is an annual permit process.

So if you have a short-term rental, you annually have a permit to renew.

That permit can presently be granted to owners and non-owners.

The duration varies based on ownership or non-ownership.

So if you're an owner, you can rent for 365 days a year.

If you're not an owner, 90 days.

If uh for a terms of how many people can stay in a short-term rental, six.

Six is the limit.

That title of city code also addresses the issue of taxation.

So transit occupancy tax may be familiar to you, or TOT.

That is um addressed in that title.

And also there are some regulation regulations that pertain to hosting platforms, such as Airbnb or uh VRBO in terms of what they are asked to or required to provide the city.

In contrast, there is uh there are limited zoning standards that do apply for short-term rentals.

Um, in summary, they uh are a by-right land use, somewhat like a home-based business that are allowed to occur in a single family dwelling or a duplex by right.

If you have a dwelling under zoning, you can have a short-term rental.

Those same limitations in terms of guest number and duration of stay do apply.

And then we do have other types of dwellings in the city, and so we have uh regulations for multi-unit dwellings.

We have 17 different zones where you could have multi-unit dwellings, apartment buildings, condominium buildings, more than three units in a building is multi-unit dwelling.

If you want a short-term rental in those locations, you need to get a conditional use permit.

So, with that overview, um, what I'd um additionally, like is to um I found it might be helpful to think about well, where like how many of these and where are they?

How does that relate to housing?

Um the slide right here.

You see chronologically, these regulations have been on the book for approximately 10 years and are largely unchanged.

And so the numbers you're seeing on the screen chronologically on the left are going from olders oldest to newest.

The second column, number of permits issued.

So you can see we're hovering around 500 for the last four years or so in terms of total permit number.

Moving a little bit further, um, there are separate columns for primary, so this is someone's primary residence, which under our current definition would mean 184 days, at least is when you reside on that property or non-primary.

So the permites, who is that permittee?

You can see those percentages, and in more recent years, you can see an increase in non-primary uh permit Tatus.

So I thought uh might be fun uh just a fun fact to know what is 537 relation to the city.

According according to the Department of Finance and their demographic research unit, we have about just over 202,000 dwellings in the city.

If you do the math, the total number of short-term rentals in a dwelling in our city is just under 0.26 percent of total dwellings, just to help you get a sense of the scale.

Additionally, uh, we have a land use, a land information lookup app, which is publicly accessible for a whole host of topics that relate to land use.

And in that map, what you see on the screen here, we have the public can go and see is there a short-term rental in my neighborhood.

So each of those little house icons is where a short-term rental permit has been granted.

Granted, we're talking about 18 or so miles from north to south, so we're in a large geographic area where those 537 permits are spread across.

Okay.

Well, moving on to uh the last public hearing we had on this topic.

Uh, in June of last year, uh the finance department presented information to the law and legislation committee seeking direction on what what updates, what changes should be made to our short-term rental ordinance.

And at that meeting, uh the staff recommendation, the committee did agree with the recommendations, which I could summarize in three points, and the first of which was to standardize the regulatory practice.

Um there are some things that you might notice, for example, in terms of structures that are eligible or not, uh permittee, who's allowed to have a permit or not.

Uh the common example for structures being if you're a detached ADU, it's not a primary unit, so therefore your detached ADU cannot be considered for a short-term rental permit.

And so we're seeking uh the finance department seeking to standardize the approach.

Additionally, um their uh observation was uh related to complaints and how might this regulatory program be revised to address uh complaints that are arising.

And thirdly, is the we are talking about dwellings, and we're talking about a commercial uh purpose within a dwelling, which uh would be distinct or different from long-term residency.

So the I uh the proposal presented was to you know seek a balance between the two.

So the committee agreed with approach uh to preserve our existing housing stock, but yet at the same time, if we could help promote new units, and I'll speak a little bit more to that in a moment.

All right, so we'll walk through each of the amendments in order.

I've organized it by title five first and then title 17.

So uh let's just get into it.

The first change in your staff report, you know uh will note it concerns residency.

Uh the amendment to Title V that's presented in this ordinance would require the short term rental permit to be at the property owner's primary residence and would remove the ability for that permit to be at a non-primary residence.

Why is that to discourage uh permanent rental businesses in dwellings?

Um secondly, to support homeowners, property owners' ability to supplement their income if they were retired, um, whether whatever your family organization is, if you need to accommodate others, or uh whatever your your your family's need are.

On the third reason is um I think greater compliance if you own it and you're and you're there when the permit is present and your guests are present.

Um the thinking is that there's more likely to be a greater level of compliance versus uh a permittee who's not present on the property.

The second change concerns who could get a permit.

Uh the change that's recommended is to provide one permit per owner, property owner, and remove the ability for non-owners to obtain a permit.

The reasons for that are um the same as the previous that I just mentioned.

Additionally, to help preserve existing um long-term rental housing where it's present.

So to strike a balance between the two.

So providing that standardized approach that I mentioned to change what's considered a primary residence to be basically a dwelling on the property, to not uh differentiate between if you wanted a short-term rental permit and you wanted to live in your ADU in the back and rent out the front house, you should be able to do so, and vice versa.

Uh so the idea here is why to treat all the dwellings the same.

Um, again to support owners' ability to supplement their income.

And I think for a planner like myself, uh, this gets at ADUs, and what we have observed and heard from those that build them is the greatest challenge is paying for it to get it built, and that if we can help folks get over that threshold of building the ADU, that that ADU will be in this city for decades.

It will last 50 years or more.

And if we can help them over that threshold, that that property could be used for many purposes and have multiple owners, and so in a very pragmatic and incremental way, an ability to supplement that income may be temporary.

Not everyone will want to have a short-term rental permit, but for those, if this helps them get over that threshold, we felt that this would support it.

Moving on to the fourth change, as I mentioned previous in the background, you presently can ask for a conditional use permit to have a short-term rental in a multi-unit dwelling property.

Our recommendation in this ordinance is to limit those short-term rental permits to lots with four or fewer dwellings.

This idea originated out of the law and legislation committee as direction, and the the stated intent was to help facilitate missing middle housing.

Additionally to help preserve existing rental housing, which is um we get into the 30 unit per acre threshold, is our affordable housing.

And looking at our permit history to date, we have only issued since 2020 uh three conditional use permits for these scenarios.

So we're not really seeing a need or a demand, and I would, as I mentioned in the staff report anecdotally, when we look at these discretionary permit applications, um, what we're seeing is folks are not pursuing that.

We do inform them of the discretionary nature of that permit process, and that we are looking to balance the preservation of units for long-term dwelling with that short-term rental, and I guess for some that might be a deterrent.

Next, uh, there is an uh a fifth change that concerns what is required of on the online hosting platforms, and that they provide more information, such as the permit number, for example.

And the idea is we we require more info from them that we can reduce the number of unpermitted properties, and that we would be more efficient with our enforcement practices.

I apologize.

There looks like there's an error in my staff, my presentation.

I'm missing the slide, so I'll just have to explain it to you.

I apologize.

Uh, for Title 17 for our amendments there, we are, I can very succinctly describe uh recommending to remove remove our regulations and instead rely on on Title V.

It is already a buyright land use.

Their uh conditional use permit process, as I described, is not utilized or functional.

And given that if we do limit the number of short-term rentals at multi-unit dwelling properties to one or whatever number the council does that we're finding that we would agree in terms of balance striking that balance between promoting tourism through short-term rentals and also preserving our housing stock, that one seemed like a reasonable number.

So we're recommending essentially to remove zoning from the equation is is a summary of the ordinance I could describe for those purposes.

In summary, our uh our recommendation or our rationale for this is that this ordinance would uh greatly simplify our existing regulations.

It does, in our view, provide greater protection of the housing stock uh from commercial exclusive commercial use.

Um, it would support those homeowners who choose to pursue an ADU to build that, um, to have a clear financial means of recouping some of those costs if they did want to also have a short-term rental, um, that we would preserve our existing rental stock through long-term rather than short-term use, and that we would be promoting our local um economy through tourism.

This uh is a public hearing, it is an ordinance, um, and as I mentioned, your role is to provide a recommendation to council.

Uh what our recommendation is that you do conduct the hearing and provide a recommendation to us.

And as I mentioned, we do have staff from both uh departments here if you have questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin.

Uh clerk, are there any uh members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, I have a handful of speakers.

May I please call up Amar Dean?

After Amara will be Kali Alakerson, excuse me, and then Josh O'Ken.

Good afternoon, good evening.

Uh my name is Amr Dean.

I'm with Unite Here Local 49, the hospitality workers union in the area.

And uh we are here today to uh voice our support for strengthening the the Sacramento short-term rental regulations.

Short-term rentals like Airbnb can deeply harm a community uh when they're left unchecked.

Our members feel this impact doubly as short-term rentals take affordable housing off an already scarce market, and they also take away hours and jobs from unionized hotels.

So allowing short-term rentals and hosts primary residences is a crucial best practice that allows for true home sharing while preserving housing units.

Cities all across the area, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Berkeley, even New York City, have all adopted this requirement.

Each short-term rental unit that is not someone's primary resident residence could be someone's home.

So the amendments before you today would strengthen Sacramento's regulation of short-term rentals and bring them in line with successful regulations in other cities.

And we respectfully urge you to vote yes on the recommendations.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

I have, is it Kalia?

Okay, Kaylee.

Sorry, Kaylee.

Um good evening, Commission.

My name is Kayleigh Olgerson.

On and on behalf of the Sacramento Metro Chamber and our member businesses throughout the city of Sacramento, we respectfully oppose the amendments presented today.

This item returns to returns as a staff initiated proposal and is identified as a low outreach priority on the city's 2026 planning and work plan.

At a time when Sacramento is facing significant fiscal and economic challenges, there are many higher priority issues competing for the city's time and resources.

Advancing a low priority item with limited stakeholder outreach risks diverting attention away from the issues that matter most to our residents, businesses, and broader economic activity.

Furthermore, short-term rentals generate more than two million annually in TOT revenue for the city.

Funding that supports core services and helps stabilize Sacramento's budget.

As the city navigates ongoing fiscal uncertainty uncertainty, protecting stable and reliable revenue streams should remain a top priority.

Short-term rentals also pay an imp play an important role in Sacramento's visitor economy and workforce ecosystem.

As our region works to attract conventions, major events and tourism, these units help fill lodging gaps when hotel stock is limited and support spending at local restaurants, retail shops, and small businesses across our neighborhoods.

They also work to provide flexible housing for members of our travel health care workforce, including visit visiting nurses, medical professionals who support Sacramento's hospitals and health care families or healthcare facilities during critical staffing shortages.

Sacramento should be focused on strengthening its economy, protecting reliable revenue streams, and prioritizing the issues that matter most to our residents and businesses.

For these reasons, we respectfully urge you to oppose today's proposed amendments.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

I have Josh O'Cann, and after Josh, I have Nick Avis.

Good evening, Chair and Commissioners.

My name is Josh Oaken, representing the Sacramento Association of Realtors.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Our members work with homeowners, tenants, and buyers across the region.

So we see how housing policies impact real properties and real people.

First, short-term rentals represent a very small share of Sacramento's housing stock, 0.26%.

And the number of permits in the city has been declining.

It is worth asking whether this is truly a major driver of housing availability.

Second, Sacramento has relatively limited hotel cap capacity, and short-term rentals help often fill that gap during conferences and tourism periods.

Third, Sacramento is a government and health care hub.

Traveling nurses, medical staff, and government contractors often need short-term housing, and short-term rentals can provide a flexible option.

The primary residence amendment limits the amount of short-term rentals.

This restricts the inventory that many of these groups rely on.

As the city continues this discussion, we encourage working collaborative collaboratively with the Sacramento Association Realtors and other stakeholders to find a balanced approach that addresses concerns while still allowing responsible operators to meet this need.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

I have Nick.

After Nick, I have Deborah Schmidt and then Jacob Schmidt.

Good afternoon evening, Mr.

Chair, members of the planning commission.

Uh Nick Avdis with the law offices of ABDAS and Kuchi here this evening on behalf of a family member, my sister, because I love her very much, and my brother-in-law.

And I know the sacrifices they made in terms of my brother-in-law taking leave from a W 2 job to stay at home to raise the kids, and as part of filling that income gap, they invested in constructing additional dwelling units on their legal lot, relying on the income for renting out those units.

There are certainly I think a lot of clarifications and cleanups that are contained in these amendments, proposed amendments that I think are very much due and necessary.

I will say uh the one that I find and we find extremely problematic is 5.114205 that lot uh titled lot limits currently states a property owner shall allow more shall no property owners shall allow more than one short-term rental on any lot for uh circumstances uh like my family's where they have three dwelling units on a lot.

Uh I think that doesn't make sense.

They are responsible uh uh short-term rental operators, they live on the property, they should be able to rent out the uh remaining units for supplemental income.

So, with that, I would encourage that this commission consider amending, and I and we submitted a letter and there's language in there, but uh uh allow short-term rentals on one legal lot in a number of four or less consistent with the other amendments that are being proposed.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

I have Deborah Schmidt and then Jacob Schmidt.

I'm probably not gonna make it through my presentation.

I just want you to know that I did print it out in the event I run short of time.

I hope that you will take the time to review it.

I also sent it to most of you via email.

I'm gonna read the email.

I am reaching out to provide pertinent information for your view as the planning and design commission deliberates on today's agenda item regarding short-term rentals.

I believe this information is vital for your thorough evaluation before any decisions are made.

I am a retire of the UC Davis House system.

I rely on this income short-term rental as a short-term rental host.

I rely on this income to supplement my retirement funds.

It's come to my attention that there is a misconception about Airbnb's hosts, that we are in it for the money.

I've had the privilege of connecting with many hosts in our community, and I can tell you that we serve as the welcoming face for Sacramento.

We host visitors from all walks of life, including those who may not have the means to stay in a hotel and dine out for two weeks while a loved one undergoes under undergoes medical treatment.

We are often visitors first impression of our beautiful city.

Thanks to our dedicated hosts, visitors leave with a positive perception of the city of Sacramento.

My concern with regard to this, these amendments is with regard to data that was presented at the law and legislative committee.

On June 24th Revenue Manager Jackie Rice presented crafts and reports derived from unreliable complaint data to the law and legislative committee to support amendments concerning short-term rentals.

The same information appears in your agenda today.

It is widely recognized that 311 complaints do not should not dictate public policy.

In light of this, I submitted a request, a public records request and analyze the 309 records using specialized software for more precise data interpretation.

The findings were quite frankly troubling.

Aside from Roger Dickert, Roger Dickinson, District 2 inquired whether the no permit complaints had been verified prior to inclusion in the report.

The committee accepted the information uncritically.

I'm gonna run out of time.

Okay, thank you very much.

Commissioner?

Yes.

Can I ask a follow-up question?

I'm sorry, can I ask a please please do?

Ask me how the information is input into the system.

I'm sorry, I don't have that.

Um question of clarification.

In your letter, what what kind of unit do you have?

You I have what's cons considered a primary So do you rent a bedroom, an ADU?

No, I rent my whole house.

And you I live there for a hundred 184 days a year, so I'm allowed to rent it.

And so do you do you move out of your home when somebody moves out?

Yes, I usually, because I'm retired, I travel quite a bit extensively, actually.

So sometimes I'll rent it while I'm traveling.

Okay, that's that was my question.

Thank you.

And I did want to say though, and um I did go over the data and I found it very interesting.

So thank you for sending that out also.

I hope you found it helpful.

And I really think I need to stress that the city really needs to look at that data.

I don't know who put those reports together.

They're very inaccurate, unreliable, and should not be used.

Jacob Smith, please.

Good evening.

Those are the 311 complaints.

Briefly take a look at it, give you a general idea.

My name is Jacob Schmidt.

Um I pose certain things in this.

Um Sacramento's proposed policy targeting non-primary short-term rental harm small business owners, homeowners, and Sacramento tourism.

