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The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency is moving to purchase The Maven on Broadway, a 408-unit apartment complex that opened in 2022 in the city's Upper Land Park neighborhood, and convert 306 of its apartments from market-rate to income-restricted housing, the Sacramento Bee reported October 29.
City and county elected officials have cleared the way for the plan over the past two weeks. The SHRA Commission is set to consider final approval of the purchase on November 10. The price has not been publicly disclosed.
If completed, the acquisition would be one of the Sacramento region's largest market-to-affordable conversions: 224 apartments would become workforce housing reserved for tenants earning less than 80 percent of area median income, and 82 more would be reserved for households earning less than 50 percent of AMI, according to city staff reports cited by the Bee. The remaining 102 units would stay market-rate.
The income tiers translate into specific rents under the proposal. A one-person household qualifies for the workforce tier with annual income up to $73,600 - 80 percent of the area median, per California Department of Housing and Community Development figures - and one-bedroom apartments in that tier would rent for $1,776 a month, according to the city staff report. The deeper tier, limited to households earning less than 50 percent of AMI - under $46,000 for a single person - would carry one-bedroom rents of $1,315 a month. Market-rate one-bedrooms in the building currently rent for $1,984 a month.
No existing tenants would be displaced under the plan, SHRA Deputy Executive Director Kecia Boulware told the Sacramento City Council at its October 13 meeting, the Bee reported. The Maven opened in 2022 at 230 Broadway with amenities including a fitness center, pet wash, grilling gazebos and a large community lounge, and is the largest apartment property on the Broadway corridor.
The financing structure runs through a new entity. In late September, the council authorized the formation of Canopy Housing, a nonprofit instrumentality affiliated with the housing authority enabled by Assembly Bill 1528, the 2023 state law that lets such instrumentalities hold property exempt from ad valorem property taxes. The council also approved a SHRA general revenue pledge as a backstop to enable bond financing for the Maven acquisition, with 75 percent of the complex - the 306 units - designated as workforce housing. SHRA Executive Director Chris Warren and Boulware presented the two-part initiative, saying the structure gives the agency flexibility to acquire, develop and operate housing across income bands and to reinvest the foregone property taxes into housing delivery.
SHRA is a joint city-county agency, which is why the plan moved through both the Sacramento City Council and the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors in consecutive weeks. The council heard the no-displacement commitment on October 13; county supervisors took up the plan October 20. Both bodies have now cleared the way, leaving the agency's own commission as the final approval.
The Maven's location gives the conversion added weight. Upper Land Park and the Broadway corridor sit between downtown Sacramento and the city's older southern neighborhoods, and the corridor has been adding market-rate supply - nearly 1,000 homes at The Mill at Broadway alone. The area also holds some of the region's oldest public housing. New Helvetia and Alder Grove, the two large complexes along Seavey Circle about a half mile south, serve households with incomes well below the Maven's proposed restricted tiers - a contrast that has figured in the neighborhood debate over who the conversion actually serves.
The income limits behind the tiers come from the state. The California Department of Housing and Community Development reports that a one-person household in Sacramento County qualifies as low-income at $73,600 a year or less - a threshold that covers entry-level teachers, food service workers and recent college graduates, the Bee noted. The 50 percent AMI tier, at under $46,000 for a single person, reaches a much narrower band of the local workforce.
The plan has drawn organized opposition from neighbors. At the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors' October 20 meeting, Supervisor Pat Hume said neighbors had sent supervisors many emails opposing the purchase and conversion, the Bee reported. Hume argued that more housing of all types is needed to balance supply and support the local economy and neighborhoods.
The building's current owner is a limited liability company tied to Chicago-based 29th Street, which did not return the Bee's request for comment. The property sits near Interstate 80 and Highway 50, about a half mile north of New Helvetia and Alder Grove - two large, aging public housing complexes along Seavey Circle that serve households with lower incomes than those targeted for the Maven's restricted units - and near The Mill at Broadway, where nearly 1,000 market-rate homes have recently opened or are under construction.
Conversions of market-rate housing to affordability remain rare in Sacramento, though not unprecedented: the Bee noted the 800-unit Woodlands complex in South Natomas as a local example. "It's a growing trend," John Vignocchi, co-founder of developer Urban Capital, told the paper. "It's the biggest market need - lower cost housing. Investors and developers are doing their best to address the market trend."
