This week saw a bit of an odd occurrence – many of the most prominent slow growth advocates stood up at the city council, not to criticize the city but rather to praise it on the issue of the letter to the university.
The two key provisions that the council put into their LRDP (Long Range Development Plan) response were a call for what we call 100/50 (“the City requests that UC Davis provide for a minimum of 100 percent of the projected enrollment of all new incoming students starting with the 2017 academic year and at least 50 percent of total UC Davis campus student population in the LRDP”) and a request “that UC Davis develop an accompanying construction and financing implementation strategy to ensure the delivery of these units and facilities in a timely manner.”
That prompted Eileen Samitz to praise the council and staff for the work that went into the letter. She stated that “there is no reason why UC Davis cannot do at least as much on-campus housing as other UCs.”
Nancy Price said that she has lived here since 1973, and “this seems to be one of the first times that I’ve been impressed – by one of the few evidences of many members of the city working on this issue collaboratively, listening to each other, that the city council has really taken in a lot of the information that we’ve presented to you and dealt with it seriously and thoughtfully.”
What I find a bit interesting here is that the council did not completely adhere to the slow growthers’ call. Many have called for the university to carry the brunt of this housing, as they believe that the university is the primary driver of growth pressures in the city.
Last summer many criticized the Vanguard for calling for the city to develop some new housing – believing that this would take the pressure off the university and the university would ultimately get the city to respond to growth pressures.
The letter itself straddles the line well – on the one hand arguing for 100/50 and the university to commit to a timeline for implementation, but on the other hand acknowledging the city’s own responsibilities.
The city writes, “We do not make the above LRDP requests without a sound recognition that the City has responsibilities in this partnership as well. The City has been and remains committed to doing its part to provide for the full and diverse breadth of housing needs in our community…”
Moreover, while many of those who spoke were outspoken opponents of Nishi, the city is committed to give it another look: “Although the initial attempt at the ballot did not prove successful, the City Council remains committed to working with the property owner and UC Davis to determine the future possibilities for the Nishi site.”
While the slow growthers saw this as a win for their cause – and indeed it was – the Vanguard views this as a win for moderate land use policies.
The more aggressive growth voices in the community were largely quiet in this discussion. The lone exception was Jim Gray who pushed the council: “I find myself in a unique position of coming before the council and asking you to not do what you’re prepared to do this evening.”
He argued that “the findings of your letter need major revisions.” He asked, “What’s the rush to get this out?”
In his op-ed earlier this week with the Vanguard, he called for “the University, the City, the private sector and non-profits to accept shared responsibility and work together to come up with solutions.”
He wrote, “I believe the questions to better frame the conversation should be ‘What can the City of Davis and the University each do to better address the situation? What can be done to stimulate more investment in rental housing within our community?’”
Over the last decade, he argued, the university provided the vast majority of new housing in the community for students, not the city.
He told the council on Tuesday that “you are dramatically overstating in what share the community of Davis is bringing to address the student housing need.” To critics of the university, he added, “While UC Davis doesn’t deserve an ‘A’, it provides the fourth greatest number of housing units on campus within the system.”
A recent column by me in the Vanguard got me hit on both ends.
I continue to believe that the community and council should push for 100/50, but I believe it is a tall task for the university to get to 90/40 in ten years, let alone 100/50. As I said on Thursday, “That is not meant as a cop out for the university, but a realistic assessment of the situation.”
But in a private email I was told that “you are already accepting failure from UCD, before they even start.” The letter sender pointed out that other campuses have been able to accomplish a lot.
For example, in San Diego, 2015: “The Committee plans to use a budget of $208 million to replace 88 of the existing units with 1,350 new ones. The plan targets 11 46-year-old two-story buildings and calls for their demolition. The construction of the five new, eight-story-high buildings is expected to be complete by 2017.”
On the other hand, I also wrote, “I am not calling for a lot of new housing and the city is fairly limited in this capacity – mainly for political reasons…”
To which one commenter noted, “Weak David.” They would add, “If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.”
Realistically, however, the call for ending Measure R will fall on mainly deaf ears. So why create community dissent on the impossible?
For those who believe that the problem is Measure R, watch the difficulty in getting purely infill projects like Sterling.
