As 2024 begins, officials in Paradise say last year was the most productive on record for new affordable housing developments in the town.
That’s because the federal government funded affordable housing projects in the Camp Fire burn scar for the first time last year.
That money is backing seven projects so far, four more affordable housing developments than the town had before the fire.
Affordable housing projects coming online include: 140 new apartments off Cypress Lane, 21 senior housing units on Pence Road, 43 units on Maxwell Drive and 12 affordable homes that burned in the Camp Fire.
Susan Hartman, community development director for planning and wastewater in Paradise said the numbers are a “huge deal.”
“Butte County as a whole certainly does not rank high on the list of the state's counties for affluence,” Hartman said. “And so to be able to have affordable prices in the North State, I think that's really important for any of the northern counties.”
There were only around 100 affordable units in Paradise before the fire.
Now, in just the past year, the town’s planning commission has ushered in around 340 units.
“I think that's been the biggest project of 2023, has been affordable and multifamily housing,” Hartman said.
That’s thanks to $55 million in federal disaster recovery money to build these rental units after the fire, which supports larger projects than were previously in the town.
Paradise’s largest development was just under 50 units; now, one of the projects in the works will be 140 units.
“Because of the disaster, our affordable housing is looking more like the urban affordable housing, the apartment complexes,” Hartman said.
It’s a new look, and, according to Hartman, an opportunity to get more, affordable, accessible and wildfire-resilient housing on the ridge, especially downtown.
Rent has skyrocketed in the five years since the fire.
Kate Anderson, who supervises the town’s housing program, said the new developments will go a long way toward replacing cheaper housing options that existed before the fire.
“The way I'm looking at it is, we are putting back what we had, just in a different form,” she said.
Anderson said the town hasn’t been a popular destination for large developments in the past.
“We've always been really challenged with developing multifamily housing because of our infrastructure,” Anderson said. “We don't have a sewer. Our topography, we're on a slope. Insurance rates … So we in the past didn't have a lot of interest from developers.”
Anderson said she’s been seeing an influx of young people looking to buy affordable homes in Paradise.
That’s a demographic she said would be especially helped by multifamily housing, so long as the developers attracted by the $55 million federal money infusion can sustain their interest in the years to come.
