In yesterday’s article and its comments the word of the day was “Crisis.” Over the past 12 months another political hype word has been in vogue … “maxi-dorm.” What do “crisis” and “maxi-dorm” have in common? They have a resonance when used as sound bites in political-charged discussion.
Yesterday’s article didn’t stop with the label “crisis.” One of the verbal images used was “We had another person describe living in a house and having to share the living room for $400 per month, with a sheet partition for privacy.” The metaphor that image tries to invoke has several interesting flaws, one of which was ironically displayed in the lead image of the article, which shows a dormitory room, where the student residents are sharing a single room for living. The second was the remembrance is stirs in most Davis viewers of the adventure and excitement of their college days, sharing a dorm room with a roommate assigned by the university. Getting to know that random stranger, sharing war stories, but without the sheet. Those were good times … anything but a crisis. Lastly, the sheet. For me it conjured up the following Colbert comedy skit.
The “crisis” theme continued in the comments section with the following:
You apparently don’t have much contact with UCD students at this point in your life. I frequently hear about difficulties in finding housing and a prevalence of “couch surfing.” We know that there is a housing CRISIS for renters in this community NOW. Why are you trying so hard to dismiss this situation?
That comment illustrates two important points.
- First, the use of second-hand anecdotal evidence of the experience of an unknown number of individual examples of “couch surfing” from a sample population of over 35,000.
- Second, that the commenter clearly hasn’t been reading my past comments on the personal research I am engaged in to better understand the problem, rather than dismiss it.
Let’s talk about that work-in-process research, which has focused on the housing supply/demand data from UCD’s historical records.
What the data shows is that difficulties in finding housing in Davis have existed for the past 23 years, unabated, since the end of the four-year 1992-1996 period where the Apartment vacancy rate for Davis steadily dropped from 8.7% in the Fall of 1992 to 5.1% in the Fall of 1993 to 2.9% in the Fall of 1994 to 1.3% in the Fall of 1995 and to 0.5% in the Fall of 1996.
In the 23 years since hitting 0.5% in the Fall of 1996, the median Vacancy Rate in Davis has been 0.8% and the most frequent annual Vacancy Rate has been 0.2%. In 7 of the 23 years since 1996 Davis has had a Vacancy Rate of 0.3% or below. As I have said in past comments and articles the Davis housing shortage is the status quo. It is a very serious long-standing problem, but when it comes to labeling it as a crisis, the expression that comes to my mind is one that hangs by many an Administrator’s desk …
“A failure to plan on your part should not constitute an emergency on my part.” (see also Failing to Plan Means You Are Planning to Fail!).
But the depth of the problem does not stop with a simple reporting of the historical Vacancy Rate trend.
I have been saying for a long time that “the Davis apartment vacancy rate is not 0.2%, but rather minus 30%.” By that I mean that Davis has a substantial number of people in the market for an apartment who simply can’t find one to rent, which is simply another way of saying the commenter’s statement, “I frequently hear about difficulties in finding housing.” He and I are in full agreement on that. Available rental housing is very difficult to find.
How big is the difficulty? I’ve used the following logic to come to my minus 30% vacancy rate. According to the US Census American Community Survey for 2017 there are 11,579 multi-family units in the City of Davis. The fiscal model presented by the City to the FBC in January shows an average occupancy for multi-family units of 3.14 persons. Putting those two numbers together I calculate a bit over 36,000 Davis residents living in apartments. 30% of 36,000 is a bit over 10,000, and I have for a long time felt that Don Shor’s often stated claim that “Davis is short 10,000 apartment beds” is a pretty good guess. I’m now beginning to feel it is too low.
But Don’s estimate and my concurrence still only make it that 10,000 number a guess. Some would even say it is a wild ass guess … a WAG if you will. My work-in-process research has been directed not at “dismissing” that WAG, as yesterday’s commenter accused me of, but rather to move it from a WAG to a SWAG. It will always be an estimate, but an estimate with some substance to it (or better yet a range of reasonable possibilities that bracket the reality).
What has my research found thus far?
Since 1996 the 3-Quarter average student enrollment at UCD has grown 14,363 students, and as a result Faculty has grown by 2,000 and Staff has grown by 4,000. That is a combined Housing Demand increase of over 20,000 beds … and that 20,000-bed increase in demand doesn’t even include the impact on demand from the spouses and children of the Faculty and Staff, nor does it include the impact on demand from people who are not students, Faculty or Staff at UCD, nor does it include the impact on housing demand from the portion of the 7,500 employees of UCD Medical Center who choose to live in Davis and commune across the Yolo Causeway to work.
UCD is still working on gathering for me the year-by-year data on the supply of on-campus beds, so any increase in housing supply that will partially offset the 20,000 bed increase in demand is still a work-in-process. One piece of on-campus housing supply data that we do have is from UC’s Housing in the 21st Century report that shows the “Total On-Campus Housing Supply” in Fall 1996 was 4,332 and in Fall 2001 was 5,552. If you count up the number of beds on the UCD Student Housing page http://housing.ucdavis.edu/housing/ that number does not exceed 9,332. So it is not unreasonable to see an increase in supply of something less than 5,000 from on-campus housing, which partially offsets the 20,000 increase in demand.
Bottom-line, if David and the commenter are correct when they say “there is a housing CRISIS for renters in this community NOW,” that crisis has existed for two decades, and we have done nothing about it. It has been the status quo, and labeling it with a new sound bite doesn’t change that.