The 311 complaints being used to justify these restrictions appear to be miscategorized and not accurate.

Some even excuse me.

Staff even acknowledged at the law and legislative committee.

Policies built on incorrect or incomplete data risk, harming responsible operators while failing to address actual issues.

The proposal is also inconsistent.

The city is considering removing caps from ADU short-term rentals so owners can recover their investment, yet at the same time proposing eliminating non-primary rentals for homeowners who made similar investments under the existing city code.

If investment recovery is the principle, it should apply equally.

Many of these homes operate as small businesses.

In our case, we invested a significant amount of money into the city of Sacramento, specifically to comply with short-term rental program and have even, and we haven't even operated for one year.

We have not recovered any of our investment yet, a very small portion.

Short-term rentals also provide affordable short-term housing for families visiting hospitals, medical professionals on temporary assignments, visitors attending Kings games, concerts, and other events who cannot afford multiple hotel rooms.

Sacramento should focus on fair regulation based on accurate data, not policies that harm small businesses, reduce visitor housing options, and undermine the local economy.

If you guys decide to put this through, I really urge a 45-day moratorium to allow a growing process with existing operators.

This is one percent of the total city, or less than one percent of the city city's housing.

What are we doing here?

The arguments being proposed are very frustrating.

It's anti-small business.

It's anti-housing.

The 311 complaints, please take a look at those.

Please take some time.

It should be held back.

Um to have the a cap, a note, and thank you for your comments.

Your time is up.

I have two more speakers.

Jose Alvarado and Janna Merriam.

Chair and Commissioners, my name is Elvarado, and I serve as a public policy manager for Airbnb here in California.

I'm also a proud Sacramento resident for the last 13 years.

I'm here in respectful opposition to the short-term rental ordinance before you.

Although we appreciate the inclusion of ADUs on the list of allowed structures, the ordinance overall impact is still detrimental to both local hosts, as you just heard, and the Sacramento economy.

According to publicly available census data, dedicated short-term rentals constitute less than 0.15% of the city's total housing stock, less than one-fifth of a percent.

Uh, this means less than two homes and one thousand, two and one thousand homes, sorry, in Sacramento or short-term rentals.

Uh, furthermore, the TICO Airbnb hosts in Sacramento shares their home fewer than 90 nights a year, uh, suggesting that most of those list their homes for the flexibility of additional income and not as a permanent short-term rental.

Additionally, um, since 2017, Airbnb has collected and remitted both TOT and TBID fees uh to the city of Sacramento last year alone, uh collected and remitted 2.1 million dollars.

Um, in addition, we have implemented our permit field that enables all local hosts to publicly display their permit number on their listing.

Airbit B has also developed the city portal to assist the city of Sacramento in enforcing its current ordinance.

Uh, and collectively, these features establish Sacramento's ordinance as one of the most robust and comprehensive comprehensive ones in the state.

We request that the city not move forward with this ordinance, especially given the lack of city provided data to justify such a change.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you for your comments.

I have Jana Marion as a last speaker.

It's Jana Marin.

Thank you for adding me.

And I don't have prepared statements because I wasn't planning on saying anything, but I thank everyone who spoke before me from the Metro Chamber from Airbnb, the other hosts we've heard from.

I'm an Airbnb host.

I may not be the first, but I'm definitely one of the original Airbnb hosts in Sacramento.

I've been a host for 13 years on and off in the last couple of years.

I am a super host.

My listings are guest favorites.

That means that people are raving about their experience staying with me, and I am I take pride in that because as some of the other hosts have said, I am an ambassador of this city, and I am showing them what it's like to live here and experience Sacramento as a city.

And it is disheartening to hear the hospitality labor union oppose this measure because I am I consider myself a part of the hospitality industry here in Sacramento.

And in fact, a couple weeks ago, I had someone who works at a local hotel who is between housing staying with me because she can't afford to stay in a hotel.

So I am an integral part of supporting the local economy, the local tourism industry, and furthermore, as other hosts have said and expressed, we rely on this income.

I live with multiple sclerosis.

And I would like to have the opportunity to expand into other units in the future if I decide to do that.

That is my right with as that is my right as a property owner, and not being able to expand and increase my income, the only income that I currently have would be incredibly limiting and detrimental to me and my livelihood at this point.

Um thank you for letting me speak and hearing me out.

Commissioner Ibel.

Can I have to follow up question over?

I'm sorry, Miss.

Thank you so much for coming speaking.

Yes.

Quick question.

Yes.

Um your Airbnb is your primary residence.

It is right now, yes.

Do you move out when they come and visit?

So I do both because I list the rooms individually and I list the whole house.

So I sometimes have people renting just the individual rooms and they stay with me.

And then periodically, if the whole house is rented, then yes, I travel or I go stay somewhere while I stay in the other dwelling unit on my property because that is rented by people who I know, and there's an extra room in that house.

I see.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then for your units that are uh closer to UC Davis.

Yeah, it's one property with two three-bedroom houses on the property in North Oak Park.

Are those currently empty?

No.

There's renters in there.

No, I'm sorry.

One is my primary residence with my Airbnbs, and the other has a tenant, yes.

But but you said you have another property with multiple units.

No, no.

It's I just have the one property.

Just the one one one property.

One property with two three-bedroom houses.

I understand.

Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

That's all speakers on this item.

Thank you.

Um, are there any other commissioners that have questions, comments, or questions of staff?

Commissioner Young or Reed.

I'm saying this weird.

Oh, it'll trip on your mic.

Uh th thank you to the speakers um for showing up today.

Appreciate the context.

Um I'll be honest, it kind of sounds like there's maybe some unknowns here that I personally don't understand.

Um I do have a couple of questions.

I'll start with a question from staff.

Um, I in the staff report on page two, um, it starts with the first paragraph.

On June 24th, the finance department sought and obtained direction from law and ledge, um, sought and obtained direction from law and ledge.

So it looks like this from what I understand is that the finance department was seeking direction from law and ledge.

So, did all of this conversation about seeking an ordinance amendment begin from the finance department?

And if so, why?

Sure.

I uh I'll I'll answer that.

So uh good evening, Chair, Commission members, members of the public, I'm Pete Coletto, the finance director.

Yeah, so it came uh this did come from staff, and it came for a couple of reasons.

So um, and there are really uh when we go to council, we're really gonna say there are two kind of key policy points uh for council to vote on.

The first is what I call the uh detached garage pro problem, which is if you right now have an attached garage and you convert that to an Airbnb, you're eligible for a primary permit, you don't have a cap.

If you have a detached garage or a backyard ADU, uh that's you're only eligible for a secondary permit, and you have a 90-day cap.

And from the staff perspective, um, you know, that doesn't make much sense.

It's just how our code is set up, but the impact on the community community and neighborhood is the same, so why are we regulating it differently?

So that was part of the reason why we came forward.

Uh the other is that we we have heard a lot of complaints um, not just in 311 data, but from neighborhood associations, from uh being brought to community meetings about uh short-term rentals, and so that was the other thing we brought for uh committee consideration.

Do we want to limit it to owner-occupied properties but expand uh the opportunities for those owners?

Okay, understood.

So I understand the first part.

Now, obviously, we we have the complaints here.

Um, and I'm I'm just curious um on the complaint side, and I don't know if you're gonna be able to answer this or staff.

Um this conversation internally with staff started on June 24th, 2025.

Is that correct?

That you guys is that when you guys started collecting the data from 311 and that was the law and ledge date.

So that that was the day we brought it to the committee.

The law and ledge, okay.

I'm trying to think here.

Okay.

But I think I because uh if I hear that, you know, I heard the concerns from the public commenters.

I'm I'm assuming the commissioners have similar questions.

You know, one of the things we did talk about at Law and Ledge, and you know, Brian and Kevin might have more color to this than me, uh, is that you know the 311 data isn't always exact, right?

When someone calls, it's not coded the exact way.

Uh but one of the things that did strike us was when you look at the overall data, um, there are just more complaints generally for the secondary permit, a disproportionate amount more complaints around uh secondary permit uh properties.

We also get you know, outside of 311, a lot of uh requests or people saying, hey, this secondary permit is not um you know abiding by the city's rules and and things like that.

And then again, you know, talking with uh various community groups uh is kind of why we we brought that forward as a policy option for the committee.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Um okay, thank you.

The other question I had, and there was a comment made by one of the thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um there was a comment made by one of the commenters, or I I can't remember who it was as the gentleman in the suit.

And I'm not sure if if this is true or if staff has really analyzed this.

Um, but as the proposals currently stand, there was a mention of um, you know, if if these recommendations were to move forward as currently proposed, that there could be potentially a 75% elimination of um our current existing uh, you know, short-term replicatives.

Do you do we know what that looks like?

Yeah, so we it's it's approximately 6040 secondary permit versus primary permit right now.

Uh the caveat I will give you is we have a number about a little less than 20 percent of the secondary permit holders could potentially be newly eligible for primary permits uh because right now they have a detached unit that has a secondary permit.

Um so we would uh think that that should open up more rental days for those folks who would uh potentially move over from secondary permit status to primary permit status.

You said 20 percent.

So there's uh it's right now it's about 60 percent secondary permit, 40 percent primary permit.

And of that uh secondary permit group, about a little bit under 20 percent of them would are classified as an ADU, so they could potentially move into primary permit status.

Okay, okay.

And see okay.

I those are all the questions I have for right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Commissioner Thompson or Rusky Thompson.

Thank you.

Um I first have just a question, probably totally curious based, but the cap on people who can stay in a short-term rental, is that six people?

And the curiosity is more uh I come from a giant family.

Uh we actually have a specialty in looking for Airbnbs and short-term rentals that'll house us all.

Uh, but I also have three adult kids who come to stay and have SIG others.

So just my three kids with myself and my husband hits that cap.

So just as a general, is this a what drove that number?

I know it's not related necessarily to this, but where does this regulation come from?

Hi, my name is Brian Howard, uh finance manager for the revenue division.

Nice to meet you all.

Um I don't have an answer to what drove the the six.

Uh it's been in place since 2018.

Um yes, that is the cap per lot for short-term rental.

Um unfortunately, I don't have an answer to that question.

Okay.

Uh thank you.

Sorry for asking you an off-the-cuff one.

So then one more follow-up.

So you started this whole presentation clarifying that really our area of will say jurisdiction, even though it's not um is specifically within the Title 17 component.

And that right now is being stated to just follow what is being outlined in five.

Sorry, there's an awkward angle here.

Is that a is that a question?

Yes.

Can you confirm that?

Is that accurate?

Yeah, I I would characterize the Title 17 amendments as deletion.

So we would not have a conditional use permit process for multi-unit dwellings that would be removed.

Um we have some special use regulations where this is kind of nested in bed and breakfast.

So those those that that language that says short-term rental gives some regulations we would which already refer to Title V, for example, for the reason you just asked about number of persons.

Right.

Duration of stay.

It's it is somewhat repetitive or duplicative.

So yeah, we would remove Title 17 zoning.

Okay, so essentially there this would be a full removal of basically any zoning application to the short-term rental component, moving it into uh a business piece.

Well, I would I would describe it's already there in Title V.

So there are already many more regulations in Title V for business purposes.

So it I know it feels like we're straddling this awkward boundary between what's lane use and business regulation, but um yeah, I we're removing duplicative regulations and zoning.

We're removing a conditional use permit option for multi-unit dwellings, and then all of the other provisions in Title V are being um that exist today are being refined or amended through this ordinance.

Okay, I think that's all I have right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh next speaker is obviously not Commissioner Ortiz.

Yeah, Commissioner Young.

Uh thank you.

Um I'm just trying to understand the kind of the nature of the problem and um have some questions here.

So uh how many of these short-term rental units today are are not primary residences?

I think it was in your table.

Can you give me an idea?

Uh so currently 60 percent are non-primary residents type short-term rentals.

Uh we've seen uh a trend, you know, over the number one in that the total you wanted the total number, so uh 323 are secondary.

And of those listings, how do we have some determination of how many are operating without a permit?

Uh oh, so the operating without a permit is a little bit tougher to understand.

So as we're uh notified of those problems, we move to enforcement.

So uh you know, Brian can give you a little bit more color on on that.

So to answer your question, the 323 all are permitted.

We I don't have a number on the unpermitted at the moment because when we learn that there when we learn someone is unpermitted, uh then we um enforce but we I can't tell you what I don't know if someone is out there operating right now and we haven't been made aware of it, um I I don't know.

Can you describe maybe kind of what are the existing enforcement mechanisms we have in place?

Sure.

We work closely with CDD's uh code enforcement team.

Um any violation of the short-term rental ordinance is forwarded over to the code enforcement team uh and it's delegated to staff for administrative penalty issuance, uh whether that be uh non-primary residents renting over the 90-day allotted um cap of days where they're allowed to rent.

Uh um if it's a non-permitted um you know, short-term rental that that we're aware of, we're gonna send uh ask code enforcement to go out.

There are some limitations there because you know they have to kind of catch them in the act when it's a non-permitted uh situation, which creates a whole nother set of difficulties that you know code enforcement can address better than I can.

But um we work closely with code enforcement.

Uh we utilize administrative penalties as a driver for compliance.

So um thank you.

Uh so if sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Um I'll jump to my other question, I'm gonna come back to the other one.

Um as far as like the complaints are concerned that have been reported, and code has gone out to um code enforcement has kind of gone out to quote unquote enforce.

Would you say that a majority of those complaints that have been reported are legitimate and valid and and you see that kind of from the secondary residences that that it truly is a problem?

Um I will say when we send code code enforcement goes out for non-permitted um issues, everything else is captured electronically through the portal.

We do have a registry requirement for non-primary residents uh type permits in the ordinance as it exists today to report their registry quarterly to us so that we can adequately maintain that they stay under the 90-day cap for their permit.

Um code enforcement does go out, it it's hit or miss.

Like I said before, you they have to catch them in the act of sometimes there's no answer at the door, sometimes there's not a tenant there who is uh a short-term rental guest.

Um sometimes there's non-compliant short-term rental guests or people who who answer the door.

Um I don't want to speak for code enforcement, but in my experience in dealing with them, those are the problems that they face.

Um I'm sorry, the other part of your question was I think I'm just trying to understand the nature of why it is that the secondary residences are having more problems.

And I was hoping maybe the staff could maybe lend some interpretation of the data as to why why we're seeing more problems.

Yeah, I think you know, part of it is um part of it is uh almost intuitive, where if the owner is on the premises, um they are going to be more diligent just generally, or you know, if the or even if the owner is on vacation and rents it out, uh they still have to face their neighbors.

Um, and so that's that I think is is part of um you know the difference sometimes between the primary and secondary.

You know, I think Brian kind of brought up the challenge that code enforcement sometimes has, and then you know, we'll hear from the neighbors um who will constantly complain about a certain property, um, and it just is more often uh a secondary permit holder.

And again, it's this isn't to say secondary permit holders are all bad or or anything like that.

We just see a disproportionate amount of uh issues in the neighborhood.

Yeah, I'm just I'm just thinking out loud as far as are there other ways of creating an enforcement mechanism, whether it's through partnering with Airbnb or whatnot that would kind of mitigate some of these complaints because I think what I'm hearing is we're using the our our code enforcement officers to try to you know regulate good behavior, and and that's not always kind of the most efficient way of doing it.

I'm sort of curious if there might be some other enforcement mechanisms that maybe the primary, you know, Airbnb folks who who kind of run that shop and and do a good job and they're not at the primary residence, like what is it that they do that um so encourages good behavior?

So we do have the ability uh with Airbnb, for example, and other hosting platforms as well to block the listing.

Um the main problem that arises resulting in a block listing is renting with an invalid permit number.

Um Airbnb does not validate the permit numbers.

Uh anyway, you could put any number you want in potentially uh get a listing.

We do verify the permit numbers uh regularly, and we request that those permit numbers be blocked, you know, uh from from listing.