The local precedent usually cited is the Woodlands, an 800-unit complex in South Natomas that made a similar transition. What is different now is the machinery: the Canopy Housing instrumentality, created under AB 1528, gives SHRA a purpose-built acquisition vehicle with a property tax exemption, letting it hold and operate mixed-income housing at scale - and, officials have said, letting foregone property taxes be reinvested into expanding housing delivery across income bands.
The Maven proposal reflects a strategy California housing agencies have increasingly turned to as new construction costs climb: buying existing, recently built housing and imposing income restrictions, rather than building from scratch. The approach converts units in months instead of years, avoids land and entitlement risk, and - because the buildings already exist - often meets less of the siting opposition that greets new affordable development, though the Maven shows acquisition strategies carry political fights of their own.
The tax structure is central to the math. Under AB 1528, property held by a nonprofit instrumentality of a housing authority is exempt from ad valorem property taxes, effectively replacing a private owner's tax bill with a public mission. Pairing that exemption with tax-exempt bond financing lets an agency like SHRA outbid or match private buyers while still cutting rents - the same playbook the California Community Housing Agency used in 2019 when it financed the acquisition and rent restriction of Serenity at Larkspur in Marin County, capping rents for households earning 80 to 120 percent of AMI.
Sacramento's adopted housing plans supply the policy backdrop. The city's 2021-2029 Housing Element requires planning for 16,769 new lower-income housing units by 2029, 37 percent of its overall regional housing needs allocation. Acquisition-conversion does not produce new units toward that count, but it protects affordability for existing housing stock that the market would otherwise keep at market rates.
Opponents of the plan, in emails to county supervisors described at the October 20 meeting, questioned the conversion of new market-rate housing in a county that is short of housing overall. Supporters' counterargument, voiced by Hume, is that the region needs housing across every income band and that the conversion adds restricted supply without waiting years for new construction. The November 10 commission vote will test whether that argument holds inside the agency itself.
The SHRA Commission's November 10 vote is the remaining gate. If approved, the agency would move to close on the region's largest apartment-to-affordable conversion in years, with Canopy Housing holding and operating the property and bond financing backed by the agency's general revenue pledge.
For owners and managers watching the transaction, the operational details will matter: how rent rolls are re-tiered as units turn, how the two restricted tiers are marketed and waitlisted, and how the mixed 102-unit market-rate component coexists with the restricted majority under one roof. Mixed-finance managers across California will recognize the compliance load - layered income targeting, bond reporting and instrumentality governance - arriving through acquisition rather than new construction.
If the commission approves the purchase, the Maven would become Canopy Housing's first major test - a 408-unit, mixed-income property acquired, financed and operated inside a structure the council created barely a month ago.
The Bee's reporting drew on city and county staff reports and council and supervisor meetings in October. Neither the purchase price nor the seller's negotiating position has been made public.
Sources: Sacramento Bee, "Over 300 market-rate Sacramento apartments set to become affordable," October 29, 2026; Citizen Portal, "Council approves formation of Canopy Housing and SHRA pledge for Maven acquisition to create workforce units," September 30, 2026; Sacramento Business Journal, "SHRA looks to purchase Maven on Broadway apartments, convert partly to workforce housing," October 13, 2026; Hoodline, "Sacramento Maven Apartments Affordable Housing Conversion Plan," October 29, 2026.
The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency is moving to buy The Maven on Broadway, a 408-unit complex that opened in 2022, and convert 306 of its apartments to income-restricted housing, the Sacramento Bee reported October 29. A final SHRA Commission vote is set for November 10; the price is undisclosed.
Under the plan, 224 units would be reserved for tenants earning less than 80 percent of area median income and 82 for households below 50 percent of AMI, with 102 units remaining market-rate. One-bedroom restricted rents would run $1,315 to $1,776, versus $1,984 market-rate.
The purchase would run through Canopy Housing, a new nonprofit instrumentality created under Assembly Bill 1528, with bond financing backed by a SHRA general revenue pledge. Officials say no current tenants would be displaced.
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