Nobody used Sacramento's pre-approved house plans in 13 years

Sacramento has had a law on its books since 2013 that lets a builder get a house design approved once and reuse it anywhere in a design review district. In 13 years, nobody has used it. "To date, no registered house plans have been proposed," the city's own staff report says.

Now the city wants to find out whether the hearing was the problem. A code change headed to the Law and Legislation Committee on October 20, and to the City Council in November, would let the city's Design Director approve these plans after staff review, with no public hearing and no mailed notice. A home built from an approved plan would then get checked only for setbacks, height, open space and land use, not for how it looks.

For a buyer or a small builder eyeing an empty lot in Oak Park, Curtis Park or Del Paso Heights, it is a small change on paper with a real goal. Sacramento's typical home sold for about $439,000 in September 2026, by Houseberry's Sacramento data, up about 6 percent in a year. The city says faster approvals are one way to slow that.

How it works now, and what changes

The rules sit in Sacramento City Code sections 17.600.300 to 17.600.320. Under them, anyone can ask the Design Director to review a plan. The Director sends a written recommendation to the Planning and Design Commission, which must hold at least one public hearing, with notice published and mailed. The commission approves the plan if it fits the citywide and district design guidelines, and it can later revoke one "to ensure a variety in the housing stock."

The city says the point is to "incentivize use of the registered house plan process" and that the change "will save both time and costs." It ties the change to Streamline Sacramento, the program Mayor Kevin McCarty and Councilmember Pluckebaum started in April 2025, which the staff report says aims at "increasing the supply and decreasing the cost of housing."

It also ties it to Program H28 in the city's housing plan, which promises reusable plans for duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and bungalow courts. That is the part to watch. A pre-approved fourplex is a much bigger deal than a pre-approved single house. Four homes, one approval.

The gap the city is trying to close

Sacramento's state target is 45,580 new homes from 2021 to 2029, or about 5,698 a year. The city reported 2,737 homes in 2025, up 14.7 percent from 2024 and about 48 percent of that pace, the Sacramento City Express reported in March. The city's free pre-approved ADU plans have been one of the program's working parts: 390 of last year's new homes were ADUs.

We looked at where those homes went in September in our map of Sacramento's new-home permits. Most are in big subdivisions in Natomas and Delta Shores, not on infill lots in the older neighborhoods where a registered plan would matter.

Why nobody used it

A hearing is not the only reason this program sat empty for 13 years. A registered plan covers only the building, not the site. It only works inside a design review district. And state law already limits what a city can do to housing on looks alone: since 2020, the Housing Crisis Act (SB 330) has barred cities from adopting new subjective design standards for housing, and the Housing Accountability Act makes it hard to deny a project that meets the objective ones.

So the commission was reviewing something the city already had little power to reject. The hearing was mostly ceremony. Dropping the hearing removes a step and a few weeks of waiting. It does not change what a lot or a lumber package costs.

We think the change is right and too small. Sacramento should do for houses and fourplexes what it already does for ADUs: commission a set of plans itself, approve them, and hand them out free. A builder in Oak Park should be able to pick a fourplex off the city's shelf the way a homeowner can pick a backyard cottage today.

The trade is real, though. Neighbors in a design review district would no longer get a mailed notice or a hearing when a reusable plan is approved, and the homes built from it would not get a second look at their design. In older neighborhoods with strong architectural character, like Curtis Park, that is the part people will notice.

Curtis Park scores 3.1 out of 5 overall on Houseberry, ranked 34th of 185 Sacramento neighborhoods, with a 4.3 amenities score. Sacramento City College's own neighborhood is the city's top-ranked at 3.8. Older neighborhoods like these are where infill lots are scarce and where design gets argued over most.

Our read is that a 1920s bungalow block survives a well-designed new house next door. What it does not survive is a city that cannot add homes anywhere but the edge.

The committee hearing is October 20. Before it, compare neighborhoods across the city on Houseberry's Sacramento ranking.

Sources

• City of Sacramento staff report, file 2026-01624, registered house plan amendments
• Sacramento City Code 17.600.300, registered house plans
• Sacramento City Express: housing production report, March 25, 2026
• CapRadio: Sacramento rolls out streamlining effort, April 23, 2025
• City of Sacramento: pre-approved ADU program