So we do have the ability in the Airbnb city portal to block the listing.

Um we do utilize that as as much as we possibly can to help with the enforcement and compliance aspect of short-term rental as it is today.

Um final question and I'll seed my my time for now.

What what are other jurisdictions kind of doing as far as their regulations around this that you could just give us a broad overview?

Yeah, it um you know kind of runs the gamut a little bit, but uh, you know, a lot of jurisdictions are uh I would say much more strict on short-term rentals than we are.

So for example, you know, Oakland doesn't allow them.

You would have to get a conditional use permit.

Uh San Francisco restricts them to just a primary uh owner.

Um, and then I believe on top of that, they have uh fewer, they have a 90-day cap, I think, even if you're the prior, if you're the primary owner.

Um, you know, San Diego, uh some Tahoe cities, they have caps and lotteries uh for short term short-term rentals.

Um, and you know, again, we um we're I think Kevin said it really well.

What we're trying to do is balance these uh competing priorities.

Uh we also view short-term rentals as very valuable, especially when we're uh having big festivals like Aftershock and things like that.

Um, they help provide that extra supply of uh of lodging to get get people here.

So we want to support the business.

Uh we don't we set this program up originally so that you know someone wouldn't have to go through a conditional use permit um process to do a short-term rental.

Thank you.

See my time.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Um Commissioner Rescue.

Um I just thank you.

I just want to clarify.

Um, so the 60% that are the secondary permits, that's 323.

And those are all um limited to 90 days by the current.

And then if um this ordinance were to go through, they would be all taken offline completely.

Um as Pete stated before, 20% of those potentially could be eligible under the new regulations for a primary residence permit where they possibly wouldn't be subject to the 90-day limitation because we're proposing in the new ordinance uh to issue for primary residents only where there would be no 90-day limitation.

But the other 80% would be completely taken offline.

Uh potentially.

They they um would not be eligible for short-term rentals, however, they could do uh long-term rentals, so they could um for 30 days or longer, you know, we would love them to put their their place on the market because we need more rental stock.

Thank you.

Any more questions, Commissioner?

No.

Okay.

Um Commissioner uh Vice Chair Caden.

Yeah, um, and these have been great questions uh for my fellow commissioners, so thank you for those.

I I think um I yeah, I recognize that we're we have this Title 17, Title V thing, and so I think you know, we're asking for general feedback, but mostly just uh, you know, uh deciding what to do about the Title 17.

But I guess given that we have the opportunity, it's I'll use the opportunity to say a few things.

I think I I do um generally I think agree with the concept that we should be you know preserving our our housing stock for long-term rentals.

I think that you know that idea is obviously makes a lot of sense.

I think there are some considerations that folks have brought up that I think you know are worth lifting up.

Um you know, tourism events, conferences, festivals.

I think these are these are good things that I think we should be encouraging, um, especially in a budget deficit, which several folks have mentioned.

I think that's a fair point.

I mean, 80% of 60% is about half, right?

We're talking about taking half of the short-term rentals off the market.

And uh, you know, relative to our peers, we don't have a whole lot of hotels.

Um, and I think that that has been a problem, I think, for hosting larger events.

I know a few years back, um, we were making a bid to kind of host the MBA All-Star game that was very much referenced as a reason why we were unsuccessful with that bid.

So I do worry about kind of making it more difficult for short-term rentals to be that um release valve, you know, for those types of events.

Um, I think in general, I am a little bit less um worried about the scale of the problem here with short-term rentals taking long-term rentals off off the the market in Sacramento.

We're not Barcelona here, where you know, 10% of the housing stock is locked up.

I mean, literally in Barcelona, it's like certain neighborhoods over 10% of housing stock is short-term rentals.

I'm talking about 0.2% of rentals.

Um, and it doesn't seem like that amount is really increasing based on what I was seeing in the slides.

It seems like it's been holding relatively steady.

So it doesn't seem like this is a problem that's like exploding out of control.

Um, and then I think you know, just a point that gets lost in here sometimes is that um short-term rental demand can actually be a reason why something gets built.

You know, the I I have a shipping container ADU next door to me that was built with the intention of being a short-term rental.

I have a friend who um recently bought a single-family rental um near the med center um years back and converted a you know, small garage to be an ADU that he now rents as a short-term rental for folks that are staying near the hospital.

And that's why that's why he built it, right?

And and as I understand it, under this proposal, we'd be precluding the situation like that moving forward because he doesn't live on site, um, and he's not the owner-occupant of that primary residence.

And this is not like a you know, institutional investor that's taking units off of the market.

Um, this is someone who's spending 120,000 to you know, create housing and provide a service.

And you know, by the way, that housing is gonna be there when he sells when he sells that house, right?

So that you know, that it was mentioned before, right?

50 years, maybe 100 years that that building is gonna be there.

Um, and that you know, potentially way down the line could become long-term rental.

Um, so I guess I'm not a I'm not a huge fan of precluding situations like that that to me are not really hurting anybody.

There's no loser there.

I you know, I'd hate I'd hate, I guess, for the reason why someone doesn't build something to be our short-term rental ordinance.

Um, and I I recognize that you know we're not the deciding body ultimately on on this, um, but and that'll be up to council, but I just wanted to express that concern.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Uh next speaker is Commissioner Neibel.

Um, I have a couple of questions, if I may.

Um what what additional info, information from the platform would you be requesting?

So the the additional info we would be requesting would be um helping us with enforcement.

It would be the addresses for every short-term rental that is listed.

Um, for the month.

Let me find my papers.

Um so we would be one sec, I could tell you exactly what it is.

Yeah, so we would be requesting the addresses with the corresponding permit number.

Um we would be requesting the names of the responsible party and the number of days that they booked.

Um that would help us with compliance and enforcement for the short-term rental program.

And and you can't get that information from them now.

Um pretty much every single hosting platform that we've requested the information from has denied and said, you know, if you want to get that from us, issue us a subpoena.

I see.

But if it's in the ordinance and they have to.

It's like, well, okay, have none.

Correct.

Okay, very good.

And then um let me ask uh let me just ask for the question about when the the next people, I'm sorry.

When we had the speakers come up and they talked about their particular situation, which was a they are renting a home that they live in permanently year-round.

Sometimes they leave, sometimes they stay.

How will this ordinance affect that?

Um I believe as long as they maintain the 184-day uh year requirement where they reside at the property, then it wouldn't affect them.

Um one of the proposals in the ordinance change is that um, you know, where there's multiple dwelling units on one lot, they're allowed to have one potential short-term rental permit.

Um if there's more than one dwelling unit, then they could reside in that dwelling unit year-round and potentially rent the other one without limitation.

Thank you for bringing that up.

That was gonna be my follow-up question.

Why one?

Pete?

Yeah, I mean, that um that was something we discussed at lawn ledge as well.

And it is some, you know, there is an impact on the neighborhood for having a short-term rental versus a long-term renter, and wanting to encourage long-term renters.

So what they uh the committee didn't want was hey, I build a three-unit ADU in my backyard, and they're all short-term rentals.

Um, so that was why one.

So it's may mainly uh community impact of having multiple short-term rentals on a property, um, kind of like almost having a hotel be built next to you uh if you're a neighbor without any sort of zoning.

Would would you bear with me and allow me to make two comments on that real fast right off the top?

It seems to me that those are three ADUs that would then be part of the housing stock that wouldn't otherwise be part of the housing stock.

Um and then isn't it a matter of relative scale?

You know, years ago we had um the stitch program in the alleys, and there were a bunch of duplexes that were there were a bunch of duplexes that were going to be built in the alleys that never were because they were too expensive to be built and they couldn't they couldn't get them built.

However, if you have a couple of small units that's simple studios, that could then justify that.

Is that a problem because you have so much fewer uses?

Well, you know, I think it's uh they're trying Kevin's laughing.

Did you have did you want to answer Kevin?

No, I I don't know that there's a magic number, just that we're we're trying to balance competing policy priorities.

And if you have a recommendation for the council on a different number, that's why we're here.

If I have a recommendation for council.

Uh so I think that what we got at earlier, if we have six units per ADU and there's multiple ADUs on a property, that's an that that is an issue.

However, if you have an efficiency and you have a bed, that's not necessarily more uh traffic impact to the neighborhood.

Yeah, I think it's a matter of what Kevin was saying.

They're trade-offs and um trying to be able to regulate it.

And I would also say, you know, if someone someone could go through the conditional use permit process and and set up a bed and breakfast as well.

If that were, you know, if it if it's this unique uh situation, they would have it wouldn't preclude them from doing it, they would just have to do uh we they would just have to show that the impact is not um uh you know too severe on the community.

But yeah, it's trade-offs, and it's it's tough to um do you have to provide breakfast at a bed and breakfast uh I've got to ask the manager, you need to need to be a host on site.

It's like a small hotel.

I I'm sorry, and I don't mean to be, but on a multiple ADU, and I think what we heard what we've already heard is that if we build multiple ADUs, and they're small, and they're not gonna cause a bunch of impact, and it's on an owner-occupied lot.

I still don't see how that is a negative impact to the neighborhood.

As the same as if it would be three a triplex with multiple bedrooms.

Well, I'd say right now those ADUs would be limited to 90 days uh of rental, right?

So under this, you know, you would have 360 if even though it's one unit, you could rent it out short-term rental 365 days a year.

Um, the other thing I would say is that you know, you would be able to rent out on the long-term market for the other two or however many ADUs you have on your property.

You would still have to do that.

I think you can, but the butterm.

Here's my thought on this.

If you have a home, that home is a part of the infrastructure of the city.

The city has made a huge investment in house in each housing unit.

Firstly, they have to come to play in the commission.

But more important than that, we have this historic housing stock.

We have a hundred-year-old sewer storm drain system, we have waters, we have roads that have to be constantly paved, we have schools that have to be paid for.

All of that is a part of the cost of these housing stocks.

ADUs are not part of that cost, they're additive to it.

And I think of ADUs not as a large three-bedroom unit, there are six people going to live in.

I think of an ADU as a smaller unit that if we can more if an investor can more quickly amateurize that, it will get built, and if it's built, eventually that will become part of the rental stock.

Yeah, and I would say that that's one of the reasons why we want to make it eligible for a primary permit versus now it would only be eligible for a secondary permit.

And we we kind of went around with the housing policy working group as well, who at first opposed us even doing that because they were worried that it would take um housing stock off the market.

But you know, again, I think Kevin was saying that this is the kind of compromise, uh the kind of balance we're trying to reach, which is right now, if you have an ADU, uh you can get a secondary permit, 90-day cap.

Uh, what we're saying is for one of the units in the ADU, you can have it uncapped for short-term rental.

If you have other rental and other units there, um, you could put them on the long-term rental market.

That that's kind of our compromise.

And um yeah, I guess I understand your compromise in that if I just don't think that compromise would lead to very many ADUs being built.

Yeah, we I don't know.

I mean, I think it's got it will help on the margin um versus the current uh status uh we also up on the market.

Because right now um you would not be able you would only be able to use uh or only be able to use it as a short-term rental for 90 days.

That's the current status right now.

If it's detached, um and under this, you would be able to uh use it as a short-term rental uncapped.

Um so that's an improvement from the status quo quote from that standpoint.

Um and you know, one of the things we were when we talked with the housing policy working group, I was saying, you know, my parents are getting older.

Uh maybe, you know, I want to build an ADU for them to live in for a while, uh, but that may not happen for a while.

And what are my economics?

And so in situations like that, uh being able to use it as a short-term rental for a period of time uh can be very beneficial.

Or if you've never been a landlord before and you've you don't know how you feel about locking in with a long-term renter, um, you this will help your ADU economics to use it as a short-term rental and try it out, and then maybe it works fine and you're more comfortable, and then you'll put it on the rental stock.

But um, yeah, that it is we do view it as uh it's more short-term rental days versus current status under this proposal.

And I guess that my preference is that if your property can build more than one ADU, assuming there's small efficiency, I would prefer that that would be available for Airbnb.

That is my that is my preference.

Okay.

That's my that's my that's my position that compromise.

Um I know that I have space in my unit in my backyard for multiple ADUs and plan on building them because I have a family member that is going to need long-term care, and I can have another ADU, both studios for potentially a caregiver or something else along those lines, but I can build that today, and in the future when I need it, I can use it for that use.

Um that's a that's that's a plausible need.

So that would be my I think that's what I would like to see the ordinance move towards.

Okay.

When the time comes to make my comments, that was a question.

Anything else, Commissioner?

Is that it?

Yeah, that's all.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Commissioner Thomson O'Reske.

Thank you.

Um, I have another question.

So of the ADU or of the rentals that are non-primary, there's 323, and about 80% of those are the ones that would not be allowed under this.

Do you know roughly how many of those, like, do we have any data on if those owners are local to Sacramento and how many are owned by the same owner?

Like are most of them of those like 323, are most of them just one is owned by an owner, or are there groups of 10 owned by one person?

I don't have the exact numbers in front of me.

Um I would say it's likely they're owned by separate people.

However, we do have a handful of uh permittees that own multiple uh you know residences that they rent out for short-term rental.

So we have it's a mix, but it's higher that they're all individually owned, investor-owned.

Um in the city, some outside, probably the majority outside of the city.

Most of the owners are outside of the city.

I couldn't say for sure, but I mean, off the top of my head, I would say it's a split.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm seeing like some cases where there's in two properties owned by someone that are adjacent, and you know, they might use some of that.

Um and I also wanted to add that you know, we've heard from a lot of the hosts today, which has been great.

Thank you for coming.

And um, but you know, there's also the the people who rent short-term rentals, and I I don't want to lose sight of how valuable it is for people like um, you know, travel nurses, also many of the affordable hotels here in Sacramento are not in walkable areas, so it's hard to affordably stay here if you don't if you can't bring a car.

Um there's a lot of family members who need to be close to someone who's who's sick or hospitalized and and you know need a place with a kitchen.

There's also um special needs kids and family members who have to prepare their own food so they can't stay in a hotel and order food or something because of health conditions.

Um women and children who quickly need upstairs to escape to can get a short-term rental.

Um and you know, a lot of people who travel like to support a small business rather than like a large hotel chain.

So I think you know, there's given there's such a very small percentage of our housing stock, it seems like it's being well used for these reasons.

I've just named.

I'm working in some communities that have like a 30% short-term rental, and I'm building workforce housing there, and they really need it, but I it doesn't seem like this is is such a problem like those mountain communities um have.

So I I would I I personally would be worried about losing, you know, around 250 short-term rentals for for people who really need that that type of housing.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner, is it Lamas or hotel?

Thank you, Chair.

And uh thank you, staff for the report for the feedback.

Thanks to those who came and testified and expressed your concerns.

Uh, I did have some questions.

Um, and I know staff did try to clarify about this short-term rental ordinance not necessarily applying to folks who stayed longer than 30 days.

I think it's there's like a term for it, um middle term housing or something, like something beyond 30 days, right?

Um, and how that's separate, right?

And folks can still do that and house those folks like traveling nurses or folks that are working on contracts that want to have like a two-month lease or something.

Um I was curious about the amount of um units that are operating as short-term rentals in the city.

I don't know, we had some discussions about it.

Um there's about 537, I think, permitted.

Um, I know there's been talk about complaints for those that are unpermitted, and it's hard to really gauge how many are unpermitted.

Um but on some of these code enforcement calls.

Do you guys have any sense of how many were determined to be unregistered short-term rentals?

Um, I don't have the answer for for sure, but I would like to kind of restate that it is extremely difficult, you know, because when in you're dealing with an unpermitted ADU, or I'm sorry, an unpermitted short-term rental.

Um they do have to kind of catch them in the act.

There has to be compliance.

Um I would uh I don't have you know statistics to give you.

I know that in certain circumstances, code enforcement has been successful and issued administrative penalties to the property owner for you know unpermitted short-term rentals.

In other circumstances, they have been unsuccessful.

