Readers of the Opinion Section of the Davis Enterprise were treated once again to claims by members of CHA (Choices for Healthy Aging), an Astroturf group that is a front for the Covell Village developers to push their massive senior housing project on the lower third of the Covell Village site.
Written by esteemed retired professors Don and Merna Villaejo, we have the claim once again made that “aging residents want more housing choices.”
“The city staff contends there is little need for senior-specific housing because Davis seniors overwhelmingly would prefer to remain in their current homes. This position is not supported by the actual behavior of seniors in our city.”
They also cite numerous statistics to show that the city’s projections for the population growth of those 55 or over are underestimated.
“The city staff report, based on the consultant’s analysis, estimates the population growth of Davis residents age 55 and older from 2010 through 2030. But the city’s numbers likely will be an underestimate because they are based on the countywide population makeup, and do not consider the unique character of our city’s senior population, who are healthier and better off financially than the county average.
For those reasons, the Vital Statistics Branch of the California Department of Public Health reports mortality rates for each age group of Davis seniors significantly lower than those of the corresponding countywide rates.”
They continue:
“In an amazing twist of logic, the staff report states the city should seek to provide age-restricted housing for only 15 percent of Davis seniors age 65 and older despite the fact that, today, fully 25 percent reside in this type of dwelling. Will the City Council adopt a policy that has a goal of throwing many Davis seniors out of town?
Many Davis senior residents have made it clear they are dissatisfied with housing options that are currently available, and are seeking more and better choices. The city survey of existing senior restricted housing in Davis finds just eight dwellings are fee-simple ownership (land and dwelling), without income restrictions.
More than 370 Davis seniors have joined Choices for Healthy Aging to ask that the city allow fee-simple ownership homes, designed for senior living, to be developed now, as recommended in the CHA report to the city.”
Unfortunately this is all ringing hollow because Don and Merna Villarejo led the way to attempt to stop the city from having hard survey data on senior housing desires–without such hard scientific data both city staff and CHA are forced to attempt some subjective assumptions about future housing needs for the senior population.
In early October the Vanguard reported on a long letter from the Villarejos explaining their opposition to the survey. The City Council would surprisingly by a 3-2 vote oppose doing such a survey.
They wrote on September 28, 2009:
“There are serious problems with going ahead with the proposed survey at this time. Most importantly, seniors have not yet been provided with concrete examples of the full range of potential future housing choices, severely limiting their ability to describe preferences for future development.”
And then they got into technical explanations suggesting somehow that professional polling companies could not properly design a poll.
“A second major concern is the survey methodology, which is not described in City Council Agenda, of September 29, 2009. To obtain valid results, surveys must adhere to strict guidelines: first, complete enumeration of the population of interest (in the present case, all current Davis residents age 55 or older); second, from this enumeration, random selection of a sample of potential participants; third, the survey instrument should only include queries that have proven to yield reliable responses, such as queries in the Census of Population or American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau) or the Current Population Survey (Bureau of Labor Statistics); last, only include additional queries if they have been demonstrated to be reliable in the peer-reviewed academic literature or equivalent testing.”
The bottom line seemed clear, these were flimsy excuses which gave the council majority flimsy excuses to vote down the authorization of the senior survey. Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor suddenly found fiscal discipline arguing that we could not afford such a survey even though a few years ago he had no problem spending $75,000 on a parks survey which would not impact policy nearly as much as the senior survey.
Elaine Roberts Musser back in September 2009 wrote:
Ruth Asmundson was in favor of a survey, just not via telephone. Her reasoning was that she herself doesn’t care to spend twenty minutes answering telephone surveys. It was never satisfactorily explained why a twenty minute Facebook or Twitter survey would be any less onerous than a twenty minute telephone survey. Or how this survey was to be facilitated on nonexistent computers that many seniors do not possess.
To their credit, Lamar Heystek and Sue Greenwald attempted to doggedly support city staff’s modest recommendation for a $20,000 senior housing survey. But the two were summarily shot down for their efforts. However in the same night, apparently Councilmember Souza had no problem expending city funds to rent out Oddfellows Hall, of which he is a member by the way. Why? So it can be used as a new location for adolescents as a drop in site, because the local Teen Center has been usurped for the city’s new Bicycle Museum.
As I said, flimsy excuses. The reason to reject the survey is obvious, as it would be likely that a scientific survey would take the ability to claim that seniors support this specific housing out of the hands of the developers and their manufactured masses and would have potentially undermined their position that seniors believe that more choices, and specifically their solution, is needed for senior housing.
Absent the survey results, they are still able to make these kinds of arguments and hope that the public will buy into it.
City Staff’s approach seems to be the wiser course of action, looking at a variety of infill sites to create a relatively small housing project of 16 to about 250 units–if we are to build age restricted housing.
There is a reasonable argument to make that what we really need is not age-restricted housing but housing that can fill the needs of seniors and other groups that need accessible and visitable dwellings. There are many seniors that have expressed a desire not to live in an age-restricted community.