As one recent letter put it: “The proposed Sterling housing project — on Fifth Street between the post office and Vander Hamm Tire Center — will be massive, unprecedented and have significant adverse impacts on the visual and aesthetic character of the neighborhood. It needs to be redesigned to reduce its high density and overwhelming presence.”
Even moderate land use policies figure to run into strong community opposition in Davis. I’m not trying to belittle or downplay the concerns of neighbors on these infill projects so much as trying to illustrate the difficulty of carrying out the modest proposals made by council to find infill spots for additional student housing in town.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Morning David,
I agree with almost all of your article. I do have one question that I do not feel that it addressed adequately. If the city accepts as its responsibility to house UCD students to either the 100/50 or 90/40 levels of students, what are your thoughts about city responsibility ( in terms of numbers) for other groups needing housing which the university has no obligation to meet which means that the city must meet those needs 100/100 ? I think that the point that the UC rightfully has no obligation to meet any other of the housing needs of the community and region and therefore should be even more proactive in following through for the provision of housing for those for whom they do bear responsibility is frequently not addressed in these conversations.
I think that both the City Council and the Vanguard have taken a wise and moderate course in the most recent iteration of this conversation to date.
Hi Tia,
Don’t have a great answer on the numbers. My hope has always been an ample supply of student housing on campus and added apartments in town opens up single family homes in town for families.
I believe that until this is all way better hashed out that there should be a moratorium on building the houses and apartments which are not suitable for the middle income and the lower middle buyers and renters who live in Davis or work in Davis..
All construction of overpriced housing and unnecessary and/or unaffordable “affordable” housing should cease.
That includes the cannery save any units which already are underway and buyers have signed on.
Perhaps those multibillionaires or perhaps only multimillionaires will decide to scale the unit down and actually make it affordable for the folks in town who cannot afford their overpriced and under quality million dollar houses… instead of advertising in the Bay area for those who cannot buy there and come to Davis..
Also, the affordable housing which is already built and or already parially constructed should be open to ALL
Including student families and student groups.
Why should we be importing low income folks from Oak Park and Oakland when the HS grads who take a few units at Sac City while they support themselves not be allowed to live in affordable housing?
That is why we have the problems we do.. and why each huge development only stresses ALL resources to the max and the problem is never fixed.
Halt the stupidity and make some real changes.
The likes of those who make fortunes in town on overpriced stuff… like at Grande only use the current high values to suck more from the folks in town…
I want you to understand that I am routinely told, as moderator, that comments like this one are racist. If you don’t mean them to be racist, I suggest you stop using Oak Park and Oakland as your examples. Moreover, I don’t think any developers are “importing” people to fill housing projects. Maybe it happened in the past; I have no idea. But there is no necessity to “import” anybody to fill rental or affordable housing in Davis now. And I urge you to stop making this assertion.
Students in some situations qualify for affordable housing, but most don’t. I don’t like the way affordable housing policies are implemented in Davis, as I’ve said many times before. I think they are counterproductive to actually providing affordable housing, except in a very limited way. Just building market-rate apartments would make more housing affordable to renters. I am aware that reviewing and changing the city’s affordable housing policies would generate considerable friction, as there are some who would push back hard against that. But I think it’s reached a breaking point. To me, for example, having built New Harmony at a very high cost per unit, while we have an apartment vacancy rate less than 1%, demonstrates that the city is prioritizing one group of residents over another. They could have built high-density apartments on that site and rented out half of them at below-market rates, or provided vouchers; the developers would still have made money, and provided lower-cost housing to a much larger number of people.
For historical purposes only… Sun Tree Apartments (F/Covell) was one of the first large-scale “affordable” MF projects built in the City… heavily subsidized (tax credits/grants). Once built, it flagged on rentals, and indeed, the owners advertised heavily in the Bay Area, and yes, particularly Oakland/East Bay. It quickly met its occupancy goals. This was late ’70’s/early ’80’s. [“Section 8” housing? Not sure]
In that era, which included high inflation and mortgage interest rates (double digits, ~ 12-14%), Davis RE rates were approximately 50% of Bay area rates. Why we moved from the Bay Area where we grew up. [along with the fact we were UCD grads, met, and got married here]
Point is, there is a kernel of truth. I’ve seen ads for the Cannery in the San Rafael/Marin papers (IJ). But they are targeted to the higher end market, not the ‘Canal’ area of SR (very low income, traditionally)
Not meant as anything other than historical…
Don
“Just building market-rate apartments would make more housing affordable to renters.”