And unfortunately, the city doesn't have the resources to do like a stakeout for these types of situations, right?

Code enforcement has you know other fish to fry.

So that's the best answer I could give you.

Just want to add one bit to that, right?

If I could the map I showed of the location of permitted short-term rentals, we created that map in response to neighborhood group interests to know where permitted and unpermitted ones were.

So to essentially use the community, the community to help us know in and inform that enforcement process.

So the map that was shared showed permitted and also unpermitted.

No, that we didn't know, but if if you if there was a party next door or there they saw a rotating cast of guests, a neighbor did that, they could look at that map and know is there a permit for short-term rental or not, and we'd perhaps have more um informed enforcement.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

That is a useful tool, I imagine to community groups who are have an interest in um having uh licensed operators of short-term rentals.

And I think my one of my points or concerns is that it it's tough to find these unregulated short-term rentals.

I know there's you know 500 or so licensed ones, but there could be a lot more.

I don't know how many that is, right?

Um so you know, so that when I think of that, I do, you know, I am I think my my primary concern is about trying to preserve um access to long-term housing options, and I like this proposal to um restrict the permits to owner occupants.

Um so I I do feel like I'm in support of that.

I also like the fact that you're trying to gather information from the platforms like Airbnb, which will help with that enforcement and give you a better idea of how many maybe operating without permits and be able to do that that enforcement.

Um wanted to call that out, and then also um was curious about the um the folks who did come and kind of express uh concerns about the fact that they made investments uh with uh the ordinances that were in place to convert or utilize their homes or the properties as short-term rentals, and that could be a lot of money, especially for someone who's not a corporation, and so um and and maybe you relied on certain income being generated through the short-term rental to offset those costs.

So if uh if I were to say one recommendation, I don't know if it's if it's spelled out, but for the city to consider um uh a grandfather fathering clause for permits that may be already in place to allow those folks to continue to operate while um maybe a more restrictive ordinance gets passed because they um they made a big financial commitment to try to um uh be in in line with the ordinance that was in place at the time.

So with that, um one last question, actually.

Um the uh the revenue that was mentioned that was generated, uh a 2.3 million um that was sent to the city.

Did does the city um confirm that that number was valid?

2.1 uh so it last year was about two point oh the 2.15 million of um uh transient occupancy tax that was uh remitted for our for short-term rentals to the city.

Um and then that gets split between the uh convention center fund and uh small portion of 17 percent of the general fund, roughly.

Okay, thank you, thank you.

And so it sounds like if we're able to um get stronger partnerships with these platforms to maybe get some of these unregulated uh short-term rentals regulated, that could potentially increase um the number of revenues that's call that gets collected.

And I know that you guys are looking at trying to increase uh the number of days that a short-term rental could be used with the secondary unit, which could also potentially impact that upwards as well.

So um, so it seems like there is um um you know still benefits to the city and and trying to generate some of this revenue, and it's not not uh not losing money by some of these um these ordinances.

So uh with that I I do yield more time.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Commissioner Mossius Reed.

Thank you, Chair.

Um first I want to start by saying that I second everything that Commissioner Caden said, so great comments.

Um so really quickly, if we do the math again, um that uh Commissioner Reskee did the three 323 units at 20 percent that would be eligible under primary units.

We would then lose, I believe, 258 short-term rentals.

And I think we have 500 and something right now in the market.

That's a pretty significant number.

Um so really like something to consider.

Um that's a huge impact to our city, uh, in my opinion, and and negative impact to our city, in my opinion.

Um and I know we've talked a lot about enforcement.

I know that's really not at our purview.

Um I think uh I've certainly stayed at you know, Verbos and R BMBs, uh Airbnbs in uh South Lake Tahoe and in Pismo Beach, and I bring those two cities up because those could be uh test cases here that we could discuss.

I know Pismo Beach in particular, those are big tourist areas, and Sacramento is not necessarily that, but I think those are interesting test cases because um specifically for Pismo Beach, they did do a moratorium on additional permits, and they did have a grandfather um approach uh before instituting any additional um rules or any new ordinances for people who had already had their permits.

Um and now you you can't get any new ones, so it's really just there's a cap.

Um and for South Lake Tahoe, I I just you know, Courtney, I I had a question about the South Lake Tahoe um the ordinance.

Um I don't know if this is applicable here, um, but from what I understand, um the the South Lake they created an ordinance.

Um and uh the Elder Eldorado County Superior Court.

Um so the property owners challenged the measure.

They argued that it infringed on their property rights and it discriminated against non-resident property owners, and they had to uh it was deemed unconstitutional, and they had to basically scrap the the measure, scrap the ordinance, and redo the entire the entire ordinance and and scrap the measure.

And so I guess my question is what we're proposing here, is that in any way you know potentially uh put us in a situation where we could be you know infringing or imposing on somebody's rights, you know.

I mean, that's that's the concern too, is is um because this is um clearly something that happened already in South Lake Tahoe, and it's obviously it's it's been challenged.

So that's just a question that I have.

I am very flattered by what you think I walk around knowing.

So I mean, um thank you.

But we do um we do have an assigned attorney to this, Angel Solis is in the office.

Angel, I don't know, or in the di in the room.

I don't know if you've looked at this yet, but we can certainly, if not, um digest that and analyze it before it goes to council.

You could take a closer look at it.

My guess is that the Tahoe ordinance had a residency requirement, which required being a resident of the state.

Does this not do that?

This requires a this has a property owner requirement.

So you can be a resident of any state.

Okay.

But uh we could take a closer look at it.

I'm not actually I haven't read the case yet.

Okay.

Yeah, I just want to ensure that.

Yep, I think that's probably something to get to look into.

Um that was it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Commissioner Young.

Yeah.

Um, just quick question on the the permits issued for short-term rentals, are they subject to annual renewal?

Correct.

They're valid for one year from the date of issuance.

Is it possible to incorporate some type of additional requirements that like if you've been a bad actor at this site and you haven't been responding to our code code compliance folks, like that's a grounds for denying any type of renewal?

In the regulations today that already exists, uh, I believe uh Title V states that if you've uh more than once received an administrative penalty, then you're not allowed to um you're not allowed to be issued a short-term rental permit at that location for I think a period of five years, if I'm not mistaken.

So would those have those existing regulations help to mitigate and maybe have we effectuated those regulations such that I mean it sounds like there are have been quite a few bad actors who've been repeating um part of the issues what Brian was mentioning earlier that code enforcement we we literally have to catch someone in the act.

So um, you know, neighbor complaints are not enough to uh that's that's not proof, right?

Um and as the government, we don't want to be getting in between you know a potential neighbor dispute or something.

So we want to actually have uh have caught them, have cited them administratively, and that can be uh that's proven to be challenging.

I guess I'm I'm having a difficult time understanding why it would be challenging because if you are issuing a letter to the residents and give them a certain time to respond and for whatever reason they choose not to respond, doesn't that give grounds for I could offer a little bit if you don't mind Pete?

I do have zoning enforcement under my my supervision.

So I have two zoning investigators.

There's basically code enforcement officers, same um we have the same procedures, same city code uh backing what we do.

They have to visually observe that we need visual confirmation of a violation evidence.

So we have to gather evidence that a violation occurred, and that could be reconnaissance through is there a listing and a hosting platform, but the activity occurring on the property, we have to visually observe it to verify the violation, otherwise that allegation will not hold up on appeal.

Yeah, I I think kind of where I'm kind of going with this is there some other way we haven't really thought through the enforcement piece as opposed to kind of going through this other methodology, which you know it sounds like there's been quite there there are some benefits, right?

That the community is deriving from these, you know, short-term rentals, and um, you know, I I think it's it's it's problematic, I think, to kind of eliminate this, you know, uh these benefits for the sake of you know, I I don't know how bad these actors are, you know, from these secondary rental short-term folks, but you know, it did that's that just seems to be what the dynamic is, and I'm just trying to see if there's some other alternative way of of addressing this, whether it's through enforcement or whatnot, that um doesn't result in in us kind of throwing away some of these benefits.

Thanks.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner Thompson.

Thank you, Cherry.

Um so just to understand where our ability, like I know we're moving, the intent is to move.

Um, but if we have recommendations or adjustments, how do we form that Courtney can correct me if I get out get out of bounds?

You could move you could move the ordinance to council with the comments that are provided here, and we will summarize them in a report for the council.

And um, if you feel like there's any particular point what you want to get on the same page about, you could certainly do that.

Um, but we will summarize all of your comments here today and uh present them for consideration.

A lot of them concern Title V is what I'm noticing, so um, yeah, for whatever that's worth.

So that's a little bit where I'm at, because um I think for the change three, four, and five within Title V.

Cool.

Uh, but the proposed change one and two within Title V.

Uh, and especially with the conversations that we've been having, uh I'm feeling the lean and that awkwardness in between five and seventeen, and as the discussion that's been going on, uh I see and I'm curious for the change number one, the statement of residency.

Um, if we're gonna state it as the property owner's primary residence, we're specifying it in a building, right?

Um, but it also sounds like in our housing push uh and our zoning, that we've done a lot of focus that it's actually on the property, and the building fills the property, and and with where we're focusing our missing middle housing and our housing density efforts, we're trying to maximize the property, which I think is where we're seeing this difference of we're trying to encourage building more on a space, but yet this ordinance is almost discouraging it.

And uh I'm wondering if there's an opportunity.

So um, if I could just say one thing.

So the um, you know, this is trying to encourage it versus current our current rules.

So um if you move on the property, um you would be able to get a primary permit for another dwelling on the property.

And I love that, and that's like change number three with the ADU applause, love.

But I think the part where I'm stuck is for those who are say maximizing their property to have two ADUs, which is fantastic.

We love that.

And again, going back to what Commissioner Caden was saying, even if they're building it out today with the intent of it being a short-term rental, is it going to stay like that for a hundred years?

Or will we, as a city just continue to build stock of housing that can work for multiple things, not just short-term, but long-term, et cetera.

And that building piece, I think is the larger goal that we're overall looking for.

So I feel that the change number one and two, as stated, even though I understand the intent, may be a little short-sighted in trying to address a temporary issue, which is not an irrelevant issue, but it is a temporary issue and potentially slowing down our progress for the longer term.

So the the question and the adjustment I think I'm looking for is there an opportunity to adjust the property owner's primary residence to be just the property owner's primary residence property, and then moving that to the permitte, the short-term rental permit is per property, and the zoning already dictates, and our building code already dictates how many properties you can have on there.

We already own that.

That's that's done.

Title 17 is finished.

So uh that I think would be my uh I guess investigation recommendation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Commissioner Lumbus.

Thank you, Chair.

Just had a quick clarifying question.

Um, I know we were talking about the difficulties in enforcement.

Um, and I know that part of this is requesting more information from the online platforms.

If you're able to obtain that information, would you still need to go out and catch some short-term rental operator in the act?

Um no, sir.

We would be able to take that information and work closely with code enforcement, um, you know, and use all of the aforementioned enforcement tactics to drive compliance for the short-term rental program.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner Hennez.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um I want to thank staff for your guys' time and analysis on this.

Um, for the folks in the room who share their perspective and during public comment and for the fellow commissioners for this dialogue, it's been really robust.

I've appreciated a lot of it and and uh want to just echo the comments by Commissioner Thompson.

I couldn't put it better myself.

Um, totally understand the balance here and the trade-offs that you guys are um deciding on.

Um, and I would uh strongly uh express some concerns with the changes to number one and number two.

Um I'm gonna stay away from the core enforcement discussions with the complaints discussions and the data discussions.

I don't think those are really big issues, but they've been discussed here already.

Um, and my main um thinking around this, I think where I'm landing today, too, just to add to some of the examples that were shared earlier, is is really about not putting Sacramento in a position of of doing a disservice to themselves by being a little too more restrictive.

Um, I do agree with the with the thinking about uh being able to accommodate demand.

I mean, someone mentioned after Shock Music Festival, hotels are completely booked, there was nowhere else to stay.

I think short-term rentals and encouraging that more and helping uh those from coming out of the shadows and into being uh you know legally operating and permitted um is is more helpful, and I also want to provide some context for a district six.

In district six, we have the med center near us was mentioned about um you know traveling nurses and traveling professionals uh in the medical industry.

We also have a lot of retirees who were depend and rely on supplemental income using their homes in the area for short-term rentals.

Um, and the other uh piece I want to add and share with the team with the commission here is I recently had an opportunity to um travel with the Sacramento delegation to Morelia Michoacan, where we're establishing a sister city relationship.

This is a really important uh uh historical and cultural um uh relationship and and engagement with uh Michoacan in Mexico, um, the large Mexican population in this uh community and throughout California are from Michoacan, and soon we will invite uh the mayor and um delegates from Michoacan and Morelia to Sacramento.

We want to make sure that when families are visiting each other, because there is a direct flight from Sacramento to Morelia, that uh those families have the option and more options to be near their families and have that uh close closer connection than staying at a hotel if that works for them again, just providing options for um for the different circumstances and the different situations that um we want to invite and encourage um in this city.

Um so all in all to say that while you know I again I understand where we have to um make our decisions and really balance, but uh I I I really think that it's important for Sacramento to not just encourage from a property rights perspective for number one and number two, from a tourism perspective, um uh, but also from an economic flexibility perspective, um, as but and not just with tourism, but also this could be an emerging economy that provides uh future opportunities for something else.

Um so that's where I'm thinking right now.

Um I would like to pass along those comments.

I'm not too sure.

Um, you know, if there's perhaps a another opportunity to comment on this in the future here in the commission again, and I I just think that there's a lot of still unanswered um questions and and perhaps more information that we would like to deliberate.

I yield my time.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner Nybill um I would like to make a motion.

Uh I'd like to move staff recommendation with some of the amendments that we've uh some of the changes that we've heard.

The specifically um Commissioner Thompson, you you said so much better than I could.

So um that would be the change number one and change number two, which is uh we define the property rather than the residents as the primary residence, as primary is that is that right, primary property.

So you live on the primary property, and then um we don't limit one short-term rental per owner.

Um we allow four, because that's the other place where you can have up to four.

Also, um, is it how big of a deal is it if we go with if we grandfather in existing permits until they're sold or until they're no longer use them?

Yeah, so as the ordinance is written today, um there is a one-year renewal under the regulations existing before you know the date of enactment of the proposed ordinance.

So we're gonna be allowing existing permittees who hold a permit before the changeover to to get another year of renewal under those regulations.

Um in regards to um, you know, I I'm not sure I would have to defer to city attorney in the changing of the language um to you know a grandfather clause.

Um but what you did say one thing of changing full to four short-term rental permits per lot.

I do want to just let you know that there is a limitation of six guests per lot.

Yeah, um, so when there are multiple short-term rental uh permits on the same lot, what we do is we limit the people to each short-term rental.

So if there was four, they would the the permittee would have to elect, you know, you get two one one.

Exactly.

So I mean it would be limited there would be a person limitation.

I just want to point that out.

Um thank you.

Thank you for that.

It and um if we could hear from the city attorney, how difficult is it to grandfather in an annual permit?

We can do that, and there's a version of it in the ordinance.

So if you're looking for an extended period uh beyond what's in there, we can we can draft it.

Okay.

And we can, if you're not prepared to give a timeline, we can work with staff to come up with options before it moves on to council.

Okay, okay.

Yeah.

Um do you you you don't need more for a motion, do you?

Yep, okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Commissioner Caden advice chair Caden.

Yeah, I'll I'll second uh the motion on the table, and I would you know, just to reiterate, would um say that I share the concerns around change one and two.

Um I totally support all of the the recommendations from Commissioner Thompson, and then um would support some version of this grandfathering idea, at least I think it's worth at least exploring.

Um and then I would just add in um if it wasn't you know clear from my comments earlier, I would be really interested in allowing for like a a non-owner-occupant short-term rental permit for new construction.

So if you have a rental property and you want to build an ADU that you, you know, and and what's motivating you building that ADU is is that you want to use it for short-term rental.

