When the Vanguard asked about what is the most important in our questions of the Davis City Council, everyone said—housing.
As Linda Deos put it, “I think it’s the most important issue facing our community. And I’m not surprised that all three of us are kind of on the same page here. We need more housing. We just downright need more housing.”
Dillan Horton added, “This housing crisis… it’s not leaving anyone untouched in terms of its impact over the past few years…”
For Victor Lagunes, “I think that affordable housing is a critical need for us, and it’s not just capital A affordable housing that people are qualifying for, but housing affordability as well.”
As one candidate told me recently, there really isn’t a huge difference between the candidates on any specific issue—but the approach differs.
In fairness, it’s hard to assess candidates in 90-second answers with a 30-second follow up (if they choose), but let’s look at how this plays out on the issue of housing.
Victor Lagunes, as most know, has been the DTA President and he has also worked extensively with DCAN (Davis Community Action Network).
He chose to focus on two specific issues in his 90-second answer.
He focused on “45% of educators that can’t afford to live in the community that they teach in.”
This of course is a real problem that impacts this community on multiple levels—one is that teachers are not staying in DJUSD and the second is that living outside of the community means that there is a disconnect between the teacher and the community and that has multiple impacts.
So what is the answer according to Lagunes?
He said that “there is a significant need for us to address not just capital A, affordability, affordable housing, but affordability as well.”
For him then, the answer is found in housing trust funds, “so that we can provide assistance to those with down payment assistance so that they can start building their own equity in those smaller size and more affordable units are really impactful ways that we can truly move the needle on the number of people that we’re able to include in Davis as part of our housing.”
Dillan Horton on the other hand, focuses on the fact that he is a renter and half the city’s population are renters and he believes that “they’ve gone unrepresented.”
The only two people who have served on council during my time who were renters were Robb Davis and Lamar Heystek (I might be forgetting someone)—but that’s over the last nearly 20 years.
Toward that issue, Horton said, “We really need to be sure that we are strengthening the Renters Resources program at this point. It levies fees on noncompliant landlords in town at this point. The fees are too small to be a credible disincentive to bad behavior or finance the program.”
Linda Deos is the only one of the council candidates who actually said, “We need more housing.”
She noted, “We stopped building those,” talking about split level duplexes. “We stopped building those small homes that people could start with. And that’s that affordability by design.”
She’s right of course—but the problem as we have seen is that affordability by design in a place like Davis is really difficult. Housing is incredibly expensive to build and getting worse.
During the 30-second replies, Horton talked about the district site that could become vacant, and said, “We stopped building those small homes that people could start with. And that’s that affordability by design.”
Victor Lagunes noted, “I actually was really happy that Workforce Housing was brought up by both of you because I think that this is something that I put a lot of work into as DTA president in partnership with D-J-U-S-D and the trustees talking about the issues that are really impacting our employees and what could get them into our community.”
And Linda Deos said that she is the one who can get this work done as “somebody who’s been part of this community for years and somebody who knows how to bring partners together to, again, get it done.”
In essence, I see everyone recognizes that there is a huge problem, and yet, I think a lot was left on the table in this discussion—which again in fairness, was a 90-second answer with a 30-second follow up.
One commenter noted that no one talked about the elephant in the room—Measure J. We are likely to ask a question in the coming weeks about support for some kind of Measure J work around.
It’s kind of an important question—where and how we are going to build more housing and how we are going to finance it? It’s one thing to say we need more duplexes and workforce housing, it’s another thing to figure out how to build that.
I am a fan of down payment assistance programs. That was featured in one segment of the Vice Presidential debate. But the problem that Davis has is it doesn’t have a lot of housing and it especially doesn’t have a lot of housing that’s available. As we saw when the last Housing Element was approved, the amount of housing sites in the city is small and dwindling.
Those are all issues that need to be addressed in the next four years or so. Those are hard questions to answer in 90 seconds, but that is the core of the housing crisis in Davis.
First of all, we have violence-by-location, the existing and new/under construction housing within 1,000 ft or less of I-80. Noise is a crime in this context.
Second, we need to use eminent domain to build on large existing shopping center parking lots. We know where these are, two of them can have great safe connections to campus.
Third, we need to get a study done based on the idea of using new technologies such as composite materials and 3-D printing to build housing and mixed use on top of a shelf over a long section of 113.
All the new plan developments on Covell will be very car dependent… While they might decrease regional VMT, I simply don’t understand what all these people are going to do when they try to find parking Downtown. It goes without saying that they’re not going to make Davis a safer place and they’re definitely going to result in a lower bicycle modal share overall
Todd
Those are mostly very expensive solutions (e.g., eminent domain and added freeway decks (that also have increase pollutant exposure)).
As the Covell Corridor being car dependent, see Tim Keller’s articles on an alternative planned concept that is transit oriented. We need to slow down the 3 proposals and integrate. Right now, I believe there is a high that they will all fail and we’ll have to start over if they go each one-off.
I agree the Covell corridor should be mastered planned. Sadly Measure J makes such planning much more difficult.
Ron,your obsession with Measure J frequently gets in the way of you practicing good research. If you had done your research, you would know that given the current status of the City of Davis General Plan is that it is out of compliance with California law, and as a result the City MUST deal with each development application that adds population to the City by itself … in its own silo … without any “interference” or synergy from any other application or current site. That is the case with or without Measure J.
Ron is not wrong here. It is true what you say, but that doesn’t prevent the city from being able to master plan. What prevents them from being able to master plan effectively is the uncertainty of passage under J.
Keep in mind, the city was able to do the downtown plan which allows for by-right development.
David, I respectfully disagree. Master Planning is almost always done holistically across the length and breadth of the area being master planned. The idea is to aspire to the best possible outcome for the entirety. Once that aspirational plan is put into place it serves as the guide for all the individual parcels that collectively make up the area being master planned. The presence or absence of Measure J doesn’t come into play in that kind of Strategic level consideration. Measure J operates at the Tactical level, not the Strategic level, just as the aspirations of individual parcel owners come into play at the Tactical level not the Strategic level.
All you have to do is a General Plan amendment – https://www.cityofdavis.org/home/showpublisheddocument/7308/636137883037270000