When the city council discussed the timing of housing projects going to the voters, they argued that they didn’t want anything to interfere with the passage of the revenue measure.
That meant pushing the first housing project—presumably Village Farms—to a special election in 2025. That always seemed problematic in terms of getting a project approved.
The council then compounded that decision by mucking up the waters for the revenue measure anyway, with their handling of the commission issue.
But even with that misstep, the revenue measure is going to pass handily and by a wider margin than a sales tax measure passed in 2014. That result, despite the work by the No on Q folks, punctuates the flawed reasoning of pushing out consideration of Village Farms.
The council got their revenue measure—but clearly they would have gotten their revenue measure passed regardless of the timing of the housing measures.
But there is now a problem—housing.
As of right now, it appears most likely that Village Farms would go to the voters in November 2025—that’s assuming the council is ready to approve in June or July of 2025.
I have always been leery of a special election for a housing measure. The problem is that it will be the only thing on the ballot. That means that the infrequent voters are unlikely to come out. Unlike in November 2024, students, who are the demographic most likely to support housing, will likely not vote.
The folks most likely to vote in a special election align with the demographics least likely to support a housing project.
So that’s the first problem—pushing a housing measure that is likely to generate strong opposition to a special election which would be a low turnout event.
From the city’s standpoint, there are several things we need to be aware of.
First, just because the last housing element (sixth cycle) was certified by the state doesn’t mean the city is now in the clear until 2030. The state is now monitoring local jurisdictions to ensure that they are making significant progress toward actually approving and building the units.
According to the YIMBY Law dashboard, Davis is “making slow progress” and “is falling behind. It is not on track to meet its housing targets.”
That’s just for this cycle. It also is going to have an even more difficult time just finding the land to rezone for the next cycle. Contrary to what people think, the city can’t merely wait until 2028 or 2029 to do this, they are going to have to have land outside the city rezoned by then—which means the latest will probably be 2026 or 2028 for getting Measure J votes.
But, worse than that, if they don’t make substantial progress, the state could force changes much sooner. A big trigger could be the defeat of one or both of the Measure J votes coming up—and given where things are, the city has made it far more difficult to get a housing measure passed.
For those who believe the state wouldn’t come in and attempt to use the courts to take out Measure J, just look at how aggressive they have been elsewhere pushing through the courts to reverse local land use decisions blocking relatively small housing projects, as well as ensuring compliance with State Housing Law in other communities.
People in Davis are acting as though we can just operate as though business were normal—but the state is going to have a lot say about this.
If the city is still behind on its progress for the sixth cycle and the voters vote down the next housing project, it is very possible that is the point at which the state steps in to litigate.
Some of this is of course out of the hands of the city council, but their decision—which I believed was flawed from the start—to push off the projects in favor of the revenue measure coupled with the commission fiasco is self-inflicted damage.