I am not sure that this would actually play out this way for the same reasons that I cited with regard to single family dwellings. I know that the two dynamics are not identical, but what I can see happening is that those who are more affluent will rent apartments and then divide rooms to cram more people in just as they now do with the mini dorms and single family homes now renting out rooms. Some may do this for under market value as my son is doing. But others will take advantage of the less affluent to preserve their own profits. I am not sure that this is the direction that is optimal anymore than are mini dorms.
Renters can’t do that.
I see nothing wrong with that… my grandparents did in the 40’s and 50’s… Dad got to know folk from India and Pakistan. They were called “boarders”. My GP’s lived in the house, as did Dad, when he wasn’t in the service. State College, PA. Very similar to Davis…
They had kitchen privileges, and would either dine with my GP’s or cook for themselves.
I actually support that model.
Could be a win-win for empty-nesters…
The proportional impact of adding another bed to an apartment compared to dividing up a house into a mini-dorm is significantly lower, in my opinion.
The separate issue of how to keep affordable housing reserved for those who need it is complicated. The city has a rather checkered past on that front, with a scandal some years ago when affordable housing got bought up and re-sold at market rates. At Aggie Village, UC is using a model where equity growth is limited and resale is restricted to those who meet their qualifications.
There is no perfect solution. The question is whether any of the options are better than the status quo.
it’s more than just a kernel.. I hadn’t known about that particular one..
but when the massive lovely housing for section 8 was being built on 5th and later in the neighborhoods of Valdora and cowell..
predominately East and South.. and where the local schools all of a sudden needed tons of new aides for title 1.. and one of my best friends was first at Pioneer and then at Montgomery and told me that..
Because my family was predominately still spread out in the Bay and one of my sons was on the outskirts of Oak Park…
It became very obvious that the developers of those new units.. one of the latest New Harmony.. were actively bussing in new low income families to fill up the units..
The flip side is new highly paid commuters for the million plus that even incoming faculty pairs are not even affording….
After that lowe income units on the south side around the Research Park UCD areas were built, my other son checked into that.. he didn’t quality as he was a nearly full time worker and yet a college student….and though he barely qualified on income.. his student status disqualified him.
One of the half plexes I looked t with my mother after my dad passed – at the peak of the last boom just prior to the bust… was hardly affordable to anyone.. a tiny two story half plex of perhaps 1000 sq ft.. and a huge yard in the area just north of Montgomery..
It was around $450K? but mostly the design was not for a senior.. .. it was designed to maximize profits for the developers…. nice exterior but the lowest of the low quality of components and not even a second bath downstairs…..
this town never learns from history and tries to cover it up and the same things happens over and over.
“Market rate” is whatever the investors/developers/realtors believe they can get….
That maximizes their profits but doesn’t serve the categories of folks who live and work here, some all of their lives, and can hardly rent much less own…
PS for those who have little clue the reason I use those examples is that is where the signes were..
Now Oak Park is an up and coming overpriced neighborhood of its own.. .and Oakland is now neck and neck with the overpriced SF in the unaffordability…and high cost…
But, the MP/Atherton/Palo Alto area have even overtaken those two neighbors and folks are being priced out there and heading to SF/Oak.
Is that why you have removed any of this repetitive and on-topic truth? because someone complained that is was a racist statement..
Did you tell them to put their big-boy pants on? jeez.
So many untruths… so little time…
And a bit profane, and you know why…
Oh come on. Why, because black people live there? At what percentage of a minority population is an example city or neighborhood considered “racist”? I never thought I’d be defending MK, but come on! Her point on this may be valid. How correct it is would take a survey. Stating things that may or may not be true is hardly unique to the Vanguard.
Come back BP! You are the master at taking on issues like this.
You’re doing fine, Alan… but BP I’d welcome back, if the “tone” would change… same with re: Frankly
Hi Marina,
“All construction of overpriced housing and unnecessary and/or unaffordable “affordable” housing should cease.”
I know that we often find ourselves on opposite sides of issues, but on this we are in agreement.
