We have heard a lot from residents in this community – many of them long-time residents, who already own homes – but we have not heard nearly enough from students.
While this is once again a student housing discussion that took place during finals week, when students were preoccupied, it was nice to watch the planning commission meeting and see a mix of comments, including quite a few from people who are not the “usual suspects.”
I wish to highlight two, ASUCD President Alex Lee and GSA Representative Don Gibson, for the purpose of adding to this discussion.
As Alex Lee put it, “I’m very proud to say that the student government got both the university and the city council to say, it’s a joint responsibility. That’s what many students believe – it’s a shared responsibility.”
Alex Lee, student body president, and a fourth year senior, spoke during the planning commission meeting.
I served as the ASUCD president this year and I wanted to give you a face for the many thousands of students depending upon the housing situation within Davis. You’re going to hear that notion brought up a lot about students, but I want to give you a face of what one looked like. One who for three, four years, struggled to find housing each year. It got harder and harder to the point where I have to compete in the market at that rate.
It’s also finals week so there aren’t as many students out here as we’d like – I need to go back to studying right after public comment. But we’ve had a petition circulating since last night and we have 65 signatures so far and its growing still amongst the students – the grads and undergrads.
The Sterling Student Apartments are within the larger context of the housing crisis in Davis. You can’t not talk about that. But having this unique proposal that has affordable housing which provides for a lot of the community members that want to live there, that are not just students, and student oriented housing is tremendous to lift the pressure off.
We’ve heard a lot about the hot-potato type issue, between the city and the university going ‘it’s your problem’ ‘no, it’s your problem.’ They go back and forth. But this year I’m very proud to say that the student government got both the university and the city council to say, it’s a joint responsibility. That’s what many students believe – it’s a shared responsibility.
The Sterling Fifth Apartments go a small way of the dent of the increasing student population, it is an unnatural population growth but in many ways it is the lifeblood of this community. Many of the business and restaurants are sprawling because the students are coming with different tastes and different metropolan lifestyles and they want to contribute back to society.
I have been very proud to live in the city of Davis for three years and I very much enjoy it. Whether the campus should have more students or the city should have more students, I think it’s a shared responsibility. But having that option for students – the thousands that come through every four or five years and contribute to the identity of this very campus, is so pivotal.
Because if there isn’t enough housing, and we’re seeing this already, students will be migrating to the surrounding cities and thus driving more, and our parking as a corollary effect as you can see, is already impacted. So if there’s more cars coming in, there will be more traffic and more congestion. But if there’s students living in apartments in Davis, they can take Unitrans which is funded by students primarily, and they can also bike to campus and that will relieve some of the traffic congestion concerns.
Don Gibson, from the Graduate Student Association, spoke during the Planning Commission Meeting and submitted his statement to the Vanguard:
Hello my name is Don Gibson, I am a PhD candidate at UC Davis and have been a member of the UC Davis community for the last 10 years. I’m coming here as the chair of the graduate student Association and ASUCD joint Housing Task Force. The Joint ASUCD-GSA Housing Task Force stands in strong support of the Sterling Project.
The housing crisis facing the UC Davis Community both students and staff continues to get worse every day. The university is planning on adding thousands of new students and staff while the City of Davis has not increased the housing supply in the same time.
Our support for this project is highlighted by three big numbers: 0.2%, 0.2% is the vacancy rate for Davis apartments. Meaning for every 1000 apartments only 2 stand vacant today. 13%, 13% is the approximant increase in annual rent last year because of this shockingly low supply, landlords have no incentive to provide quality or affordable housing in Davis. 540 beds, the number of bed added will be incredibly helpful for students in dire need of finding a quality place within the city of Davis.
When deciding upon whether to approve this project can we call upon the Planning Commission to consider the effects of rejecting housing that can fit approximately 540 additional beds. Additional housing in the city of Davis is by far the most sustainable solution for our environment, the City of Davis, and those who work or study at the university. If this housing does not get built that would be an additional 540 people who would most likely drive by car every day. That’s an additional 540 cars clogging our freeways, our roads, our parking garages. To continue Davis’s ethos of sustainability, having additional housing in the city of Davis is by far the best way to save our environment. Housing in the City of Davis allows these residents to use far more sustainable for their transportation options such as biking or Unitrans which studies have shown that 72% will take either of those options from this side of town.
The Sterling project has some unique adventives. Being an infill project provides a significant number of beds without the need without removing agricultural lands. Next, having a significant percentage of housing units be single rooms is a great way to attract young professional like myself to the city of Davis. Single rooms are important for young professionals because it facilities meeting new people without the struggle to find a roommate.
