Manteca has built 9,397 single family homes during the past 20 years.
That number may be a tad abstract until you reference Manteca’s population growth since 1996. Those new homes helped the city add 34,829 new residents or 1,721 more than the combined estimated 2014 population of neighboring cities Ripon and Lathrop.
And during the last 10 years when new home construction was at a virtual still elsewhere until 2013, Manteca added 3,651 new homes to grow by more than half of Lathrop’s estimated 21,000 residents.
Manteca developers in 2015 built 494 new homes. That’s the highest level since 2006 when there were 549 new homes added.
Given the number of new projects moving forward now , Manteca could top the 549 mark this year in homes being built. January — traditionally the slowest month — saw 29 new homes started averaging 2,917 square feet each.
While new home construction was up 13 percent from 2014 to 2015, overall building permits issued by the city soared 27 percent going from 2,589 in 2014 to 3,294 in 2015.
As a result, city personnel in the Community Development are struggling to keep up.
The Manteca City Council during the recent mid-year review workshop was provided with data to show what staff is up against.
The city’s goal is to turn around a permit request for a single family home in 10 days. Back in 2009 when the city had seven technicians devoted to the process they were able to issue permits in 8.63 days. Now with just two technicians after budget cutbacks in 2011, it took 15.63 days to get a permit for a new home issued. City management expects that time to increase to 18.78 days this year.
Meanwhile, average time spent on inspecting construction has gone from 50.5 minutes in 2009 to 14.41 minutes in 2015. It is expected to drop to 12.84 minutes this year. The recommended time per inspection is 30 minutes. There were 9,590 inspections in 2006 when there were five inspectors, with staff halved to 2.5 positions last year, there were 16,431 inspections. The inspections this year are expected to jump 12 percent to 18,690.