Which brings me back to the argument I made in Public Comment at the October 17th Council meeting when this current incarnation of Nishi was formally resurrected. I said, “the project needs to be designed with at least the same density as the Nishi 2016 project. That way, we will make real progress” … progress toward addressing a serious problem that has existed in Davis for the past 23 years … a problem that has grown by 1,000 students and 500 faculty and staff each year for the past 6 years, and will continue to do so by similar amounts for each of the next 5 years according to UC Davis projections.
To do any less is simply a failure in planning on the part of the developer, the City and the University, which brings us back to the sign at that Administrator’s desk … “A failure to plan on your part should not constitute an emergency on my part.” (see also Failing to Plan Means You Are Planning to Fail!).
Matt
You’re ignoring the growing number of commuters, both students and staff, evidenced by the various transportation surveys that have been cited in the Vanguard and the Enterprise. That group reflects the nature of the housing crisis we have. And on top of that, we’re damaging our environment by forcing so much more car use. The environmental mitigation alone is probably sufficient to offset any potential financial losses. We should take responsibility for what we wrought (per Neal Ruud’s well put essay today.)
And yes, a crisis can go on for a long time. Some of us have been noting the crisis with housing supply since the turn of the century. Why do you think that UCD came up with the desperate Hail Mary in West Village in 2005? UCD is not well positioned to develop housing for anyone other than entry level students. It simply doesn’t have the competitive cost structure, nor the housing management institutions to well serve older students, staff and faculty. UCD was forced into West Village because the City refused to authorize a large new development that could have satiated that housing demand. This election is just another highlight along the way in this ongoing crisis.
As for demanding a higher density project, you have not responded to my request that you provide a GUARANTEE that such a project will be financially viable and that it will be approved in version 3.0. The fact is that you cannot provide any such guarantee, so instead you are now standing with the naysayers who want no development there, ever. You have failed to make your case for a viable alternative.
Richard, your request for a guarantee is purely rhetorical. There are no such guarantees in life. The Nishi developers have no such guarantees for their current project. Asking for such guarantees is like asking someone when they stopped beating their spouse.
I’m not ignoring the commuters at all. Evey one of those commuters is included in my calculation of the combined UCD-related Housing Demand increase of over 20,000 beds … and as I noted in the article, that 20,000-bed increase in demand doesn’t even include the impact on demand from the spouses and children of the Faculty and Staff, nor does it include the impact on demand from people who are not students, Faculty or Staff at UCD, nor does it include the impact on housing demand from the portion of the 7,500 employees of UCD Medical Center who choose to live in Davis and commune across the Yolo Causeway to work.
Commuting is an impact related to the housing shortage.
Fundamentally we are in agreement on everything except whether 2,200 beds is an appropriate response to a 20,000 bed shortage, or whether 5,000 to 7,000 beds would be a better response. I respect your right to disagree with me. That is one of the fundamental tenets of democracy.
Of course my question was rhetorical. As for Nishi 2.0, it is the choice we face, and by voting “yes” as a community, we give it that guarantee of approval. We are choosing between something that we collectively have control over–approving Nishi 2.0–or waiting for a potential phantom project which may never materialize for which there is no guarantee. It is the case of “a bird in the hand.” Your are proposing a highly speculative bet on trying to get another 3,000 beds. And I still haven’t seen the financial analysis that shows that a project with more units would be financially viable. You have to make a convincing case, again without speculating, to even get to the sufficiency conditions for rejecting the current proposal. It’s very late in the game to come up with that analysis.
So, I can’t follow your line of argumentation on housing demand. Are we in a housing crisis now? Or is it that you are just objecting to that it is being elevated now at such a late date?
There is no one in town that knows the numbers better than the developers. The project they proposed is the one that they believe is financially viable now. It doesn’t matter what Matt thinks about his theoretical alternatives unless of course, he is offering to buy the property in order to build his preferred project.
Mark and Richard, because private developers keep their numbers quiet, we will never know what their calculations are/were.
With that said, we do know the following “comparables” that allow us to have some sense whether greater than 3-stories makes fiscal sense. The first example is the current Davis Live project, which has been designed as 7 stories, and wouldn’t be proceeding if it didn’t pencil out. The second example is the current Lincoln 40 project, which has been designed as 5 stories, and wouldn’t be proceeding if it didn’t pencil out.
There are other points I could make based on my one-to-one conversations with John Whitcombe, as well as follow up discussions I have had with a top industry expert on apartment construction costs, but I am going to preserve the mutually-agreed-to confidentiality of both of those conversations.
With that said, I acknowledge that the points you both have made have resonance. However, I believe they are not binary issues, with simple on or off alternatives. IMO, they fall into the grey area between.
(My comment posted while I was editing it. Here’s an addition as the 2nd paragraph.)
You’re also ignoring the proliferation of increased rental density within dwellings–mini dorms. This has picked up much of the housing slack that see missing. Also, rentals have pushed further into single-family neighborhoods. I could see that in the two neighborhoods we rented in from 2008 to 2016.
Increased rental density within dwellings — mini-dorms is a consideration on the supply side. Until UCD gets back to me with some additional supply side information, my immediate focus is on the demand side. The story there is compelling enough to warrant focused attention now rather than waiting.
With that said, mini-dorms have impacted the supply side … with consequences both good and bad.