I I think makes a lot of sense to add that flexibility, and even if you're not an owner occupant.

Because it's not like you're taking units off off the shelf, right?

You're creating a new unit.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Um Commissioner Moses, if you don't mind, I think might go to um Courtney first to see this.

Sure.

I'm just sorry for one second.

If we can go back to that, were you making a friendly amendment to the motion?

No, I think it's it's just a second to the it's just a second to the motion, and then I'm adding to the feedback that we're providing to to staff, is that right?

Or does it need to be a new motion or a friendly amendment?

Commissioner Nybo made a motion with um with some I would say more slightly more formal comments, and uh I think he's seeking this commission's concurrence with that.

So unless the attorneys have a different opinion.

Sounds like a friendly amendment.

Are you open to a friendly amendment?

Yes, I'm yes, but of course.

Let's do that.

But can you can you go through and so just to clarify that you're saying that if somebody has a long-term rental and they want to build an ADU in the back, they should be able to do a short-term rental on that?

Correct.

Yeah.

Is that not allowed in the new ordinance?

My understanding is that it's not because they're not an owner-occupant.

I got you.

I got you.

Exactly.

Is that right?

If the property owner didn't reside, that wasn't the property owner's property, the answer would be no.

Yeah.

Under the current draft bait.

I under Yeah, and I would support that amendment because um that's additional ADU that would be built that monitor that gives another opportunity to monetize an ADU.

Is that difficult to incorporate into an ordinance on that?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Courtney, do you have a comment?

I guess I just want to make sure I'm clear on the motion.

So the motion is to one, define the regulations will apply per property instead of per unit.

Two, allow for four short-term rentals per property, three, explore a grandfather clause, whatever staff will explore that, and then finally eliminate the owner occupancy requirement.

The friendly amendment was to eliminate the owner occupancy requirement for new construction, specifically.

Thank you.

Specifically for ADUs.

I'm suggesting for any new I mean, there's various avenues besides ADUs to add units to a property.

So I guess I would suggest for ADUs or anything that's missing middle scale or something, you know, 684 SB9, any any of those opportunities as well.

Thank you, Commissioners.

Uh Commissioner Masi is read.

So I know we don't regulate Title V, so I I don't know that this would actually be an amendment, so I don't know how we would do this, but I this is a recommendation that I would really like the council uh to consider when we move this on.

Uh you guys, this it sounds like this six persons per lot is an arbitrary number.

And I think I don't understand why.

And I I don't agree with it, and I think that it needs to be reconsidered.

And so I will ask that that is um added um as a reconsideration, because I I don't understand why it it is six.

Thank you.

Would that be requested as a friendly amendment?

I if it has to be yes, I think it's incredibly easy to do.

It says it says uh pass a motion.

Oh yeah, front page.

Okay.

May I ask another question?

So that that makes sense.

Staff will incorporate that into the motion as a topic to explore versus you're not asking for an actual amendment to the ordinance right now.

Six.

Yes, yes.

Um I'm sorry, I want to ask Commissioner Caden again about when you say new construction, so if there's a primary unit and two ADUs in the back, are you saying if the can you explain to me?

Say one primary unit and they build two ADUs in the back.

Does an owner have to live anywhere on the property?

In order to use the two ADUs as uh to have a short-term rental on the ADUs, I would I'm suggesting no.

If if they want to build a unit on their property and use it as short-term rental, even if they don't live on the property, if it's a net new unit, I would say that all three units.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Commissioner Hernandez.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Whoops, sorry.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I was going, I was going to have the uh similar question um as uh Commissioner Mercias Reed.

Um so just to clarify, are we is there an amendment or what is the specific direction for now that part of the motion includes uh um allowing up to four short-term rentals um then uh the six occupant maximum doesn't match that.

Um so I just want to understand how how that looks moving forward.

Kevin, jump in.

But I envision the staff report would say the planning commission voted to approve the ordinance subject to these actual changes to the ordinance, the owner occupancy, these other things that were said.

In addition, the commission questioned the wisdom of the six-person limit, and it especially doesn't make any sense if we add more units.

So that's how that would be identified.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Commissioner Lamos.

Thank you, Chair.

Um I do have some reservations about the motion as it's proposed.

And I think I I believe the city's trying to encourage more long-term housing.

It's probably why this maybe where the six occupancy number came from.

So I I um some reservations about some of the components we're we're recommending here.

Um I also want to try to dispel the notion that um like an ADU for long-term housing is somehow um doesn't generate any revenue.

So those are still viable house like revenue options.

If someone wants to build out their lot, they can still build it out for long-term housing options and their property.

Um, and so I think um there's still options for folks who want to do that, right?

Um and and I'm trying to like think of the lens in which the city is trying to move forward with this, and I'm thinking that it's trying to preserve long-term housing options within those lens.

So just wanted to point that out for clarification.

Then I think also there was a comment this uh from staff that said that the city will also consider all comments beyond just what's in the recommendation as part of the report to the city council, right?

Right?

It's not just gonna be what's in the motion, like if there was other comments that were added, or is it just gonna be strictly based on what's in the motion?

Well, there's a a mild limit there's a limitation to staff's ability to transcribe.

So if you want it in the report, you should say it out loud to make sure we capture it.

But the intent is to provide a fair representation of what all of you discussed.

Okay.

Um with that, I'll I'll yield my time.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Um, I had a few questions and clarifications like before we move to a vote on the motion.

Um the I think in your presentation, one of your slides, Kevin indicated uh one permit per property owner.

Um property owners can be multiple uh on a piece of so would it mean that you know husband and wife if they're both probably would would be eligible for a separate permit.

So I think you if not, then you should call it.

I think clarify that.

I think the intention is uh one permit per lot for an owner occupied property.

Okay, I would suggest you clarify that then.

I think the uh another quite a question uh in uh is um I think it was change number five uh regarding the online uh the hosting uh platforms.

I think I mentioned our uh staff meeting earlier today.

The board that I work with at the state, we have issues getting uh online platforms to make changes to conform to our legal desires uh relative to practice for architecture.

Do you do you feel comfortable that you will be able to that the online platforms will uh uh you know coordinate and comply with any changes we make here?

Um I'm hopeful for compliance and um I will work with staff and we we've passed other ordinances as well, uh you know, such as the one where the platforms remit the TOT directly to us and the STMD STID fees, and they've been um you know uh there can be challenges or giant corporations, and sometimes it can be hard to get it to the right person, but I um you know I I trust the Airbnb folks when they say they want to be good partners, and uh I'm confident we'll be able to get the information.

Okay, thank you.

And I guess my last comment is we we heard comments from the public who justify that there was some a lack of accuracy in some of the data that was presented to um the law and ledge.

Can you comment on that?

Or I can so uh when we did go to lawn ledge.

I mean, we were clear with the committee that you know this is the 311 data, it doesn't always um get categorized as the right type of complaint.

Uh but the message that we wanted to get through uh to the committee was just as overall complaints, we get a disproportionate amount from the uh non-primary permitted units versus the primary permitted units.

And we were we just tried to do disclose that we know there's uh you know uh it's not a hundred percent accurate how things get coded on the granular level.

Thank you.

With that, we have a motion on the floor, and we have a second.

Um, do we need to court?

I think reward uh repeat the motion.

I think we've got it, but let's we can do it for kicks if we'd like.

Um so what I understand the motion to be is number one adopt the ordinance with the following amendments.

This is your recommendation.

Define that the regulation should apply on a property basis versus a building basis.

Number two, you'd like to allow four units per parcel per property.

You would like to explore a grandfather clause.

You would like to eliminate the owner occupancy requirement for new construction.

So last question.

So an existing primary unit, they build two new ADUs in the back.

When you say new construction, do you think the two new units the person does not leave need to live in the original primary unit?

Correct.

I'm suggesting that you would be able to use the two ADUs in that case as short-term rental, but it you would not for the for the primary structure.

It's for the new the net new units.

Yes, that are created.

So they so you would still need an owner on the parcel.

That's what I'm saying.

No, it would you would not.

You would no longer need to be.

So let's so let me just give the exact situation.

Like there's a single family, you own a single family rental, you don't live on the site.

You build those, you build two ADUs, you should be allowed to get a permit for short-term rental for those two ADUs, even though you don't live on the property.

Okay, thank you.

And then finally, the commission questioned the wisdom of the six-person limit.

Thank you, Courtney.

Uh, we have a motion that's been clarified.

And does the major of the second agree to the motion as presented?

Was that you, Commissioner?

Yep.

Thank you.

Uh motion and a second.

Uh clerk, can we take a vote?

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Lee.

I commissioner Tao.

Commissioner Lamas.

No.

Commissioner Nybo.

Vice Chair Gaden.

Aye.

Commissioner Hernandez.

Aye.

Commissioner Mercedes Reid?

Aye.

Commissioner Young.

Aye.

Commissioner T's absent.

Commissioner Blunt?

Aye.

Commissioner Rishsky?

Aye.

Commissioner Thompson.

Aye.

And Chair Chase.

Aye.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

Thank you, everyone.

Our next uh item of business uh is uh number three on the discussion calendar.

Uh the 2025 housing element annual progress report.

And uh I think Greta is presenting that all right.

Good evening, Chair Chase, members of the planning and design commission.

My name is Greta Seuss, senior planner in the community development department.

I'm here tonight to present our 2025 housing element annual progress report.

Every April, the city is required to submit a housing element annual progress report to the state for the prior calendar year.

The report provides housing production numbers and status updates on the city's adopted housing element implementation programs.

The 2021 to 2029 housing element planning period housing target is 45,580 units.

These units are broken down by income level from extremely very low-income housing to above moderate income housing.

And this housing target assigned to the city by the state is known as the city's regional housing needs allocation or RENA.

When we break that housing target over the eight-year period, we must produce about 5,700 units annually across all income levels.

In 2025, the city produced a total of 2,0737 housing units.

This represents a 15% increase from the 2024 production levels, which is good.

In 2025, the city produced 930 deed restricted units, affordable to extremely low, very low, low, and moderate income households, accounting for 34% of our total production.

This chart shows the number of housing units produced by income level compared to the city's regional housing needs allocation targets, averaged over the eight-year planning period.

So while we produced about only 48% of our annual production target, we did see housing produced across all income levels.

This chart shows the number of units produced by income level and includes the breakdown between deed restricted affordable housing and non-deed restricted housing.

Deed restricted affordable housing projects that contributed to our 2025 numbers are listed here.

These projects help expand the supply of long-term affordable housing across the city.

And later on in this presentation, you will hear from our city housing manager about some of these projects in more detail.

While deed-restricted affordable housing production is critical to ensure long-term affordability in our community, we know that we cannot meet our lower income RENA solely through subsidized housing given current funding availability.

Today, the average cost to develop a regulated affordable housing unit in Sacramento County is approximately $600,000 per unit.

And if you multiply that by our lower income RENA of over 16,000 units, it would be over 10 billion dollars in total development funding that would be required to produce those units.

And the city's local contribution would likely be around $2 billion over the planning period.

So because of this, in order to meet our housing needs, we must build both subsidized affordable housing and lower cost housing that does not require subsidies, such as through more affordably designed and deployed housing construction methods, creative financing tools, and housing products like ADUs.

Speaking of which, this graph shows our ADU production in Sacramento since 2013.

ADUs have been an increasingly important source of smaller scale, more affordable housing production.

In 2025, the city issued 390 ADU building permits, continuing our strong growth trend we've seen in recent years.

Since 2021, we have issued permits for 1,448 ADUs, which has well surpassed our housing element goal of 680Us in the planning period.

And our shelf ready ADU plans also continue to see interest from homeowners and small builders as of January this year.

31 ADUs have been constructed with these shelf ready plans, and we've issued 21 permits in addition to that.

When comparing our housing production across California, we continue to lead the way of the top six housing producing cities in the state from 2020 to 2024.

Sacramento produced the most units per capita of those six jurisdictions on the screen.

Those programs were assigned different implementation program timeframes, including short-term, medium-term, long-term, and ongoing programs.

To date, we have completed about 37% of our programs.

So we're making steady progress on that front.

In 2025, the city advanced several housing policy initiatives, some of which are listed here.

We updated our universal design ordinance, launched a housing development toolkit map, and piloted a small developer incubator program, submitted our pro housing designation renewal application, adopted our local ordinance implementing SB684, and completed our review of the mixed income housing ordinance.

And on the screen, you'll see photos from some of our small developer incubator events this year.

I'm looking towards 2026.

We're planning to advance some of the items listed here.

We will be looking at an ordinance to allow cottages, backyard cottages on wheels, conducting outreach to expand awareness of our universal design ordinance.

We're gonna look at adopting an ordinance allowing for sale, the sale of ADUs through state legislation AB 1033.

We'll be reviewing and updating our condo conversion ordinance to make it more feasible to convert existing market rate housing, certain existing market rate housing to condos.

We'll do some continued small developer programming, and then we'll also be conducting a citywide ADU survey.

And then I will pass it now to our city housing manager Yayin Isle to provide an overview of some recent and ongoing housing projects.

Thank you, Greta.

Church Ace, members of the Planning Design Commission, nice to see you all.

I'm Yah Yan Eil, I'm the city's housing manager.

I work out of the city manager's Office of Innovation and Economic Development.

We wanted to provide some updates on housing projects.

Once upon a time, the city had funding that we made available to help support the development of housing.

Back in 2022, the city made some significant investments with Measure U, General Fund, Risk Management Fund, our homeless housing and assistance program funding, as well as some old redevelopment funds and other funds to support and help increase the production of housing.

So I wanted to highlight some recently completed projects, projects that are under construction, and projects that are underway.

I also want to note that several of these projects are financed in partnership with SHRA.

Christine is here to help answer any questions, but we partner a lot of times we'll partner and provide financing to SHRA, who is also providing additional financing or issuing bonds for projects.

We also have projects that we partner with the Capital Area Development Authority, CADA, who is also a developer of projects in the downtown core.

So these are a couple of different projects that were recently completed.

The Kind South project is most recently completed this January.

And in the effort to save time and happy to go back and answer questions about any of the specific projects.

San Juan Apartments is close to being done.

They're going through application processes right now for prospective tenants.

And the 13th and C project is also well underway for construction.

Some additional projects that are under construction on the Stockton Boulevard corridor, there is quite a bit of growth going on.

If you've driven down Stockton Boulevard lately, just south of Broadway, you'll see the Gateway East and West projects that are going up really quickly.

And we recently had a groundbreaking event at the Donner Field, which is a project that SHRA has been working on for decades, so it was a really exciting groundbreaking to see that project come through.

I will know and just put a plug in the Housing California Conference is going to be in Sacramento next week.

And we are the city is hosting one of the tours for the conference, and it is going to be a Stockton Boulevard tour, which will highlight many projects along Stockton Boulevard and Broadway, including these housing projects, other housing projects that were completed a couple years ago, including the Stockton Safe Stay, which is a tiny home shelter program operated by the county.

A couple of pending projects that the city is currently working on are we have several property-related projects.

So Russell and Truxel Apartments is also known as the Fong Ranch Road property that the city owns.

And we have a purchase and sale agreement with Anton Development that was approved in 2025.

There's been several iterations of that project.

And we currently receive their planning entitlements and are looking to pull together financing.

So that is a property when they close on their financing.

They anticipate closing on the sale of our property for this development next February.

Club Center Drive is another city owned property in the North Natomas area.

It's a city surplus property.

It was long ago originally considered for a community center.

However, with the completion of the North Manitomas Community Center, there is no longer a need for another community center in that location.

And so the city went through the exempt surplus process for this property, which the state allows us to declare a property exempt surplus if it's going to be 100% affordable.

And we are currently in discussions with EAH housing on looking at an affordable family and senior housing project.

So we're in the very early stages.

We have an exclusive right to negotiate agreement with EAH, and we will hopefully eventually be bringing back a purchase and sale agreement to the council for that project.

