The Abridged version:
- A regional nonprofit, Valley Vision, released its 2025 livability survey, asking residents of the six-county Sacramento region about their experiences living and working in the area.
- The poll found most residents agree housing is needed – but are less aligned about how to address the issue.
- Other findings include general anxiety about the rise of artificial intelligence, as well as a desire for California to do more to conserve natural resources.
More and more, residents of the six-county Sacramento region agree there is an urgent need for housing.
But there is less consensus when it comes to confronting the problem, according to new polling.
Results from the 2025 Valley Vision livability survey, released Tuesday, show that when compared to other quality of life factors, such as career opportunities for all and climate resilience, affordable housing was by far the top concern.
When presented with quandaries like where to build and how soon, area residents were more divided.
Some said they want to see more development even faster. An equal number said neighborhoods are already changing way too fast.
This is a sentiment that Sarah Aquino, mayor of Folsom, is not unfamiliar with.
“Nobody wants a cell tower in their backyard, but nobody is willing to give up their cell phone,” she said. “I think this is exactly the same situation. Everybody understands that we have a housing shortage in the state; they just don’t want it built in their community.”
Results from the biennial livability poll, conducted in partnership with the Institute for Social Research at Sacramento State, captured the varied experiences in the capital region, CEO of Valley Vision Evan Schmidt.
“I think this poll reflects a lot of regional needs and challenges that we have,” Schmidt said. But, she added, “While we do have challenges to bear, we also have a lot of strong assets and strong collaborate work in the region.”
Residents agree housing is needed
In a question that allowed respondents to choose up to three issues, 61% picked affordable housing as most important for their community. The next highest answer, selected by 50% of respondents, was accessible health care for all.
That’s up a bit from prior years. In the same survey in 2023, affordable housing still topped the priority list, selected then by 55% of respondents.
That’s because housing remains expensive for many in the region.
“You’re hard-pressed to find a house in the city of Folsom for under $500,000 and even for a young couple starting out, a two-income household, that is really tough to afford,” Aquino said.
“Right now in California, six out of every seven Californians can’t afford a median-priced home,” Tim Murphy of the North State Building Industry Association said when shown the poll’s findings.
Residents of Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, Yuba, El Dorado and Placer counties gave the region less-than-good marks when it comes to purchasing a home.
Ratings varied, though, by demographics – 44% of Hispanic and 49% of Black respondents said the Sacramento region is a “poor” place to buy a house, while 43% of white and 48% of Asian and Pacific Islander respondents said conditions for homebuying were “fair.”
Housing concern varies by age, place, income
The prioritization of housing also appeared to change with a person’s generation, wealth or current living situation.
Older and higher-income respondents were less likely to register concerns about housing costs. According to Murphy, that reflects what’s happening in the housing market.
“The people who can afford the level of fees on housing … tend to come from more affluent communities and they tend to have the ability to buy the new homes,” he said. “We’re rationing housing to those who can afford expensive fees that get folded into expensive home prices, and that’s a real challenge.”
City dwellers were most concerned about housing accessibility – 72% said the issue was important to them. About 59% of suburbanites said the same, compared to 42% of small town or rural residents.
Murphy said those variances are to be expected. Many of the people living on the outer ring of the region where there is plentiful land and lots of development probably think growth is happening too fast, he said. On the other hand, opportunities to build in urban areas run into challenges, so city dwellers likely don’t think development is happening fast enough.
Not in my backyard. Or theirs.
Despite general agreement that housing is a concern, residents of the six-county region have mixed views on a solution.
Asked in the new livability poll if they believed housing development should “slow down” or “speed up,” participants were split – 50% to 50%.
“One of my concerns for when housing is built too quickly is that you’re not building a sense of community,” said Heather Fargo, former mayor of Sacramento and president of the board of directors of the Environmental Council of Sacramento.
“I think this sort of mantra of ‘we need more housing’ is too simple,” she continued, “because what we want to make sure of in the long term is that we have strong neighborhoods.”
The survey also asked respondents to weigh in on where they thought new housing should be built.
Asked to choose between building in “my community,” “other existing communities” or “currently undeveloped areas,” participants by and large opted for the latter.
A preference for building on undeveloped land carried across age groups, ethnicities, incomes, genders and education levels.
The one exception was residents of small towns and rural places.
Forty percent of respondents from less urban areas favored building in other existing communities, while 29% chose their own community and 31% said undeveloped land.
Before 2025 and beyond the Sacramento region
Housing concerns are not new to the Sacramento region, nor are they unique to the state capital and surrounding counties.
The cost of housing is a financial strain for about four in 10 Californians, according to a survey in May by the Public Policy Institute of California. The burden is higher for renters and low-income earners.
Another poll by the same organization in November 2024 reported about a quarter of people in the state worry every day about affording housing.
Here in the Sacramento region, Fargo said, there is a “disconnect” between the housing that is being built and the kind of housing that is needed.
“I think it’s really clear that there needs to be more housing built for people that are at the lower end of the economic scale, that are maybe starting their careers or people that are in minimum wage jobs,” she said. “I sort of feel like we’ve built enough for the people from the Bay Area.”
Other Valley Vision livability poll findings
The new poll included other findings, such as:
- Aside from housing, Sacramento region residents gave their home counties high marks: 69% said the area is a good or excellent place to raise a family and 58% said the same for pursuing a career here.
- A majority of respondents want to see their state do more for conservation: 52% said California is not doing enough to preserve natural resources and 57% said not enough is being done to preserve agricultural lands.
- There is general concern about the future of artificial intelligence: 63% of participants said they believe AI will impede job prospects for the next generation, and the sentiment largely carries across demographics.
The poll was conducted from mid-June to mid-July 2025 and surveyed 1,273 respondents in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, Yolo, Yuba and Sutter counties. Results have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. Read the poll here.
Savannah Kuchar is a reporter covering education. She came to Sacramento to be a part of the Abridged team and contribute to a crucial local news source. Daniel Hennessy contributed reporting for this story. He is a reporter covering Yolo County at Abridged.