SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A south Sacramento motel is slated to be turned into permanent housing for homeless adults and families.

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors will Tuesday consider a proposal to redevelop a Motel 6, near the corner of Stockton Boulevard and Elsie Avenue, into housing.

If the supervisors approve, nonprofit California Supportive Housing plans to apply for about $31 million in state funds to complete the project. It’s also seeking $3.7 million in loans from the county, mostly using federal funds.

That would equal more than $500,000 per door to build, according to a county document. A county document shows the unit cost $579,560 but some of those line items are for operations.

It’s a comparable cost to the construction of other government-subsidized affordable apartments in Sacramento. Mayor Kevin McCarty recently sounded the alarm on a similar high-cost project the council approved last month, saying it could take Sacramento over 100 years to build housing for every homeless person under the current way of doing things.

It’s been a statewide issue for years. Several affordable housing projects in the Bay Area cost over $1 million per unit to build, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2022.

Tiny homes are sometimes cheaper, such as a North Sacramento Homekey project the council is set to consider Tuesday for homeless seniors. That project would cost about $200,000 per door to build, according to city staff report. It was on the agenda for the April 29 meeting, but was delayed to Tuesday due to neighborhood concerns.

The Motel 6 building currently has 122 rooms, according to a county staff report. If converted, it would have 59 one-bedroom apartments, including kitchenettes, bathrooms, and living rooms. The development would also have a community lounge and case management offices.

To qualify to live there, tenants would have to be formerly homeless and would have to earn no more than $24,750 per year for an individual living alone, according to the staff report.

The number of parking spaces would be reduced to 78, the staff report said.

The John Stewart Company would be the property manager, and Lutheran Social Services would provide resident services, including workforce development, mental health, physical health and substance use services.

For security, there would be 24-hour desk coverage and security cameras.

State funding for the project would come from the Homekey program, which Gov. Gavin Newsom launched during COVID, to turn motels into housing for the homeless. Several Homekey projects have already opened in the Sacramento area, including in downtown about a block from City Hall.

Visit Sacramento and the Downtown Partnership opposed that project at the time, because it was removing available motel rooms, which could hurt tourism. For the Motel 6, Kari Miskit of Visit Sacramento said they had yet to study the proposed project.

“While Sacramento continues to face a shortage of necessary hotel rooms to capitalize on the economics of tourism, finding solutions to address homelessness is critical for the region,” Miskit wrote in an email Monday. “While there are no perfect scenarios to do this, we appreciate the efforts being made to address our collective challenges.”

The Motel 6 is located in the county, but is less than a block from the city line.

Sacramento has fallen behind its housing goals for all income levels, which is contributing to the homelessness crisis, according to a recent report. To keep up with its goal of building 45,580 new housing units by 2029, the city would have had to issue 5,698 new housing permits last year, according to recent city report. It issued 2,387.

The Board of Supervisors meeting will take place Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. The council meeting will take place Tuesday at 2 p.m.

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