Step up on Fruit Ridge is another property that the city purchased for Step Up several years ago.

And they were looking, they're looking at doing a hundred units of permanent supportive housing.

They were originally looking to go non-traditional in terms of financing, so they were hoping to through a foundation grant that they received with the Lenar Foundation.

They were looking to pull together pieces of funding that were not going to be our more traditional tax credits bond financing.

However, the project is a little bit stalled with the financing, so we'll continue to see what we can do to bring this much needed project forward.

AHSC, the affordable housing and sustainable community, is a large source of grants, which I'm sure DOF could probably speak to more than I could.

But it has been a great resource for housing projects in the city, as well as this grant also includes a transportation and transit component.

And so with these housing projects, the city public works department is also receiving money to improve pedestrian and bikeway projects near these projects.

So the on Broadway project is nearly complete, might be just about complete.

Sakura is under construction.

The Clover Apartments and Ice Street Apartments were two projects that were awarded just in December.

And so now they're going forward and continuing to pull together the rest of their financing and going through their building permit process.

We have a couple of other potential projects that we've been working on to increase the pipeline for permanent supportive housing to address the housing shortage for people who are experiencing homelessness who are really needing that highly subsidized rent.

You know, these are a lot of people who cannot afford more than $600 of rent.

They're only on Social Security.

And we are looking to do these a little bit differently as well.

We're looking to use pre-manufactured homes.

These are homes that have bathrooms and kitchens all within their own unit.

We are moving along with the state on the Rio Linda site and hopefully getting through their application process.

And we are still working with the state on the MAC Road project.

So we are hoping that these projects will be awarded and we'll be able to bring on 220 more permanent supportive housing units.

We have a couple of other city properties that we continue to look for development opportunities.

One of them is the Colfax site in District 2.

This is the former camp resolution site, which some of you might know this as.

This one is is more uh we're looking at um, you know, talking with Habitat for Humanity and looking at more potentially of a uh single family, perhaps denser single family development opportunity on this site to kind of fit in with the neighborhood.

There's an elementary school that's right across the street from the site.

Um they're currently evaluating site and development standards to see if they can make a project work.

We do still need to declare this property surplus and go through the surplus land act steps, but we are also hoping that we might be able to enter into an exclusive right to negotiate with them in 2026.

And finally, um the city inherited uh properties as uh when redevelopment um agencies were disbanded, and uh we've re inherited some former redevelopment agency successor properties that we currently have listed with a broker for sale.

Um these projects are listed.

Um I wanted to put this up there as a plug for anybody who is uh looking for development opportunities.

Um we have been pushing these properties and trying to garner interest in development opportunities.

Um the one parcel at Norwood and Silver Eagle is adjacent to the Del Paso Nuevo project.

So you can see there's kind of that park site, and uh we uh have several um properties.

It's a you know decently sized parcel.

The other parcel there at Lexington and Dixian is um it just if you keep going down that one street there, um Selma, you will hit the Swanston Light Rail Station.

And we've also had some conversations with uh Sacramento Regional Transit as they have a very large underutilized parking lot at that site at what uh partnership opportunities there could be for development.

So we we put these out there for any potential interest.

So that concludes my presentation, and uh Greta and I are both happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, Greta and Ya Yen.

Great presentation.

Uh great update on the on the program too.

Um I'm optimistic to see something happening with that COFAX site.

Uh having lived not too far from that, watching it go through its uh it's its issues over the years.

Um I I think I'll be asking if there are any public comments.

I'm not sure there will be, but um, I did want to say uh looking at the numbers that you presented, Greta, of the Sacramento is uh the per capita, the highest producing uh city out of the top six.

That says a tremendous amount about I think all the efforts that staff has has made in allowing the city to uh to get to that point.

So congratulations to everyone on that.

Great, great move, very proud of that.

Uh, with that, are there any members of the public that wish to speak on that program?

Thank you, Chair.

I have no speakers for this item.

Thank you.

Uh, any commissioners that have questions or comments.

I don't know.

Uh boys here call it.

Okay.

Yep.

Yeah, uh, would definitely echo all of that.

I mean, you know, I'm always amazed at you know uh what staff is able to do.

And um, you know, I think it's really overall production and it's in particular the affordable production, that's just phenomenal.

And um, I had a quick question for you, Yayen.

I appreciate the presentation.

It's actually really nice to just get the overall kind of picture of all the the projects in the pipeline.

Um so and it's I appreciate how creative I think the city is with like how we're funding all of these things.

It's like so many different avenues that you're pursuing.

And I'm particularly interested in all of the loans that have been made from the various sources, including like the risk management fund and then other funds as well.

And um, I'm wondering if you can just kind of talk a little bit about um you know how those work.

Like, are you you're you're offering, I presume, sort of below uh market, you know, rates than as opposed to what they would normally get through through lenders, and I guess a larger question around just how are we thinking about positioning these loans in the future?

Is it you know, is there thinking around creating a more like a larger revolving loan fund or you know, consolidating some of these various sources that we're using to loan out funding to to kind of create a more formalized program.

Yeah.

Well, I will start by saying that SHRA is the primary financer of affordable housing projects in the city and county of Sacramento, but we did have some um funding opportunities that came up several years ago that we wanted to take advantage of to really bring forward some of these catalytic projects.

So the majority of the loans that we have structured are residual receipt loans, and so they are with favorable conditions and uh you know, we're anticipating that most of them will take some time before we uh see any residual money that will come back to the city.

And so I know that developers, um, a lot of actually workforce um housing developers have approached the city who really are looking for very small gaps, like a million, and and they have said it'd be great if the city had just even a small revolving loan fund.

Unfortunately, with our current budget deficit situation, um, we're not in a position to be able to do that.

Um, but we do continue to apply for grant funding.

We're going to be applying for the fourth round of pro housing money in uh the the spring.

Um we do continue to offer the uh fee deferral or fee uh zero dollar impact fee program to help support programs.

Um and you know, we have uh continued conversations with the city treasurer's office on what other um pots of money that uh might be invested in one area could potentially be invested in a housing project that would maybe quickly return the money and uh so those creative solutions uh continue.

I also wanna add an acknowledge that Leslie Fritchie in our department, um, she is you know has a wealth and breadth of experience with uh financing and supports um many of these projects as well.

So we can we continue to to look at what other ways that we can bring some sort of recurring ongoing funding source forward.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

And I mean, I think the um there's been various you know uh places across the country that have really started to explore these sort of revolving loan funds and had a tremendous amount of success and having that be this kind of recurring source of funding that you know you're able to offer these great terms because it's like it's something that you know it's gonna happen.

You get the money back within a few years and you're able to kind of keep it turning.

Um and then so yeah, thank you.

And then just more generally, I wanted to yeah, commend the city.

And I I always in these presentations I always want to tie it back, I guess, to like what what the point of the housing production is, which is we're trying to reduce rents, and so I if it's possible at all to in the future just like have some statistics about what what rents have looked like because I think there's um amazing news on that to me.

Like, you know, we've been building all of this housing to the end of reducing rents and rents have been flat for three years, like actually negative, I think, for like I think I was reading in the collier's um quarterly report that it's six of the last 12 quarters have had negative rent growth.

Um you can I mean you can on the open market in Sacramento now, you can find affordable housing if you are 80% AMI, which is you know, the the statistic, you know, it's that's the threshold that we consider affordable housing, right?

So if you are at 80% of the area median income, you can find market rate housing today in Sacramento that is affordable.

That's like that's remarkable.

That is a functioning housing market to a certain extent, which is like very unusual in California.

So I just I wanted to lift it up because I think it's it's really really meaningful, and it's actually like the the output of all of this work.

And so yeah, thank you to everything that staff has done to make that a reality and and to to our council and to this commission as well.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Uh Commissioner Young.

Yeah, I also just wanted to commend the the planning staff for all the work that they put in with you know with with the very limited financial resources, right, that are available to produce kind of the lower income band units uh in this region.

Um that said the the because you know the RENA, the RENA units, right?

That were we said that we were going to um produce over a certain period of time, right?

We're we're falling short of that.

Um has there been any other consideration of what else might we do to try to um perpetuate those numbers a little bit further?

I mean, I don't I've seen the laundry list of all the things that you guys are doing.

Um, but just given the fact that you know, yep, you guys done a lot, but we're still falling short.

Has there been any kind of consideration of other things that we might do as a jurisdiction to to improve those numbers?

Uh, you know, we're working on our citywide zoning code update that'll be um uh you know expanding our uh the results of the the general plan, right?

We have our um we I think we still have even more opportunity to be unlocking, um right.

We have our missing middle interim ordinance, but um you know that'll be exciting to see.

I think um, you know, from the local perspective, we continue to just implement um you know good policy um when we have an opportunity to opt into new state legislation, you know, doing that.

So I think that at this point, you know, we're looking to um you know, hopefully see more market rate reduction and maybe more um state-led um efforts around you know, building code and things like that, but um, you know, all years all the time on any um potential ideas for new ways to incentivize it.

Yep.

Um a couple of follow-up questions.

Um I noticed in the sorry, I have got this coughing spell, and I appreciate you guys kind of accommodating me.

Um I saw in District 8, there was the Clover Apartment, and I think you had mentioned that they had received a SIDLAC bond allocation in the last December round.

I just went on the list.

I did not see their name.

Could you just it was the AHSC, the affordable housing sustainable community grant?

Okay, they they received AHSC, but they did not receive the SIDLAC bond allocation award.

Okay.

Okay, so they received a different okay.

Thanks.

Um, could I ask Christine Weigert?

Uh and it might not be Christine who answers it, but I'd like to ask her just because I think SHRA, SHRA is really the main vehicle that we have in Sacramento that is responsible for that one sixth I saw on the on the table, which was really helpful, right?

$600,000 per unit to produce affordable housing restricted, and Sacramento's, you know, in general on average contributes 100,000, right?

Which is one sixth to the total development cost.

So that they are the primary organization that we have that that produces those units on the lower lower band.

Um I had a question regarding um, I know that in the SAC B that there's just been a lot of talk about um Angeli Ashby kind of working on this proposed legislation to possibly do a new joint powers authority, which would kind of combine the different housing agencies from different jurisdictions into this super kind of regional agency.

Um could you maybe give us a little bit more of a flavor of kind of like where that process might be at?

I don't know if you're the expert on it, but I think what I'm sort of curious is in that proposed legislation.

Is there any type of initiative that tries to leverage additional type of funding sources other than the one the existing funding sources that each of these jurisdictions have?

Um I I didn't know if they were like possibly looking at doing some form of tax agreement financing or some other type of funding mechanisms that increases right the amount of resources available to reduce affordable housing.

I think that was kind of really my main uh curiosity, but I I looked and I'm just not sure.

So I'm Christine Weiker with SHRA.

Uh I am not an expert on SB 802.

Um I have read it, as many of us have probably um it does uh you know suggest the another JPA that combines housing and homeless functions for cities and the uh county of SAC within Sacramento on the county.

Um it does name many of funding sources that it this new JPA would administer things like home funds, for example, and C BG funds, and it does right now it states that though uh if a locality has let's say a city housing trust fund, those funds would stay being spent in that city.

But I know it's still going through the legislation.

I mean it's going, I think right now it's in the housing assembly housing and community development committee.

Um but I really am not an expert in 802, so I'm not sure I can tell you much about that.

Okay.

Well, no, I appreciate I mean what you were able to provide.

I don't know if there's anyone else who could provide some more information on we've been we've been following SB 802 a lot closer as it has um direct impacts to the city and around housing and homelessness and the proposals that it's uh providing.

So um, so I've read the bill over and under like 10 times.

Um so at this point, there isn't anything that would look to create like a tax increment or financing district or anything that it's looking at existing funds that are administered by local jurisdictions and SHRA.

Okay, thank you.

And then I had a follow-up question for Christina, which I think she'll be able to answer.

Um, just given given the path the various federal cuts that have occurred over the past year.

Just given given the path the various federal cuts that have occurred over the past year, could you maybe give us the big picture overview of kind of where SHRA is with their project-based voucher allocation as well as its tenant-based voucher allocation?

Well, um we were we were fortunate in 2026 the Congress did keep our funding levels the same across the board, or even a little bit a little tiny go higher for the um housing choice voucher uh department, but the other federal funds we administer for affordable housing, like as I mentioned CD BG and home, those all HOPWA, those all remain the same.

Um so uh you know, at this point, we are uh at a high level.

We have um the same number of vouchers, which is about 13,000 vouchers for families in the county of Sacramento.

Um and we're still able to maintain that number of vouchers.

Uh however, the amount of funds we're receiving from HUD still are not um quite meet making that um that budget amount required to fund those vouchers.

So we have nobody has come off the voucher program, but we're just not able to increase the voucher level, not necessarily because of the number we have, but because of the the funding we're receiving from Congress.

So very high level again.

You can imagine the rents, you can have the same number of families having a voucher, but the rents continue to increase, they're not increasing in Sacramento as much as they were, but for many years they were really increasing, but Congress was not increasing our budgeted amount they were giving us for those vouchers.

So that's why we're sort of at this equilibrium right now and not able to provide any additional vouchers.

So in other words, the those vouchers they're not able to increase the the rent amount that they they say that well, we are increasing rents, but that's why we can't provide more vouchers to individual.

Okay, it's the number of vouchers.

Right.

If you have a voucher now, you're very lucky.

Got it.

Yeah, got it.

Okay.

And then all the other funding sources like CDBG, how like that you are used to fund new projects, that level has remained consistent.

Uh yes, and but we were anticipating a big cut.

That's right.

Yeah, the the um the president's budget, uh, the um Congress's budget that reduced it.

But anyway, we got the same amount, so that was great.

Right.

Um maybe more of a question for SHRA, like just from a staffing perspective, like um how there's a lot of developers who are like coming to you guys and requesting funding, and um, you know, can you maybe give us a sense of like how many developers and projects you have to turn away because of this is off the top of my head, so it might be a little incorrect, but we have two funding rounds a year.

We um SHRA administers on behalf of the city of Sacramento federal, state, and local funds.

Um, and I think in January, our last funding round, our the requests were over 55 million for financing, and I believe we might have advertised 10 million as being available.

So you can see the ask is you know about what one to five dollars available.

So there's a lot, there is a there's a lot of good affordable housing projects out there.

We wish we could provide funding for all of them, but um there's just funding is restricted.

Thank you so much.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Uh Commissioner Lamas.

Thank you, Chair.

And I actually had kind of similar question for SHRA.

Uh it had to do with uh the federal funding uh for these the voucher programs.

I know you mentioned that the funding level was um similar or are um not adversely affected.

Are there any long-term plans to try to account for future limits in funding for those voucher programs?

I know there's other jurisdictions that are looking at maybe um redeveloping sites with different funding sources that may not rely on federal vouchers.

I'm curious, maybe long-term planning, you know, because I know the building of new housing is great, and I the city's doing a lot of good work, but I think preservation is also a really key part of that.

So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that, that long-term preservation strategy.

Uh there's you know, lots of discussions being had.

Um, but I can't point to anything specific except for making sure we can make sure we administer the program as efficiently as possible and make the dollars go as far as they can.

Okay.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Yield my time.

Thank you.

Um not a question, a comment, I guess.

We were all, I think, all pretty disappointed uh years back when Governor Brown um abolished uh redevelopment.

Um is any there anything in any of these uh financing uh funding mechanisms that I've heard discussion about um in any way uh you know trying to uh trying to accomplish what tax increment financing had been back then I know we were promised by the governor at the time that something would follow to replace it, but it hasn't.

Um I think right now the closest thing might be our infrastructure financing districts.

I feel like I saw something about proposed legislation that looked something like tax increment, but I don't have the details on that, and I can look into that.

Um but I thought I saw when that there's a whole slew of uh bills being proposed, and one of them I think was kind of redevelopment tax increment like so yeah.

Yeah, it's not it's not like the old redevelopment days, yes, yeah.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks, yeah.