Lets be clear, both the City of Davis and UC Davis have the responsibility to share the need to build student housing. Recently the university has begun taken steps to relive the housing crisis. However, the City of Davis has not held up its end of the bargain in the last decade to support the college town environment. By restricting housing growth for its student population more and more students are forced to live in apartments beyond intended capacity and forcing many to commute by car from outside of Davis. We call upon the planning commission and the elected leaders in Davis to support housing designed for the student population.
Lastly, here in the middle of a Finals week, the city of Davis should do its fair share in the housing crisis and approve desperately needed housing. If it was not for the students in the university the city of Davis would not be the city many of us here love today. If Davis continues down the path of rejecting housing in the city center, it will go against the core values many of us hold of sustainable environmental practices by forcing hundreds of more people to drive from far away every day.
Please support the Sterling project.
I am glad to have these two voices added to the conversation and agree with much of what they have to say. I have a question for both, or anyone who cares to share an opinion. I agree that the responsibility for housing students is a shared responsibility. However, there is an important factor that is unilateral. The university alone can determine how many students that it will admit and over how much time. How do you think that the city can best adapt to having both joint responsibility for housing, and no say over the amount of housing needed for the student population ?
What ‘say’ does the City have about how many people choose to move to the region, or how many babies are born here, causing the population to rise? How much ‘say’ do you think that current residents should have on those same issues? The population of the region is going to continue to expand as long as we have an environment that is attractive to those not living here (and residents willing to have babies). This will continue even if the University reduces enrollment to zero.
Since we don’t (yet) live in a command and control society, there is no way that residents can be prevented from moving around where they please. The City has tried to limit the expansion of the population by placing limits on housing, but the direct consequence of those efforts has not been to prevent population growth, but to increase population density within our limited housing resource.
How the City can best ‘adapt’ to the existing situation is to address the housing needs of all of its residents (current and future) and not just those whose housing needs have already been satisfied.
Mark is confusing two different issues.
One is growth driven by UC, which is primarily responsible for the housing challenges that Davis is facing. Much of this growth is the result of the UC’s decision to pursue more “profitable” international students, at the expense of California resident enrollment (which was actually decreasing). There are several articles online, regarding this trend.
An interesting quote from the article, in which the state auditor pointed out that:
“Recent policy changes that allowed UC campuses to set their own enrollment targets and keep the revenue generated by nonresident supplemental fees created an incentive to recruit more out-of-state and international students.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article68782827.html
The other is regional growth (of which Davis is already meetings its “fair share” SACOG growth requirements). All of the current proposals (including Sterling) will exceed Davis’ current allotment.
The City has a responsibility to provide appropriate housing for its residents, irrespective of what SACOG says, or what the University promises. The oft-stated ‘concerns’ about the University and SACOG from Ron and others are nothing but deflections from the real problem and an attempt to justify the City’s (and their own) abject failure to meet the needs of their neighbors.
Nowhere in the statutes of the state of California does it suggest that adequately planning for anticipated units under the RHNA means the state condones or supports a jurisdiction saying “no” to everything else. Nowhere. Also, SACOG has repeatedly noted the severity of need of housing in Davis above and beyond the RHNA allocation.
Ron… you’d be more persuasive if you stopped spouting untruths/stretched ‘truths’/opinions, and pretending they were facts. Just my opinion.
Matt:
For the moment, I’ll take your word for it, that SACOG has noted a need for housing above the allocation that it actually assigned to Davis.
But, would you not agree that UCD is driving much of this need, and is essentially forcing the city to respond (one way, or another)? And, that so far, UCD has disregarded the concerns and recommendations outlined in the city’s resolution from late last year? (And, that UCD previously disregarded commitments, as well?)
Some other interesting quotes, from the article above:
“The broad and blistering (audit) report also found that academic standards were lowered for thousands of nonresident admissions and that UC has not developed an actual cost of instruction to guide decisions about tuition.”
“It slammed the university for not seeking further budget savings before pursuing the new enrollment strategy, and questioned some spending choices, including high executive compensation and a low-interest home loan program for faculty and senior administrators”.
No idea what you’re talking about. I posted an article describing a state audit report, above. Was that not “factual enough”, for you?
“How much ‘say’ do you think that current residents should have on those same issues? “
The answer to this question as written is not at all. But we are not discussing the random movement of people in and out of a given community, we are discussing a number which is determined in advance by one of the involved entities, namely the university, and this is a controllable, targeted number, not a spontaneously generated demand.