I believe that our current development paradigm is that building more of all kinds of housing, including luxury, will meet the needs of all in a kind of a housing “rising tide lifts all boats” concept. Unfortunately it has not and in my opinion is very unlikely to ever work since the housing simply does not “trickle down” to those in real need. What actually does occur is that those of us who are affluent enough to buy will often choose to “bid up” the price of a single home that is being sold as an investment rather than as a personal home. I recently bought in partnership with my daughter, a home in Sacramento, and was amazed at the speed with which we had to act and the price that I had to be willing to pay to ensure that we “won” the bidding war with four other offers on the table before ours. I am now going through the same process with my son and seeing the same situation unfold with houses selling within days of hitting the market often to out folks from the Bay area who scoop up the first available for cash, and then a few months later, once they have identified their ideal home, sell the first purchase at a profit. Those benefitting are not those in need, but those who will never have any financial “needs”.
I would like our city to focus on our “needs” before we focus on the “nice to haves” good investments for those who already have plenty of money and luxury apartments for the few who can afford them. I opposed The Cannery for this reason and still oppose the Trackside development for the same reason. If these were “need” based projects, you would not hear me speaking in opposition. What baffles me is that many of those who support these “nice to have” projects are some the same folks who insist that the city focus on our “needs” instead of our “nice to haves” when it comes to public infrastructure and services.
Trying to get to the heart of the topic…
To me ‘moderate growth’ would be to accommodate growth in the development of land, proportionally to land use needs (both res and non-res), to sustain at least internal needs… and I consider UCD to be ‘internal’, with the caveat that they need to pony up as well… proportionally.
Besides the ‘internal sites’, I’d add the area under the Mace Curve, and the ‘Covell Village’/Crossroads site.
But Davis has gone thru boom/bust cycles that pretty much benefit no-one… in the late 70’s, early 80’s, development permits were given out by an “eye-dropper”… developers got rich, and CC approved this with (as someone said) “a wink and a nod”. Then, we had Covell Park Northstar/Wildhorse, Oakshade/Rosecreek all starting to come on line at the same time… the “cork popped”… good for us, as we were able to buy @ ~ $100/SF. Now the cork has been replaced, but show signs of popping again, particularly like the Cannery.
I believe we need a valve, not a cork. One that can be adjusted, as necessary. But remains ‘open’ to some extent. Grande/Chiles Ranch, Sterling, Lincoln 40, the three hotels, etc., could be ‘valved’ to a certain extent.
Yet there are realities… non-res cannot easily be built in phases… for a given project, it pretty much needs to be all or nothing. You cannot build a given hotel 10 units at a time. For SF, you pretty much have to build all the infrastructure for the entire (or much of it) master plan before you sell the first unit… becomes a cash-flow/lending issue.
Marina’s idea for a moratorium on all new units in the Cannery is impractical and (frankly) unconstitutional… yet Tia appears to support that concept. That is not moderate growth/development.
I’ll know ‘moderate growth’ when I see it. But the “boom/bust” model is not practical, nor “sustainable”.
One of the big problems is that the CC voted in the recent past to set the population growth rate at no more than 1% per year, and consequently has limited the issuance of building permits to stay within that limit. Problems arise because the population of the immediate region (Yolo County) continues to expand at the same approx. 2% per year that we have seen for the past four decades. If the population of the region grows at more than twice the rate of the City’s growth, you build up the pressure to ‘bursting’ whether you have a cork or a valve.
All of the housing problems that we are experiencing are a direct result of the City’s attempt to limit population growth. Denying that simple fact moves the discussion into the realm of fantasy rather than reality.
Nah… if a valve is used properly, you can vent the system, and avoid an explosive buildup. Key word is “properly”… I happen to believe, as far as residential (SF & MF, in proportion) is concerned, the right # is 1.5 -2%, on average, depending on “market” conditions… likely higher, in some sectors, such as truly affordable MF units. We’re hurting on those.
“truly affordable” SF ownership units just does not appear to be in the cards anytime soon, with the possible exception of MF-looking condos.
Howard
“Renters can’t do that.”
“Can’t” is a very big word. Can’t under their contract….true. Can’t as in “don’t ever do it in the real world…..not so much so… as I have personally known a number of people who can and do just that. However, I do agree with Don that this is probably a minor factor that although it came to mind for me probably has no significant impact.
“Marina’s idea for a moratorium on all new units in the Cannery is impractical and (frankly) unconstitutional… yet Tia appears to support that concept.”
