Sacramento, California – Sacramento City Councilmember Caity Maple is pointing to a proposed affordable housing project in Meadowview as a clear sign that one of the city’s biggest housing changes is beginning to move from policy paper to real neighborhood plans.
The proposal calls for 38 affordable homes on excess land owned by Antioch Progressive Baptist Church, with Northern California Community Housing Corp. involved as the developer. For Maple, whose District 5 includes parts of Meadowview, the project is more than a single development. It is an early example of what Sacramento hoped to unlock when the City Council approved the Missing Middle Housing Interim Ordinance in 2024.
“Sacramento needs more housing. That’s why my Council colleagues and I unanimously passed the Missing Middle Housing Interim Ordinance… This recent proposal for a 38-unit housing project is proof that policies like the MMH Interim Ordinance works,” Maple said in a recent social media post.
The ordinance was unanimously adopted by the Sacramento City Council on Sept. 17, 2024, and took effect on Oct. 17, 2024. It opened the door for more housing types in areas long shaped by single-family zoning, including R-1, R-1A, R-1B and R-2 zones. Instead of focusing mainly on strict density limits, the city shifted toward rules based on building form, size, height, setbacks and neighborhood fit.
That change matters because “missing middle” housing sits between a detached single-family home and a large apartment building. It can include duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, small multi-unit buildings and similar neighborhood-scale housing. The goal is to create more attainable homes without requiring large redevelopment projects that can feel out of scale with existing blocks.
The city’s approach includes a sliding-scale floor area ratio, reduced minimum lot sizes for new single-unit homes, objective design standards, height rules that generally allow up to 2.5 stories, and limited or no onsite parking requirements in many cases. Sacramento also included anti-displacement protections as part of the framework.
The policy grew out of a multi-year Missing Middle Housing Study tied to the city’s 2040 General Plan Update. That work was led by Opticos Design, with Cascadia Partners, Unseen Heroes and Bill Lennertz also involved. Sacramento became the first city in California to allow multi-unit housing by right across every neighborhood through the policy.
By early 2026, the city had already received dozens of applications and approved more than 20 projects under the ordinance. The Meadowview church proposal now offers a more concrete picture of what that could mean on the ground: affordable homes, built through a community-based partnership, on land already connected to a local institution.
For supporters, the project shows how churches and other community landowners may play a larger role in Sacramento’s housing future. It is also a reminder that zoning changes are not just technical language inside City Hall. They can become homes.