The University does not answer to the City Council, much less the noisy residents of town. The only rational basis for the City to have any ‘say’ in what the University does will be through the relationships developed over time between the CC and the University Administration, a relationship that was severely damaged by the actions and arrogance of past CC members (and their noisy supporters). Nothing the City ever does, however, will have any impact on the level of enrollment as that is determined by the system-wide administration, not the local campus.
Davis needs to stop whining about the University and start addressing the severe housing shortage in town.
“The university alone can decide how many students it admits.”
No, Tia. The university’s Regents and the State Legislature are players in that part of the process. Big players.
Matt
I stand corrected on this technical point, but feel that the city remains essentially powerless in this determination.
The city really is powerless in that respect. So th only real question is what should they do about it.
Tia– I’m afraid to say that you are correct. The current legal system around UC only allows for CEQA lawsuits as a way for cities to settle issues with UC campuses
Do I assume correctly that the Lucy & Charlie Brown football gag has been previously used in the context of UC Davis’s promises about housing provision? How involved has the legislature been with helping – rather than simply IPTIWWTing* – with this situation? Has the city done a study to see if a lawsuit is feasible and likely to achieve success?
If UCD was on city land could the City force it to e.g. restrict academic immigration? In pretty much all but the formal definition it is part of the city.
*I’m positive that if we work together.. ing.
Are you serious? If so, what country/state have you come here from?
The City cannot even control DJUSD as to numbers of students it accepts from ‘out of district’… and the vast majority of DJUSD schools are within corporate limits…
Howard P., I come from the Bay Area , where housing prices have increased by leaps and bounds due in part to absolutely irresponsible planning that created lots of relatively well-paid jobs on the Peninsula, amongst other places. In other words, regional and local entities exercised little pressure – by will or design – to balance this with housing. The problem there is not housing supply, per se, it’s matching job creation to housing creation. This didn’t and is not happening, and there are huge problems with transport: Public transport cannot easily solve bad job-to-residence distance planning. So, a huge number of long commutes between SF and the Silicon Valley should not exist in the first place, especially if the backbone is an well-meaning but archaic rail system. The taxes that would have the most bang if spent smartly on rail instead fund individual private mega-shuttles. But there’s also a lot of Peninsuala driving, and then there’s a huge amount of driving caused by displacement: people who used to live and work in SF find it difficult at least to find a job in Stockton or wherever the hell they are, e.g. Sacramento, unwilling victims and neighbors of similar victims of regional planning insanity in Davis and its functionally- but not formally-connected academic institution, both for which solutions that would be considered reasonable in reasonable countries and studied deeply, such as incorporation of the Yolo County area under the UC Davis campus into west Davis, or West Davis — the latter by nature of its formal relationship encouraged or forced to work with the rest of Davis or its twin-city to celebrate the lives of humans by allowing them to live in the area, whether as students or workers, in a way that does not strain any resources for more than a short period of time, in any case below the threshold of suffering.
It’s easier to pretend you’re liberal, call me Stalin and wave your Davis flag with its pennyfarthing until you put on your They Live glasses and see that’s actually a hybrid SUV on a flag with both a Sterling and UC Davis parking permit, driven by a well-meaning but functionally extreme narcissist freshman, alone on the way to school, because riding a bike requires mental effort, just like creative solidarity.
We are still missing a key variable – how much housing in the city is needed if UC Davis gets to 90/40? How much in the city is needed if they get to 100/50? And how much in the city is needed if they don’t get to at least 90/40?
David
Seems like you are arguing for an evidence based approach. I could not agree more.
Precisely what I’m arguing for
I don’t see why you need any more evidence than the current vacancy rate. It’s not like this low vacancy rate is a new thing. It has been extremely low for years. The solution is to start building apartments and stop when the vacancy rate is in a ‘healthy’ range. It is going to take years of building to get to that point regardless of what the University does (or doesn’t do). Waiting for some determination of a specific number is really nothing more than another justification not to act.
We have the data, we know there is a shortage, start building apartments. It really is that simple.
We know there’s a shortage, what we don’t know is how many units we need to build. While I reject the notion that the city should build zero – I also believe that the university does need to build their share which is somewhere between 90/40 and 100/50. Based on that, I want a number. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Actually, it is not so simple, Mark… you need a willing property owner, and a willing developer to take the risks to apply, and usually a willing lender to do much of anything… the combination of the three is just short of betting on the UCD men’s basketball team to get into the “sweet sixteen” in the NCAA… possible, but…
Understood, Howard. But you first have to be willing to approve projects, which hasn’t been the case of late (10 years?)…
One other thing I don’t get is Ron is arguing here that UC growth is driving the demand for housing, and yet yesterday he and Eileen were arguing that Sterling was problematic because it is only focused on student housing. There seems to be an inherent contradiction in those two arguments.