Marina frequently packs many concepts into a single post and this part of Marina’s comment, I do not support as I feel that the cat is already out of the bag on The Cannery, ill conceived and poorly located though I believed it to be. I am much in favor of a “valve” concept such as you laid out so as to prevent the boom and bust cycles that I also see as detrimental. I feel much the same way about housing as I do about the hotels or the innovation parks, make one change at a time, allow time for assimilation and then move forward as needed with additional developments. I remain an incrementalist. And I never assume that the situation we are facing today will be what we face tomorrow.I believe in the acceptance of change and maintaining the flexibility to speed up and slow down as needed which I guess does not make me many fans on either the “no growth” or the “grow as fast as we can” ends of the spectrum.
The solution to the problem at hand is that UCD needs to stop creating the problem and start creating solutions to the problem they have been neglecting to take responsibility for, for so many years. UCD has access to many options on their 5,300 acres, in fact over 100 acres on or near the core campus have been pointed out as options many times to the campus that would be excellent sites for high-density on-campus housing. The City does not have access the amount of land UCD has. Furthermore, the City has been providing at least 60-70% of the housing historically for the students and that needs to change since UCD is now trying to bring on another 7,000 students, 4,500 of which are to be non-residents so UCD can extract the triple tuition from them to increase UCD’s revenue.
Since UCD is creating this enormous housing need, with the main purpose of taking on 4,500 non-residents students for UCD’s own financial benefit, it needs to provide the on-campus housing for its own growth surge which is a long-term solution. This way the student housing can be permanently available and affordability can be controlled long term as well as reducing the commuting needs of the students and reduce the traffic, circulation, and parking impacts on the City as well as these and other impacts on our environment. Students have the option to live on-campus or in the City but non-students can only live off-campus in the City. So UCD needs to start taking responsibility to build the on-campus housing for its own needs, like so many other campuses are.
Also, other campuses are constructing high density on-campus housing in a timely manner. UC Irvine will construct two more high density housing projects with American Campus Communities in a public-private partnership within 2 years, so why not UCD? UC Irvine will be providing at least 46% on-campus housing in two years by 2019 while UCD is putts-ing along at somewhere of only 27-29% on-campus housing yet it is the largest UC campus. Furthermore, the majority of UCD housing is freshman dorms providing housing for only one year, and they have admitted that they don’t even have sufficient apartments on-campus for the students to transition into. UCD’s negligence and lack of planning is simply outrageous.
The solution to the problem at hand is that UCD needs to stop creating the problem and start creating solutions to the problem they have been neglecting to take responsibility for, for so many years UCD’s negligence and lack of planning is simply outrageous.
Eileen Samitz
The UCD is the part of the UC system and UCOP and regents are making decisions whether more housing should be build on UC Davis campus or the money should be spend for others multi-millions dollars projects. Apparently the housing in UC Davis campus in not the priority for the regents and the UCOP .
Did you ever read the 2011 Davis Enterprise entitled, “CAMPUS MAINTENANCE BACKLOG IS IN THE BILLIONS,”. This billions of dollars problems never was resolved . In the UC Davis Medical Center I was closing year after year the maintenance work orders which never were finished and the equipment newer was repaired .
Two examples
On May 31, 2012, UCDMC Professor Michael DeGeorgio, from the Department of Internal Medicine, wrote in his e-mail to Maintenance Department Manager Charles Witcher:
“Hello, it’s Witcher,
Thank you for sending Dereck Cole to RES III to check on the effectiveness of the AC/Heating unit. He found multiple problems, which he corrected. This is the first time in 10 plus years that the AC actually works in my office. Please acknowledge him for a job well done.
Sincerely,
Mike DeGregorio”
On July 7, 2012, in the e-mail entitled, “Dereck being awesome in Research III,” the scientist from the UCDMC Mac Lab wrote to the HVAC shop manager Patrick Putney and Department Head Charles Witcher:
“Mr. Putney and Witcher,
I am a scientist in Research III (Building 95). I have worked in this building since 2008. In that time, I had given up hope of ever being comfortable or maybe even safe in here. In the short time that Dereck has been working here, he has solved many of the issues that have been plaguing us for years. I can finally not FREEEZE to death every day or eat under dripping ceiling tiles where floods have happened over and over. He is such a welcome sight and a great guy. Everyone here is so thankful to have him around.