In short, there has been an excellent discussion that has taken place in light of these developments on the amount and type of senior housing that we need. CHA however has an agenda to push and right now they are not getting their way. However, the council overruled staff on the need for a senior survey, they are likely to overrule staff and the Senior Citizen and Social Services Commissions who have spent many hours formulating a reasonable policy to deal with what is still an important issue.
However, CHA is a front group for the people trying to build housing on the Covell Village site. They hoped to create a mass movement of seniors that would push for a senior housing project and get it approved. More likely some project will reach a Measure J vote and then go down to heavy defeat.
If CHA really were interested in senior housing options, they would work with city staff to create the type of housing everyone could support. Unfortunately, good and decent people like the Villarejos are left to make untenable arguments that there is some sort of consensus in the senior community when it was they along with their allies on the council that prevented us from actually knowing what seniors think about this issue.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Excellent summation of the situation, DPD.
[quote]Written by esteemed retired professors Don and Merna Villarejo, we have the claim once again made that “aging residents want more housing choices.”[/quote] If the position taken by the Villarejos is not their honest point of view, then what do you believe is motivating them? Are you suggesting they are investors of some sort in the project? Are they being paid* (like many of the shills who supported WHR were)? If they are paid representatives, does the developer have a legal obligation to disclose that?
As an aside, when I read the piece in The Enterprise I immediately realized you would refer to CHA as an astroturf group. I had never given that term any thought, and then I did: “Oh, yeah. Fake grass. Fake grassroots.”
* I think newspapers and blogs would do their readers a service by directly asking contributors like the Villarejos to disclose any financial ties they have to a project they are supporting. If the writers say they have no investment in the project and they’re not being paid anything and have never been paid, then that should be disclosed. This struck me as an issue when the Vanguard published a piece in favor of WHR by a paid shill for that project.
David: No survey needed; maybe a few accessible, infill senior units, yes; but a huge development on one of the last remaining viewscapes of productive ag land on our periphery – NO!
Thank God for Measure J. When will Whitcombe (etc) finally realize that they made a bad investment by buying the “Covell Village” site with the intent of making millions of dollars profit? It won’t happen!
The latest “carrot” (op-ed piece by “esteemed” authors) failed miserably, and should not sway anyone to support such an obvious attempt to pave over even more ag land & habitat.
In case any Vanguard readers are interested, I received an interesting email today from Davis City Councilman Stephen Souza, which I replied to on my blog. You can read it here ([url]http://lexicondaily.blogspot.com/2010/01/correspondence-from-city-councilman.html[/url]).
“If the position taken by the Villarejos is not their honest point of view, then what do you believe is motivating them? Are you suggesting they are investors of some sort in the project?”
There was talk of a telemedicine project involving UCD being a pilot program in any new senior development built by developers of Covell Village. Much of the talk of a Disneyland style development, with all sorts of amenities, speaks to all sorts of conflicts of interest in regard to who is going to provide the goodies.
[i]”Much of the talk of a Disneyland style development, with all sorts of amenities, speaks to all sorts of conflicts of interest in regard to who is going to provide the goodies.”[/i]
What does that have to do with Don Villarejo, who was a professor at UCD who mostly studied farm labor ([url]http://www.donvillarejo.com/about.html[/url])?
Elaine’s Disneyland explanation does not fit Merna Villarejo, either. This is her bio: [i]”Merna Villarejo received her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Chicago. Since joining the faculty of the University of California, Davis, Professor Villarejo has been actively working to improve undergraduate education. As Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Programs in biology, she designed and implemented supplementary education programs for underrepresented minority students, transfer students and honors students from all backgrounds, raising over $10 million in external grants to support that work. In recognition, she received a University of Califronia Presidential Award of Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research.
Merna Villarejo was active in K-12 science education as Principal
Investigator for the state-wide California Science Project and ubsequently
successfully coordinated campus efforts to launch a new School of Education.
Prof. Villarejo has also been an active researcher throughout her academic career. Her most recent scientific research emphasis was on the molecular mechanisms of adaptation to osmotic stress in bacteria. Since her retirement, she has been conducting research on the efficacy of educational intervention programs for minority students in biology on a grant from the NIH. She currently serves on Educational Advisory Committees to the National Human Genome Research Institute and the NSFsponsored Center for Biophotonics and Technology.”[/i]
“Much of the talk of a Disneyland style development, with all sorts of amenities, speaks to all sorts of conflicts of interest in regard to who is going to provide the goodies.”
Rich Rifkin: What does that have to do with Don Villarejo, who was a professor at UCD who mostly studied farm labor? Elaine’s Disneyland explanation does not fit Merna Villarejo, either.
The Villarejos are both affiliated with UCD, and have many friends there I am sure. What employee/retired employee of UCD would not promote the interests of the University? The number one goal of the University, according to Katahi, will be to fundraise from the public/private sector. It is UCD that wants to start a pilot program presumably from grant funding/private donations for the telemedicine goody in the as yet to be proposed senior development. Connect the dots Mr. Rifkin.
[quote]Connect the dots Mr. Rifkin. [/quote]My god, I have never heard such total nonsense in my life. Try a rational argument, next time.
“My god, I have never heard such total nonsense in my life. Try a rational argument, next time.”
When someone doesn’t agree with you they are not rational?