David:
I suspect that you’re just playing games, now. You already know the basic argument (discussed countless times), that UCD is causing the need for housing, and that housing which is primarily oriented toward students (“megadorms”) are better-suited for campus locations. In fact, people like Eileen are leading the effort to build MORE student housing on campus, including apartments.
You already know all of this.
Yes, but your argument yesterday was that Sterling was improper because only students could live there and that we should be developing housing for families as well. That’s the tension.
David: Not exactly what I said, but still not seeing any contradiction with that statement, as written.
Here is a sampling of what you and Eileen said:
Ron: “What strikes me is that you’re continuing to advocate housing for a specific group ”
Eileen: “One of the major problems with the Sterling project is that it is exclusionary by design, since it simply does not offering rental housing to families and other non-students.”
What’s the contradiction? The complaint that the houses at Sterling are “for a specific group” – the group that happens to be driving the housing needs in the first place.
David:
Again, you already know that housing on campus can be legally reserved for those with an association with the university (e.g., students, staff, faculty). That’s not possible, elsewhere. And, it does provide a benefit (for all) to have such facilities located/available on campus, for reasons already discussed.
A question for you: Are you planning to continue your advocacy on this (and other development issues) for days/weeks to come? With the usual, repetitive arguments, all of which have been debated at length? (That’s been your pattern.)
Reading and replying to articles is entirely voluntary.
Gawd, you can say that again. This subject has been beat up and down, sideways and had its teeth kicked in. In other words, the horse is dead.
How is the horse dead? The council is set to vote on Sterling on April 18, housing is one of the two biggest issues facing this community
“Again, you already know that housing on campus can be legally reserved for those with an association with the university (e.g., students, staff, faculty). That’s not possible, elsewhere. And, it does provide a benefit (for all) to have such facilities located/available on campus, for reasons already discussed.”
But wait, Eileen said: “One of the major problems with the Sterling project is that it is exclusionary by design, since it simply does not offering rental housing to families and other non-students.”
So which is it?
David: Already responded to your comment. You’re apparently just engaging in nonsense. (Slow news day, perhaps?)
Untrue, as stated… again…
The “horse” could be revived if anyone were to objectively address the issue as David expressed it in his post of 3:01 pm.
Tia: The “horse” (accurate numbers) cannot be determined in the absence of a completed LRDP, in which no further action is anticipated by UCD or the city.
Perhaps more importantly, the “water” to which we’re leading the horse is not clear. (In other words, it could consist of a lawsuit against UCD, for example. As per the example provided by Greg Rowe yesterday, with UC Santa Cruz.)
Reminds me of the blind and constant advocacy on the Vanguard for more (local) commercial development, to maintain roads. (All while ignoring the statewide magnitude of the problem, and efforts to solve it at that level.) Same with pensions.
Of course, there are some talented people on the Vanguard, who will nevertheless continue to try to show the “problems and solutions”, using incomplete (and only local) information, with only one “obvious solution” (in their eyes).
We can estimate how many beds we are short. We can make projections based on the 90/40 commitment UCD has made. We can speculate about what they might be if UCD suddenly changed their minds and agreed to 100/50 despite all evidence suggesting they won’t do that.
Those are the parameters of the LRDP.
I see now you are already starting to use a hypothetical lawsuit as your next excuse to oppose apartments. I guess that was too easy to predict.
Don:
Go for it. But, keep in mind that the UC Santa Cruz lawsuit apparently ties increases in enrollment to housing availability, in some manner. (Refer to Greg’s recent comments, for details.)
Also – continue misstating what I said. Nice touch, for an “objective” moderator. (Oops – is that comment not allowed?)
Here is the Santa Cruz lawsuit settlement.
http://lrdp.ucsc.edu/settlement-agreement.pdf
There seem to be three issues: water supply, sewer, and transportation impact. Housing seemed to be the bargaining point for settling disputes about the other factors. UCD is now a customer for a portion of its water from the city of Davis, but is capable of being 100% autonomous with respect to water. I believe they run their own sewer system. Transportation impact would be very different from UCD/Davis vs. UCSC/Santa Cruz. So I would be interested to hear from an attorney as to whether Davis residents would be wasting their time and effort suing UCD. I could be misunderstanding the whole basis of the lawsuit.