Please tell Dereck thank you from everybody on the second floor of Research III. He is an awesome worker, and we really appreciate him. Please, please keep him here!
Rebekah Tsai, MSSRAM, Mack Lab”
This guy who was new in shop and dared to repair the HVAC equipment almost got fired and was removed from the shop and transfer to other shop . How the UCD suppose to build more housing if UCD has no men- power and money to properly properly what the UCD has now.
· Power to an animal hospital at UCD went out when an electrical panel malfunctioned, Tollefson said, and the campus did not have a backup generator for the building.
“We had to scramble on many, many fronts to keep from a pretty major loss,” said David Wilson, the director of the hospital.
The maintenance staff raced to get a new power generator, leaving the hospital, which provides emergency care for animals and other services, without power for four hours. The problem ended up costing much more than replacing the electrical panel would have cost initially, Tollefson said.”
The points Eileen makes in her comment above present only a portion of the total picture. That doesn’t make her points right or wrong, just incomplete. In addition, some of the points she makes are her personal opinions. Here too, that does not make her opinions right or wrong, just ones that many Davis residents do not share.
In an attempt to avoid getting into a he said/she said dialogue I’ve stepped back and sought out some objective data that can shed some light on the history of UCD enrollment and City of Davis population. I contacted the California Department of Finance, Demographic Research Unit to get official Census information for the City of Davis in 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010. Ethan Sharygin provided me with that information segmented in age cohorts in 5-year increments (0-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, etc.) The graphic below shows the proportions of those 5-year age cohorts in each Census year. It is interesting to see that in 1970 the 20-24 age cohort, dominated by UCD students, was 25.4% of the total Davis population of 23,488, and that in 2010 the 20-24 age cohort was 26.2% of the total Davis population of 65,622. That represents a 3.1% change over a 40-year period. Further, the 1980 value was 26.4%, the 1990 value was 25.6%, and the 2000 value was 22.7%. A comparison of those five proportion values tells me that the City and university students seeking housing in the City have been in a stable symbiotic relationship for over 40 years.
https://davisvanguard.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Population_Davis-from-Cal-Dept-of-Finance-1970-2010.jpg
During the Housing Element Steering Committee process in 2008, more than any two people in Davis, Eileen and I highlighted the 2002 “UC Housing for the 21st Century Task Force report as a reasonable guideline for achieving a measurable level of UCD on-campus housing growth. As Eileen and many others have pointed out, UCD has not achieved that measurable level.
With that said, the 1970-2010 City of Davis Census and UCD Enrollment figures clearly show that the the City and UCD have been in a stable symbiotic relationship for over 40 years . . . where the UCD enrollment has averaged 50% of the City population, with a high of 55.1% in 1970 and a low of 41.6% in 2000 (after the 1991-2000 SFR building binge in WildHorse, Mace Ranch and the final phase(s) of Stonegate).
Bottom-line, Eileen’s words, “UCD needs to stop creating the problem” do not encompass the whole problem.
Matt
I think that while your numbers do round out the story, you have mischaracterized a number of Eileen’s comments as “her opinion”. And yet she makes a number of factual statements. She is correct about the amount of land held by UCD, that the determination of the number of students to admit and from where was made exclusively by UCD, and that UCD has not fulfilled its previous agreements.
I think that you two actually have a lot of common ground but are simply prioritizing the facts differently. I write this not to criticize you, but rather to point out that in these days of blurring of fact and fiction, we need to be very careful not to “fictionalize” or portray as opinion the facts as expressed by someone whose priorities differ from our own.
that is true about the number of students to admit but there was more to that story….it was exactly because UCD has the land and space
and it was asked of the chancellor as part of the 2020 vision.. by the Pres/Gov/and Regents
It had the full support of most departments and the Academic Senate and was also to help solve the problem of not enough spots throughout UC for many qualified students especially CA students…
and also coincided with her vision to open access to more students of underrepresented youth and particularly to create a safe haven for latina/o and chicana/o and pacific islanders etc…..
and expand STEM opportunities for women and the underrepresented.
Unfortunately all if these visions are much more expensive and required a ton of new buildings and tripling up of dorms and involving developers to build non-dorms for non-undergraduates.. that reducing the cost of construction to developers and speeding up the numbers of new units available but at the same time driving up rents for students/parents… as now the developers and management companies need a cut also…
Eileen is very sharp and correct on her analyses.. sometimes there is more to the stories on the UC side.. as I have tended to be more involved in those kinds of things due to my role on campus.
