Sunday Commentary: Sac Biz Journal Focuses on Davis Housing

By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor

Davis, CA – If you don’t believe Davis has a housing crisis, take a look at the numbers.  This year, in most months, the city has topped out on about 30 home sales—many of them condos rather than single family—at a median price of around $900,000.

Since 2009, according to a city report from April, the city just built 700 single family homes (attached OR detached).

As Ben van der Meer of the Sacramento Business Journal notes in an article on Friday (paywall warning), “For years, Davis was a tantalizing prospect for housing developers who saw high education and income levels and in-migration from University of California Davis college students providing strong demand.”

But housing proposals fell “in a familiar scenario” — “propose a project, see it battered by skeptical residents, eke through the approval process, and then get stalled further by a lawsuit or public vote.”

For those of you who are new or perhaps still in denial, this is the regional reputation of Davis and why I have consistently pointed out that the city has a giant bullseye on it when it comes to the state.

Writes van der Meer, “The result is not only a dearth of new housing in Davis, but both rental occupancy and home prices at or near the top of the Sacramento region.”

The thrust of his article, however, is that Davis, with nine new housing proposals since the spring, has become a “hot spot for new housing proposals.”

“The applications we’ve received are primarily a response to two things,” said Sherri Metzker, the city’s community development director. “The housing crisis in California, and the shortage of housing in Davis itself.”

A lot of people have focused on the former, but ignored the latter.

The article, however, heavily focuses on the downtown plan and those three projects.

Writes van der Meer: “Two other factors are also at play in Davis that also explain the relative flood of new applications. One is the Downtown Davis Specific Plan, which took effect earlier this year and calls for up to 1,000 new units in the central part of the city.”

The plan as Metzker notes increases the allowable size of the building—up to seven stories—and also “the plan doesn’t require new parking with those proposals.”

These projects will proceed without public hearings because of the Downtown Plan.

“A lack of public hearings doesn’t mean an opponent couldn’t still challenge a project’s approvals in court. But because all three projects fall within the Downtown Davis Specific Plan, Metzker said, a suit contesting their approvals would actually have to challenge the plan itself,” the article notes.

“At this point, we don’t have reason to believe there will be a court challenge for any projects,” she said.

All of this is great, and while we need housing of this sort in the downtown to invigorate the downtown and provide housing for the younger portions of the workforce, as I have argued in the past, I don’t see the downtown housing proposals moving the needle much on the massive housing crisis the community faces.

While the builder’s remedy has come up, I agree with Sherri Metzker—the affordable threshold of 20 percent makes it hard to pencil out.

Moreover, while it might impact Palomino Place, it is not going to impact Village Farms, Shriner, or Pioneer Community.

The article notes, “The city is also working to revise its housing element to HCD’s satisfaction, which would end its builder’s remedy status. As of early August, though, the city is still under builder’s remedy, which means more proposals could still come.”

Bottom line—I don’t see either the Downtown Plan or the builder’s remedy as being game changers in Davis.  But given city staff bandwidth issues, streamlining the process is probably helpful.

Comments from Alan Pryor and David Taormino are also of some interest.

Pryor, who as many know has opposed many recent projects, told the Business Journal “in an email that his group will be looking for components such as minimum transportation impacts, a diversity of housing types, a high percentage of on-site low-income affordable housing and quality land-bank mitigation to make up for what’s planned to be developed.

“We certainly encourage strong community outreach as these project details are finalized,” he said. “However, until the broader community has weighed in on the project, more details are finalized and (environmental impact reports) are prepared and submitted to the city, the [Sierra] Club will not take a position on any of these projects.”

They also generally support the three downtown Davis redevelopment housing projects, “though with concerns about a lack of parking.”

Taormino, on the other hand, is upset that the city has not processed their project which he believes “flies in the face of what builder’s remedy is supposed to do.

“Our perspective is that the law requires the city of Davis to process our project in a certain time frame,” he said. “They’re dragging their feet and not doing that.”

Of course the Business Journal article does not address the biggest elephant in the room—Measure J and what to do about that.

The council this fall is likely to decide whether they should put before the voters modification of the measure and what that would look like.  In addition, there is potential that the state or even a private group would file a court challenge.

Until something changes, it is hard to imagine that Davis can escape the scenario van der Meer brought up from the outset: “propose a project, see it battered by skeptical residents, eke through the approval process, and then get stalled further by a lawsuit or public vote.”

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