Um any other comments or questions from uh the commissioners.

This is not a uh uh an item that requires our approval, it's for review and comment only.

So uh thing anyone wants to add before we take an action.

Do we take an action on yeah, very good.

Thank you, staff, everyone.

Uh Courtney, is there anything we have to do for a review and comment?

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

Um, with that, let's see, we've already covered the uh director's report.

Uh one more item oh yeah, sorry.

We will now move on to item four, which is an informational presentation by the Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel report.

Um heat.

Uh, who will be, I guess Bruce gonna be presenting that's here.

Good evening.

Chair Chase, commissioners.

Um we're here to talk a little bit about uh what uh we've been doing in the last year relative to extreme heat.

Um provide you some information on our recent urban lands program for increasing local heat and heat island effect um and opportunities for mitigation, and to gather from you whatever comments that you might have for us.

Um as noted in the staff report, uh Sacramento continues to experience increasing extreme heat impacts, and those pose a significant risk to public safety, public health, and um particularly in areas where there is a limited tree canopy and high levels of impervious surface of those big parking lots.

Um in 2025, um actually almost exactly a year ago, because we started this March of last year, um the city of Sacramento and the and the County of Sacramento participated in an urban land institute technical assistance leadership exchange um competition, um, primarily focused on advancing strategies to combat extreme heat.

Um with the program, um ULI convened a panel of national and local experts to examine opportunities and uh to talk about how to integrate heat mitigation into land use planning, urban design, development standards, and public realm improvements.

The resulting report, which is part of uh what you received, one heat advancing heat resilience in partnership with the city of Sacramento and County of Sacramento, summarize those key observations, and tonight I'll be presenting to you the key elements of that report.

But before we do that, I want to recognize some people here because I'm standing up here making a report.

But there was a ton of people that worked on this for the last year.

I'd like to uh recognize Laura Teller and and Vic Randall, um also Rachel Patton was involved, and from the the County of Sacramento uh principal uh planner uh Joel Inman.

Um also want to thank ULI for making this opportunity um possible.

So the city and the county came together on this.

We'll talk about that just a little bit, but we had existing um the general plan and climate action adaptation plan goals, and um this goal A2 was about creating environments to reduce exposure, extreme heat and mitigate um heat um urban heat island effect.

And um this goal A2 was about creating environments to reduce exposure, extreme heat and mitigate um heat um urban heat island effect.

So this ULI program played very well into that particular goal.

Um the background was that um as we went into uh looking at this with heat reduction within the public realm, um minimum tree requirements um to minimize uh heat mitigation and then heat resilient design techniques, and this was one of the things that brought me to the program because I had thought for too long that buildings weren't being analyzed properly for their contribution to local heat um effects.

So the these actions were part of the the 2025 planning and zoning work program, and staff saw that the participation in this ULI program was going to be a particular benefit to this.

Um that we're finished with the report, we're working on uh implementing some of these.

Uh the um project was made available through the ULI Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability and Real Estate.

It was a competitive program.

Um and our application stood out uh within the selection process because it centered on a collaboration between the city and the county.

We were pursuing this individually, um, and it turned out the county was also pursuing it at the same time.

Knowing that it was a competitive project, we thought that if we went together, we might have a better uh chance of securing it.

We also thought that we might put ourselves out of competition by doing something that wasn't being particularly asked for.

Um, as it turned out that we over the the last year after selection have been continually lauded for having actually worked with a county.

Um the panel for the ULI was uh put together as a panel of experts from across the country that had experience in different aspects of this challenge that we were talking about from extreme um heat to urban design and economic development, which is a big factor of what we're talking about here.

So the the city county collaboration was critical to this.

Um actually, I if I recall correctly, it was our planning director, uh Greg Sandlin, who said check with the county, they're doing something, maybe we can put this together.

And when we sat and talked to the county in mid-March of last year and looked at the things that they were considering and looked at the things we were considering, they were almost perfectly aligned.

And the the thinking was that heat doesn't really know municipal boundaries, and our constituents don't know municipal boundaries, and we have um environmental justice communities that are mixed between the city and county.

You know, Stockton Boulevard, and it goes city, county, city, county, all the way down.

So we have a jurisdictional area which is uh you know across border.

We actually had a project with part in the city and part in the county.

So within the shared strengths, um, we found that we both had similar policies and both had similar policy documents.

Sacramento City was just a little bit further ahead in this, but this idea that um we were both looking at resilience and climate adaptation strategies, we were both working on policy frameworks to adjust those challenges.

Um, and that we thought that the partners like the ULI and other stakeholders would would end up you know making that just a little bit more impactful.

So um to participate in this technical assistance program, which was part of this um technical assistance leadership, um, we ended up establishing a series of background documents.

So the city could gather documents, the county gathered documents, and we prepared that as background.

There was a briefing book, and I think our briefing book was 300 and some odd pages.

Um they did comment that never in the history of the ULI um review had they seen such a large, complex and complete briefing book, and asked if they actually had to read it.

Um but one of the reasons for the complex briefing book was we didn't want to hear from them things that we already knew, or we already had policies on, or we are already working on.

So what we were really looking for was this ability to reach out and um learn something new from experts around the country.

We had picked a series of city sites and a series of county sites that had similar problems but slightly different focuses.

And I thought it was interesting.

The first place we went to was a a park in North Detomas.

And the first thing this whole group did when they got off on the bus was made it straight for a shade structure sitting in the middle of the park, which only sort of reinforced what it was we were talking about.

So the the panel ended up going through a couple of days of study here and talking to people, and they made near-term and short-term recommendations, and we'll talk about that a little bit later here.

And we also talked about an implementation, and part of it was collaboration with the care holders to may maintain the momentum that we established within this program.

Um pressing the wrong button.

One of the things that we were asked to do was frame the work for the visiting tap.

And so we were asked to establish essentially five questions.

Um these are representative, those questions are not exactly the questions.

Um we'll talk about this in this order a little bit later here as we go through their responses.

But we wanted to know from their national experience what were the best practices for design and development in order to deal with heat mitigation.

We wanted to know more about alternative regulatory pathways, what had worked in other jurisdictions.

We wanted to discuss incentives and funding because nothing is free in this world, and we were concerned that as we went into things that we wanted to add to the the development program, it was gonna cost money.

Um we wanted to deal with equity and underserved areas.

Um the uh area of of you know land park East Sacramento is significantly different than Florent Road.

Um and then lastly, we wanted to know what the role of the public sector was, how to engage the public sectors.

We talked about both the public infrastructure relative to development and the buildings that were being established on those particular sites.

Um one of the the the shared, you know, one of the main concerns here with our question one was how do we embed cooling strategies in our um uh densifying urban fabric.

We want to build more, we want to get it more dense, but how do we build that?

One of the the questions that came up was one of the problems we have was that as we densify, we get smaller and smaller lots, there's less room to put a tree.

Um developers don't want to squeeze a tree in somewhere, so we're trying to balance this idea of things that are good for the environment, create a great living environment for the people of Sacramento, but still provide for a more dense environment.

And um, how do we deal with the under-resourced areas without undermining housing production when you add cost to a project, some of those projects go away.

So when part of the the tap was to talk to people, they ask us to identify um people that they could talk to as a group.

Um we developed a very long list between the city and the county, and then they came back and they said, Yeah, it needs to be a much shorter list.

We can't talk to that many people.

But it was a really broad range.

So we had elected officials, we had staff, we had private sector, we had nonprofit sector, local agencies, state agencies, educational institutes, institution and community-based organizations, and I think some of the commissioners may have even been on those that particular interview list.

Um the information that they got back from these individual groups went into forming some of their policy decisions.

And I I would note that they arrived on a Sunday.

We took them out Monday, they worked on a tour all day, Monday.

Um, they worked as a group on Tuesday and on Wednesday, they were uh responses back to us on general things.

So this was not a really long study, it was show up work really, really hard.

Um I think Tuesday was the hardest day for staff because we didn't have anything to do.

We had been working on this thing for a year actively, just cranking stuff out for six months.

The week leading up to this and and the day of the tour, it was all hands-on deck, and then it's like we got nothing to do.

So the recommended recommendations that came out of this are very much aligned with adopted city policy, but some are new, and some are going to require require further investigation.

Guiding principles.

Look at additional shading, whether it's buildings that create shading or built shade, built shade structures.

There was one personally very embarrassing moment for me in a project on Richards Boulevard where we had allowed a project to convert a street to a pedestrian pathway.

We were standing out there looking at a, we were standing in the shade of a building, and there were trees planted in the shade of that building, and the pedestrian pathway had no shade, no trees.

And I wondered how we managed to get to the point where we created a pedestrian pathway with absolutely no shade.

The other thing that came out of this was trees are not just a nice thing.

They need to be managed as critical infrastructure.

They're as important as a street or water pipes or sewer pipes.

And if we don't manage them, they just go away.

Using the systems approach to go through and deal with this on a fairly regular basis.

We need to look at how to put them in other places.

Rebuild trust with some accountability on how we're going to manage trees and how we're going to deal with the shade structures, not just request them, but actually manage the process.

Focusing on a plan for performance to where we actually had something that we were accountable for and could enforce.

Some places have lots of shade, but they got old trees, and those trees are gonna die.

So in those areas, you need to be a deal with a program for tree replacement.

And if you've got an area that doesn't have trees at all, and there's no development going on, you need to find a path to be able to get trees in those areas, more of a public intervention.

And those areas that are getting development, you need to be clear and more consistent about how we ask for and add trees.

And lastly, it was about building and scaling capacity through partnerships.

It was realized that this could not be just a city or a county effort.

It had to include the development community and the nonprofit community and those other people that are really were interested in the trees.

So we we ended up with a series of responses from them.

Um and these relate to the five questions we started with at the beginning.

So from a design and development standpoint for the built environment.

They came up with some short-term recommendations and some long-term recommendations.

One of them was uh prioritize deep paving.

We have lots and lots of paving that's not necessary.

We need to be able to find a way to begin to remove that paving.

That's just removal of things.

Shade for priority locations and build shade primarily to get shade where it makes a difference and where you can control the actual shade pattern.

And this next one, which was piloting new green infrastructure techniques.

We have a requirement for street trees and the width of a planter, but not necessarily length of a planter.

What we find on a regular basis is that there's not enough root area.

Um was commented that we require street trees or the trees within residential development, but residential paths get compacted at 95%.

You can't pack it up.

Plant a tree in 95% compaction.

We have different kinds of soil conditions, and so you can't plant a tree in exactly uh the same consistent manner and get it to survive.

And what we really found was that a good portion of the trees that have been requested with planting after 10 years weren't growing.

They weren't going anywhere because it was the technique that was used to plant them and provide some some root growth.

One of the things that was recommended was this process called Silva Cells, where you have a solid surface on the top, but underneath you have this very broad area where root structure can grow.

So this allows you to have a fairly narrow surface planter area, but you're providing underground space for the plants to grow.

And this was one of the recommendations is we start looking at different technologies.

Longer term, um, they recommended that we update our design guidelines standards and review process for climate performance.

Um we're actually kind of working on that right now.

I have been advocating for quite some time that the building design should be valley centric, our shading, our heat, our wind flow.

We don't necessarily design buildings in in Sacramento or approved buildings based on their conformance with these.

And the last was expanding clean energy and efficiency systems.

So under the collaboration and funding for near-term recommendations, they said consider an extreme heat focused MOU between the city and the county.

That is currently in process, and kind of skipped over through this, but we went through the process of qualifying, being selected, preparing the material for the TAP to be here, receiving the report, and then beginning to analyze these.

We have been engaged with the county on regular ongoing meetings.

And we have some very very common goals.

What we did here in within the city and within the county, while it might differ a little bit, there was some real common opportunities here.

And if we could begin to deal with this on a regional basis with this memorandum of understanding on how we'd move forward, it could become a regional model from Elk Grove to Lincoln.

Because there is no boundary.

And if we're finding solutions and we're able to identify ways to mitigate those solutions, we want to make that available for other people.

And then collaborating on grants to support implementation, because as we've heard, there's not a lot of funding for these kinds of things, so we want to go out and find that additional funding for this.

And then to move towards a more durable uh sources of funding.

Um, quite frankly, there's just not enough funding to either help the development community implement some of these things or to be able to plant more trees and and to maintain those trees.

And then lastly, you're engaging expand the tent and engage developers.

We can't create standards without engaging the development industry.

If we make something too expensive without other offsetting benefits, then we're not going to be able to achieve what we want.

One of the nice things about the city-county collaboration is that historically it's like, well, if the city does this and we don't like it, we'll just go do development in the in the in the county.

So we're hoping to get that alignment between the two particular areas.

Um next steps, um the MOU document policy options, and this includes both planning options and design options.

We've had a close relationship with the design review administrator for the county of Sacramento, and he and I have been sharing ideas on how one does design review and what kinds of things are important.

And both from the design side and the planning side, we think that it's not particularly helpful to go from one side of the street to the other side of the street and have a totally different set of standards and guidelines, both for planning goals as well as design goals.

So there is hope that as we go through some of these design standards, we begin to share them between the two jurisdictions, and we can see how we're going to adopt them.

Now, clearly we have two different adoption policies between the city council and the board of supervisors, but we do believe that there's a lot of commonality, and there may be some specialization on what goes between each board, but we really do want to see this this common situation.

Um conducting informational interviews, one of the things that we've been asked to do is go back and talk to the people who already talked to sort of expand on that, and then um coordinate with as we go forward on the current planning and zoning administration.

Um li has continued to step up in this process.

Um they want to find funds to launch an additional study tour, begin to push this.

Um of the things that I was not aware of when we got into this, I don't know if you two were was once ULI hooks you, you are hooked for life.

Um we are continually asked to participate in studying what other people are doing, provide information to other organizations, and um advance ULI's goals within our particular region.

Um through this process, I became a ULI member, and then I got drafted into the ULI Sacramento Climate uh resiliency committee, and we did a presentation here, I think a week or two ago.

So um we continue to to participate in what the ULI is doing, and they're they like to leverage the people that have been in their programs.

We want to continue, they're going to continue to reach out to developers because they need the developers to buy into all of this, and ULI is a perfect platform for engaging those folks, um, providing additional letters of support to our our our electeds as we move through, and then to convince continue to elevate the importance of heat strategies because while we can all see that our climate is changing and the um not only the heat but just the weather events get more severe.

We have to be prepared for a way to make our city still very livable.

Um in 10 years we might be like Phoenix is now.

I don't know.

But we have the opportunity to certainly make this a more livable place.

We don't want a Sacramento to get behind the curve and end up with people saying, you just can't go there, you just can't live there.

There's no shade, there's no cooling, it's just a miserable place.

So this is an opportunity working with the ULI to move forward to take care of those things.

So that's the report.

Um you have the the one heat report uh and uh you have the ULI tap in there.

This is the direction we're going.

We'd like to know if there's anything you'd like to caution us with, add to be considerate of.

Um make sure we engage.

So this is your chance to tell us something.

Thank you, Bruce.

Great great presentation.

Um I know we've got another speaker, but this is, I think, as you know, near and dear to my heart.

Um been involved in passive solars for the last 40 years, uh lead accredited professional for the last 25 years.

Uh prior to working with the state in developing their green building uh code.

I worked with the city with Jamie Cutlip, which uh some of you remember Jamie, in developing the city's green building ordinance, which was then preceded by the uh the state's uh green building code.

Um so I I think this is you know, and as a longtime ULI member, which I suggest everybody joined ULI, it's a great organization.

Um I think this is a great elevation of everything that I've seen happen to date uh in the city and around here.

And I look forward to working with the county.

Uh somehow the city has found a way to work with the county here, which is very commendable.

Um Dustin said there was some great people in the county too, having been working with them.

So um a great presentation, I really appreciate it.

One of the things you keep harping on, and I've been harping on for decades now, is the issue of treaties.