I used to ask lots of questions there also.. and the answers may not be so obvious if one wasn’t there or asking.
Tia, I’m not sure where or how you felt I was saying that anything that Eileen said was incorrect. In fact I very overtly went out of my way to say “Here too, that does not make her opinions right or wrong, just ones that many Davis residents do not share.”
Further, you and I are very much in agreement about prioritizing facts. That is precisely why I very overtly went out of my way to say “The points Eileen makes in her comment above present only a portion of the total picture. That doesn’t make her points right or wrong, just incomplete.”
I agree that Eileen and I have a lot of common ground, and have had that common ground for the 8 years since the Housing Element Steering Committee, which is precisely why I very overtly went out of my way to say “During the Housing Element Steering Committee process in 2008, more than any two people in Davis, Eileen and I highlighted the 2002 “UC Housing for the 21st Century Task Force report as a reasonable guideline for achieving a measurable level of UCD on-campus housing growth. As Eileen and many others have pointed out, UCD has not achieved that measurable level.”
this is ancient history though a start.. .it is now nearly 2017.. Happy New Years everyone!
the above is why you were the best choice for council Matt though I also like Brett…
PS> I do pack a lot into each post.. who has time to be wishy washy..
if the developers were brought to task for advertising outside of Davis.. and I mean outside of Davis to way outside this county…..only to fill the unneeded units then perhaps those units would stay empty until the market catches up and they would start actually building needed units
In the meantime those same folks, who know how to play the game better than most anyone in town while the paid or volunteer building folks and council folks have no clue what is going on.. .despite my harping on it for many months now.., are laughing all the way to the bank and even got a $10 MILLION bonus for lying, cheating and promising .. ..and getting a pass less than month later..
There are very few in town who get it.. to the depths of MH, ES, and me … ..
Eileen was a long time UC employee also…. an ole buddy, she new hubby 1 first, then we met later…
And yes, we have been on many, many of the same causes…and still are.. and yet, the problem is way larger than the UCD .
The developers and what they are allowed to get away with are much larger contributors to the problem…
Marina
“if the developers were brought to task for advertising outside of Davis.”
Can you propose a mechanism within our nominally “free market system” by which developers could be “brought to task” for advertising outside Davis…..or anywhere that the happen to want ?
“ …while the paid or volunteer building folks and council folks have no clue what is going on.. .despite my harping on it for many months now.., are laughing all the way to the bank and even got a $10 MILLION bonus for lying, cheating and promising .. “
I am unclear about whom you are implicating in this statement. Surely you are not implying that any of our City Council members received a financial benefit from any of the recent financial development proposals ?
not now.. .I had a good response and it never made it to posting..hit the wrong button or something… going to do something else for a while…..suffice it to say that by the time it is being built it is really too little to late.. and much needs to be changed much earlier on to ensure those things are not continually done by the same developers over and over….with the populace paying the price
Yes, UC Davis should build more housing! Nobody disagrees. But when plans come in the pipe will locals sue again as happened last time?
How many times did locals sue UCSD and UC Irvine? You get from the world what you put out in it. The town-and-gown relations in Davis are no exception. Try googling “UC Irvine LRDP lawsuit” Davis comes up, not Irvine!
Mathew
The January 2007 Legislative Analyst’s Office Review of UC’s Long Range Development Planning Process addressed in details what cities with the UC campuses can and can’t do about the UC LRDP.
http://www.lao.ca.gov/2007/uc_lrdp/lrdp_011007.htm
The UC LRDP problem for the City of Davis community is the part of the 25 years of Larry Vanderhoef’s legacy as a Provost and Vice Chancellor for 10 years and the UC Davis Chancellor for 15 years .
Matthew, I don’t know about Irvine, but you may want to read the following New York Times article from 2007 about Santa Cruz. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/us/19campus.html
As a Santa Cruz alum who was there for all of this: Yep, I remember!
There is one enormous difference though: Santa Cruz was built in a redwood forest and much of the easily develop-able land is off limits via federal law. UC Davis has no such limitation as far as I’m aware.
That is true Matthew, but you were arguing about a pattern of human behavior, not the geography that surrounds the locality of the behavior. In both cases the behavior happened.
JMHO