Three Hogs Don't Make a Farm: HCD Puts Sacramento's AR Zones Under SB 9

You own a parcel in one of Sacramento County's Agricultural-Residential zones — AR-1, AR-2, AR-5, or AR-10 — and you want to split the lot or add a second home. Then the county tells you to stop: AR zones allow farming, they sit on septic and private wells, the lots run large, so the county excluded every one of them from SB 9. On paper your zone isn't "single-family residential," so the ministerial lot split and the two-unit path are off the table.

Here's the thing: the state looked at the same zoning code and reached the opposite conclusion — and one detail it leaned on was a cap on hogs.

What the county argued

Sacramento County's AR zones allow both residential and agricultural uses, carry minimum lot sizes of one to ten acres, and commonly rely on septic systems and private wells. Pointing to rural census designations and the absence of sewer, water, and right-of-way frontage infrastructure, the county decided these constraints were prevalent enough to exclude the AR zones from SB 9 entirely.

Why HCD reads AR as single-family

In a July 30, 2026 Technical Assistance Letter, HCD took the position that the AR zones qualify as single-family residential zones for SB 9. Its reasoning: look at what each zone actually limits.

The zones do allow general agriculture. But the county's own code caps that agriculture while placing no comparable cap on houses. HCD's example lands the point — "when hogs are raised in the AR-2 zone a maximum of three hogs are allowed." General agricultural activity in the AR-1 zone requires a minimum lot width of 150 feet. There's no equivalent ceiling on single-family dwellings.

And the stated purpose of the zones is residential. HCD quoted the first listed General Purpose from the county's code: "[T]o establish living areas within the County where development is limited to low-density concentrations of single-family dwellings." Agriculture isn't even mentioned in that purpose statement.

From there HCD drew its line on the very constraints the county had used to justify the blanket exclusion:

"…these zones cannot be automatically excluded due to prevalence of the constraints identified."

Instead, HCD's position is that the AR zones must be treated as single-family for SB 9, with each application judged on its own — septic suitability and the rest handled case by case, not used to zone out an entire district.

Verified against HCD's Technical Assistance Letter to the County of Sacramento (SB 9 implementation), July 30, 2026.

Constraints go lot by lot, not zone by zone

The county asked three follow-up questions, and the answers are worth knowing if you're working an AR parcel:

• Septic lot sizes. The county requires two acres for a parcel on both septic and a private well, one acre for septic with public water — while SB 9 says a local agency "cannot require a minimum lot size larger than 1,200 square feet" for an urban lot split. HCD's position: the county must harmonize its septic lot-size rules with SB 9 to the maximum extent possible. On some small lots that may still block a split as an unmitigable adverse impact; on larger lots that meet the standard, or where mitigation is possible, it shouldn't.
• Rural areas. Parcels in census-designated Rural Areas are not eligible — HCD says they don't meet SB 9's urbanized-area or urban-cluster test.
• Offsite improvements. For an urban lot split, HCD's position is that "the County may not require offsite improvements" — no new sidewalks or right-of-way dedications as a condition of the parcel map. (For building the units under the other SB 9 path, offsite improvements can be required if they apply uniformly within the zone.)

HCD noted this is consistent with earlier technical assistance it gave Placer County and the City of Bellflower. It closed by asking the county to amend its SB 9 ordinance to include these zones, and reminding it that HCD can refer noncompliance to the Attorney General.

Before you rely on this

A Technical Assistance Letter is HCD's interpretation, not a court ruling, and it's written to one county about one set of zones. If your AR parcel is being treated as SB 9-ineligible, this is the reasoning to put in front of your planner — but confirm the specifics with your jurisdiction and your own counsel before you build on it. This isn't legal advice.

What CrossBeam does with it

When the letter lands on your desk, CrossBeam turns it around the same day: what each item is actually asking, the code or law behind it, and a written response you can hand to your team or your attorney — the back-and-forth that used to eat weeks, done in a couple of hours.