Sacramento rolls out streamlining effort to boost housing production

The city of Sacramento is rolling out a new effort to speed up housing construction by streamlining permits, inspections and approvals.

City leaders are calling it Streamline Sacramento. It aims to shorten the time it takes to move from a building application to a completed home. Officials said it will make the permitting process faster and more predictable and could spur more housing construction for all income levels. 

Ben Raderstorf is vice president of the pro-housing advocacy group House Sacramento. He said when the city’s approval process drags on, it delays people from moving into homes that could already be built. “Those are people that can be living in those apartments,” he noted.

Last year, Sacramento issued just over 2,300 building permits, or less than half of its annual housing goal of 5,700, according to a city news release.

“If you're city government,” Raderstorf continued, “you don't control the cost of lumber, you don't control the cost of labor, you don't control the cost of land, but you do control the cost of process.”

Those responsible for the streamlining effort are Mayor Kevin McCarty and Councilmember Phil Pluckebaum. Pluckebaum said Sacramento is focused on reducing delays at every step.

“If we can just shorten the time that it takes folks to get from application to building inspection to certificate of occupancy and really to start collapsing those milestones,” Pluckebaum said, “that's probably the best measure of this working.”

Pluckebaum said even large, well-resourced projects like the Downtown Railyards have been stalled by permitting backlogs. The new effort is meant to help everyone move faster, from major developers to homeowners.

The initiative adds virtual inspections and aims to simplify construction reviews. It also provides what the city calls “instant building permit issuance.” Under that process, the city plans to create a check box form that an applicant can self-certify for minor building permits, including for items such as water heaters or some solar projects. 

City officials hope the changes will help Sacramento catch up to its long-term housing targets.

“The only thing we can do as a community to improve the availability of housing inventory and the quality of that inventory, “is to streamline the regulatory process,” ” Pluckebaum said. “So that means collapse the timelines [and] reduce uncertainty.”