Um we and it's interesting as we have pushed to uh maximize our our housing, we have done away with setbacks.

We push buildings right out to the perimeters of property lines, which is great from the building standpoint, not good for tree planting standpoint.

And uh it's always really annoyed me to see how quickly uh tree removal uh permits are granted by the city uh prior to even a plan really being proposed for that site.

So uh I think we need to, knowing that a lot of the areas that the tree is going to grow in, as you pointed out, Bruge, aren't wide enough to to really promote good group.

That's an interesting concept of going down and under.

Uh, but we've got this conflict of you know, more housing, more building, but trying to maintain our our green building, uh our tree coverage as well.

And it's gonna be a challenge going forward.

I think the idea of shade structure rather than just relying on trees is is certainly a good one.

Uh and we need to begin, you know, as you look at designs coming in on buildings.

Let's try to you know really emphasize that and propose those things and until we get to the point where we have an ordinance that may come out of all of this work that will require uh you know a certain amount of shading as a part of a building design uh moving forward.

So excellent presentation.

I look forward to it being implemented and moving forward and working with the uh ULI uh on this.

Um glad you're involved in joined too.

So it's just a couple of comments.

You have uh promoted ULI for decades, and I have not listened well enough.

And and I will tell you that is the light bulb when I when I went to the ULI conference and I went, oh my gosh.

This Bob was right.

That's what I was thinking.

Um about the only time it's ever happened.

And and to your comment about solar solar or passive solar pass solar is is back.

We're gonna go back to thinking about how to use the natural aspects of shading and ventilation in our buildings.

And the last part of this is that energy regulations have always been about our Title 24 energy regulations.

How much energy does it take to make people inside the building comfortable?

We've never talked about what impact does that building have on the neighboring buildings or the people walking by that buildings.

We we have a standard in our central core design guidelines which says buildings should be um uh north south and not east-west, because if they're north-south, they they they they make a minimum shadow on the street, and you don't want dark shadows on the street.

But our buildings that have the long axis facing west are right into our western sun, and that's not good.

And quite frankly, having a building that runs east-west and puts shade on the street, that's a good thing in the middle of summer.

So um we we do need to realign our thinking about the impacts of building have um within the the comfort as well as the success of a particular neighborhood.

So beyond the trees, uh we have to make buildings um better performers for our our neighborhoods.

You use the term which I I think is really important here, valley centric.

I mean, we have a unique uh climate here, uh different than other parts of California.

We need to recognize that in our building site design and city planning.

So again, thank you, Bruce, for and the staff that worked with you on this great presentation.

Uh any yes, we do have uh who was uh was it Commissioner Lowe or is this from before?

Commissioner Messiah Sreed.

Yeah, thank you.

The great presentation.

Um I was able to read the report and also participate and had a really really great discussion with some of the uh members of the group of the ULI panel and group.

Um as some of you may know, I have been going through a complete street streetscape project um with Franklin Boulevard in the city for a while, and there was a lot of uh learnings and revelations that we had going through that process and meeting with the city arborists and you know, trying to you know determine how we would fit in, you know, the trees and the landscaping and how would we maintain that long term, um how would we get the funding to do that?

Um and so there was a lot of really good discussion that we had, and I'm I'm happy to see that it was included in the report.

And um there's just so much more discussion, I think that we could have just around um around providing trees just even in the public right-of-way, and how you know you could get potentially creative about getting funding to fund that.

I mean, we're an you know a nonprofit organization and that didn't have the funding, right, to provide the long-term um the long-term uh maintenance costs, but we're also serving an underserved community that did not have the infrastructure or the um, you know, had uh tremendous heat island effect if you look at the map, right?

So um it was um it was just really eye-opening, I think, to to sort of go through that process.

Um and the city, of course, you know, there's limited, you know, there's finite resources as you had mentioned, Bruce.

And so um, you know, we were lucky enough.

I just want to give a shout out to Rachel Patton and the team, um, because we were fortunate enough to be able, and the city was able to go after a grant to to help us uh fund the maintenance for a few years, and so we are able to now get those trees um maintenance and established because you know that the thing that people don't realize oftentimes is yes, you can have a tree planting event and it's fun and it's great, get your pictures in and everything, but those trees have to be um established for a three to five year period in order for them to survive.

And um, you know, I think oftentimes we don't really think about that long term.

Um, and so uh yeah, anyways, really great conversation.

Um I'm looking forward to to having more of those conversations.

So great job, thank you.

Interesting, just uh I I just remembered some years back, some of you may remember um NASA, I guess, who just happened to have an extra airplane sitting around.

And they photographed, I think about a half a dozen cities around the country.

Um I think infrared photography to look at the the heat uh islands within the cities, and they did Sacramento was one of those cities, and it was very interesting to see.

Not surprisingly, you know, the areas that were really cool and protected, uh, you know, the ones with lots of trees, land park, etc.

The ones who were not the south area of you know, district two.

So uh and I believe that information is still out there, it's still available, I think, with the city as uh as a tool.

But uh that was an interesting process.

Um Commissioner Thompson or Vreski.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much.

This report is really fascinating and looked really fun to put together.

Um, and really important.

So I just have one quick comment.

You guys might already be on this, but um, I think the the comments you made about like new construction considering building finishes and canopies is really great.

Um for existing construction, I I think a couple of the pictures showed like these off-the-shelf metal canopies that you can add.

And um, when existing construction wants to add that, even though it's non-combustible, if you don't put it at least 20 feet away from the building, you're potentially being triggered to add fire sprinklers to your entire existing building.

And so buildings are making the choice to forego the shade because like you know, it's this off-the-shelf product that's not very expensive, but then the fire.

So if there's any way to coordinate that, I just suggest seeing if there's there's something we can do there.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Commissioner Lowe.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for that.

And that report, very interesting and comprehensive uh um initiative you guys led here.

And I just wanted to to highlight some kind of uh interesting recommendations.

I think they were in the long long-term strategy section.

Um my father worked as a laborer and particularly on construction and concrete projects, and I remember going out to work with him, and we'd have to wait uh until a certain time to begin work.

And in the summer it gets really hot, and so you're working like these really extreme heats.

Um so I I um saw that one of the recommendations was to support laborers and try to avoid extreme heat and um work through some of the the ordinances that allows when work to begin.

So I I um appreciate that.

Um the other um item which those of us who have kids um would appreciate was is the shade structures at playgrounds, right?

There are a lot of shade structures, a lot of playgrounds without shade structures, and we all know how hot Sacramento is.

Um, I think as adults we probably have learned to accommodate it um a little bit more than children who are gonna play or want to play regardless of how hot or how cold it is.

Um but it can be pretty dangerous, right, to get on these place structures that in the middle of summer.

Um, and so I want to uh you know acknowledge and appreciate that um you guys were thinking about how to create additional place structures to support kids um during the summertime.

So thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Commissioner Nibel Um just two quick comments.

First is that uh have you considered uh the ground treatment during winter um groundwork for new development?

And and I'll tell you what.

Oftentimes gypcrete is used when it's wet outside, and um when you go through and you grade a large subdivision, and it's because it's too wet to work and you don't want to lose six months of the season.

The problem is is that turns the ground into concrete, and when you put a tree in the ground, it's not gonna grow.

And um I've done it.

And you go back 20 years later, and I was so excited to see these beautiful parkway strips that we put in.

I want to see those trees, and they are about that big 20 years later because they're just sitting a concrete pot.

So I don't think that's something that a lot of cities consider or follow.

Uh the other thing is is that um I have taken out three street trees two this week.

Uh one, the city took out um a couple weeks ago in front of my house.

And they were there they were old street trees, and and uh the city took it out because the sidewalk um needed to be replaced uh because of the city street trees.

And um I had to pay for the sidewalk because of the city's street trees.

I never really did understand that in access.

Yeah, but um they removed one and now it's kind of a gap tooth in front of my house.

So I worked with staff and I removed two more street trees, and they were all worn out, they were getting done with their life.

And I found staff to be very responsive to it.

I think you came uh the inspector came on site three times before they would give me a permit, and we had to uh walk it off and plan it, and they were very thorough about it, but they were very responsive, and so I was quite pleased by that.

Um I was quite pleased by the way that they were so um thorough.

So that's all I got.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, Bruce.

Really, that's a great presentation.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

You reminded me, uh, Commissioner, the some people don't realize that we pay for everything on the sidewalks until they in fact have to pay for everything on the sidewalks, which I've realized that several times now.

Um the first time though in Midtown is interesting.

Uh, they were coming through, they were gonna put new sidewalks in and almost kind of demolish half the roots of a tree out front of our our place.

My wife met with them and convinced them to curve the concrete and work around the roots and everything, and they agreed to do it.

So you can push back.

But any other, let's see, who do we have now?

Oh, sorry, Commissioner Thompson.

Just me, and I'll be quick because it's late.

Sorry.

I'm so excited about this.

This is uh such a necessary time, uh, especially today, is already hot, and we're barely into March.

So the indicators of the impact of living in Sacramento and its heat is becoming very, very real.

And I am thrilled to see this initiative and not only see this initiative but see it teamed with the county, uh, because climate doesn't have a boundary, so it doesn't care.

And uh the broader we can make this impact, the better we'll all be love.

Uh the last part that I'm really excited about and would be maybe the recommendation, although maybe it's old news and you guys already know this.

But to see Kim Garza on your panel, fantastic.

Uh, if we're going to really push this concept of trees and importance, and I recognize it's first shade of shade, yes.

But within this uh broadening the idea of trees as a critical infrastructure.

So it's not just save the trees, save the trees, it's we need to take care of them and learn how to do that.

That how are we ensuring or just making sure that as this moves forward, we are keeping experts who understand how we've prevented trees from growing within unintentionally uh our standard specifications or whatever that is by having someone like Kim consistently engaging in this process to make sure that we've got those who understand uh on the future front of good landscape uh engaging in the process.

That would be it.

Thanks job.

Just a quick comment from my years as uh deputy um state architect.

Uh had I was on several tasks force with the go with the Governor Brown's office.

The first one was flood, uh flood task force.

When we were good at getting in inundated with rain and snow and everything.

So we had a lot of meetings with all the agencies and everything, planning on what we would do.

And uh a few years later, I was on a drought task force.

I mean, things changed that much.

And an interesting thing that happened on the drought task force was that uh the state was asking everybody to cut back on the watering, you know, the lawns, let them die.

And the governors obviously said, well, we're gonna have people to do it.

We better set an example too.

So they said, let's cut off the water in Capitol Park.

And uh, which they started to do.

And I said, you know, do we have separate watering systems for trees and grass?

Well, no, that now we do, but we didn't back then.

That would have killed the trees in Capitol Park by cutting that off.

So the water went back on.

So you just have to be aware of the things that they can happen in here.

So but again, thank you, staff, Bruce, everybody.

Excellent presentation.

Oh, I'm sorry, Commissioner Lee.

Yeah, yeah, great job, staff.

Uh just have two quick comments.

Uh you know, I noticed that for some of the newer developments in Sacramento, some of the trees tend to be on the smaller side.

So I'm not sure if that's something that uh you know can be looked into as part of this.

Um but you know, like for example, land park in Esac, it's it's awesome that they have really big trees, but like in the Thomas, you know, the trees are just you know they can tend to be pretty small, and it takes quite a few years for them to develop.

Um obviously, you know, we have solar over uh on rooftops now too, so that's that's one thing to consider.

Um but the other thing too is that I've noticed that, and um especially in some of the underserved neighborhoods, um the education sometimes is um like it could use more education in terms of uh uh the benefits of of keeping trees.

Uh I noticed that you know some some residents may sometimes um you know arbitrarily remove a tree or or um you know they they may chop down a tree, and so I I think that uh maybe some efforts along those lines.

I think it sounded like you guys are gonna be working with CBOs on that front, or um or at least in that underserved neighborhoods.

Um so I just want to make that comment.

Uh, but yeah, thank you very much.

Uh that's all.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh quick question viewers did does this end here?

Does this report go to uh uh council?

Yeah.

Go ahead, Laura.

Oh, there I'd like it to go to council.

I think they they should hear it.

So there's there will be policies coming out of this eventually.

They will come back to you.

Um there's there's such a variety of opportunities here, if I can just take a moment.

Part of this is our built environment, and how do we recognize and and create some level of consistency and control and responsiveness there?

The other is just how we coordinate things.

The trees are such an example.

I think everybody agrees trees are good, right?

Yeah, great.

But if planning goes out and requires a tree, and we look at a tree planting list from urban forestry, and then it gets required to be put into a development, and the contractor goes and sticks tree in the ground, and then nobody's inspecting that particular tree, and then you come back 20 years later and you got a tree this big.

We we have a lot of people that touch a particular topic, and in this case, trees, and there's not a whole lot of coordination.

And I will be the first to admit that I think that we've been too lenient and removing trees.

Several years ago, we uh urban forest came out with a um private protected tree.

So, you know, I think that was five years ago.

Prior to that, the only trees that were controlled was in city trees.

You could cut down any tree on your property, and they said no, we've got private protected trees.

So we started looking at at trees, but they were always in the way of development.

So it's like, okay, we'll go ahead and cut that one down, and you just pay a mitigation fee.

The urban forest is has taken a new look at that with their urban forest master plan and looking at is it really necessary?

Have we really looked at enough design opportunities to save those trees and maybe do something differently?

Um, and then do we have too broad a tree list and should it be narrowed down that's more specific to our climate?

And then what instructions are we giving in within the construction industry and how to plant the tree?

Don't put it in 95% compaction soil, you know, dig it, dig a bigger hole, put it in something that'll actually grow.

So I think there's a great opportunity for no pun intended low-hanging fruit, that we could make things a whole lot better just in trying to better coordinate our process.

Some things will be bigger, and we'll bring those back to you.

Other things, I think we could just do a better job of coordinating amongst all of us to create get a better, more successful project at the end.

You know, Stockton Boulevard was one of our examples, but any of our boulevards, when you look at the history of those boulevards and how they've developed, and some of them don't have sidewalks, you know, none of them have separated planter strips.

So there's no place to put a tree, someplace there's no place to walk.

And yet there's 10 acres of asphalt right next to that um little tiny sidewalk with a telephone pole right in the middle of the sidewalk.

So we we really need to go look at these areas that are our traditional boulevards that are under serviced, underfunded, and find the ways to make them a little bit better over a period of time, and whether that's adding some built structure, finding a way to put trees, finding a way to get rid of concrete or asphalt that we really don't need, and we can pull it up, and then we get water that doesn't drain into our system, it percolates down.

So I think there's a lot of things that we can do, and that's part of this ongoing discussion of what are the big things and what are the little things, what are the easy things to move forward, what are the more challenging ones?

So you'll see us again.

I look forward to that.

Yeah, I think a lot of developers you know looking forward to how they can they be competitive by offering more amenities, you know, pool tennis course and whatnot, without realizing a mature tree in a courtyard within a project can be a tremendous uh uh asset.

So anyway, do your best in convincing people to do that, Bruce.

Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

Um let's see what is next here.

We did the director's report.

I think we're now on to commissioners' comments, ideas and questions.

Commissioner Reschke.

So uh Yayin had mentioned next week is Housing California.

So we're having a celebration at our office, which is Mogavera Architects, uh, next Wednesday from four to six to celebrate housing.

And um several of the projects Yayen showed today were uh projects that our office contributed to, so that the teams who worked on those projects will be there.

And I'd like to invite you all to come to the reception from four to six.

We're at 1331 T Street.

So yeah, come celebrate housing with us.

A quick a quick little comment on that.

Years ago, David Mogavera, who whose firm that is, uh, we realized at one point that he and I had both gone to Woodstock coming from different directions.

I came from Boston, he came from Ohio.

We didn't meet each other there, but anyway.

David would be there and love to tell you all about Woodstock.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh you mean he remembers it?

I if you were there, you shouldn't remember it.

Um, with that, so any public comments?

Seeing none, I believe we will be adjourned.