In our previous article, we discussed our broken planning process and its consequences: How Measure J/R/D effectively prevents any high-level master planning of our community.
Today we will discuss the important issues around the proposals themselves, and why you too should be encouraging the developers and the council to reconsider going down the current path.
The Two Crises
When we talk about housing, we are actually battling two related crises:
The Housing Crisis
- “Starter homes” affordable to our workforce cannot be built here without subsidies;
- Even to rent a three-bedroom apartment takes a $120,000 income (assuming 35% goes to housing);
- The middle, especially our workforce, has been frozen out. This means 23,000 cars on our roads everyday for inbound commuters coming from neighboring towns to work here. (An almost equal number commute outward, and that also needs to be addressed);
- School enrollment is declining because young families are also priced out.
The Climate Crisis
- Receding glaciers among other indicators prove climate change is real, worldwide and now;
- The six warmest years on record in Sacramento have all occurred since 2014;
- Sprawling suburban housing patterns are recognized as a major contributor to greenhouse gases and global warming because our personal carbon footprint is largely dictated by the energy used in our house, and by our cars;
- Single-family homes require twice the energy to heat and cool than multifamily homes:
- Those 23,000 inbound commuters cause tailpipe emissions which would be reduced if they could afford to live closer to work, or eliminated if they were able to bike or take transit to work:
There is quite a bit to learn about the reasons why we started building our cities this way, who was behind it, and why we are still doing it, and it is a fascinating topic that, once again, we cannot hope to plumb the depths of here. But we encourage voters to learn this history, and we have a number of links on our website HERE for people who are interested in learning the back-story about why we started making these mistakes as a society;
That said, with the understanding that “the great suburban experiment” was indeed a mistake, is is disheartening to see these new proposals for the future of our city, perpetuating those mistakes: Car-centric, 1950’s-style low density housing, which in Davis’ market, will be unaffordable to all but high-income households, with commuters out of town;
Housing like this exacerbates the climate crisis, with low energy efficiency structures, and the people who live in these single-family homes, at the edge of town, by definition, will need to get into an automobile for every single trip outside the home—causing both traffic and GHG emissions.
The economic objections
On top of all of this are the city-economics objections to single-family housing, which are perhaps best communicated by a group called Strong Towns. (We have a local chapter of this organization here in Davis now, and you can find them at the Farmers Market.) In a similar vein, the economist Donald Shoup has also produced an enlightening work called “The high cost of free parking” which is also on our must-read list, and a short seven-minute summary video can be found on our site.
These economic objections to suburbia are compelling, and we have links to amazing articles discussing these issues on our website
But the short version of those arguments is this:
- Low density housing means that city services—roads/electrical/sewer—have to run much farther to serve many fewer people than they do in a denser city. And in the long term, the maintenance of these utilities costs far more than the property tax revenue paid by that housing. So single-family housing is a net drain on the city in the long term. In some cities that have been studied, the replacement costs for this infrastructure is more than the value of the homes themselves.
All Davisites who complain about the state of our roads, and the reliability of our grid during heatwaves, are in fact experiencing this very fact: We have a city (and PG&E) that has obligations to pay to upkeep infrastructure for homes that do not pay for themselves in property taxes (or utility rates). The dominance of single-family housing in our city is bankrupting us.
Why else do you think Measure Q was necessary? - On the commercial side, if everyone drives to go shopping, the only solution that can ever accommodate all of those cars is the kind of strip-mall, or mega mall development that we all hate.
We all love our local downtown don’t we? But what is the one thing we all dislike most about it? The lack of parking near where we want to go.
This is something that unfortunately cannot be fixed. You have to pick one or the other… either keep a downtown compact and walkable, or destroy it to build parking lots and push everything apart so that it isn’t as walkable.
You really can’t have both.
These seem like two different issues, but they are in fact two ends of the same issue: When we all live in the middle of a large tract of low-density housing, we all need to get into our cars to do everything. The low density of housing makes it almost impossible for transit to be effective or to make small nearby businesses viable, so that isn’t an option either.
That means that almost everyone who wants to go out shopping ALSO needs to bring their cars with them. The mega-mall and the strip mall shopping form factors are a result of this reality. Walkable commercial spaces like our downtown simply cannot meet the needs for all those cars.
Additional local issues
The above are the problems with the suburban paradigm in general, but there are also a variety of additional factors to consider that are specific to Davis:
- Approximately 1/3 of the 11,000 detached single-family houses in Davis are owned by persons over 65. Those who can afford to purchase the median price of $900,000 here have many options, including waiting for existing houses to be put up for sale.
- And because the housing shortage is regional, building more single-family homes in Davis will mostly attract more outbound affluent commuters, and will NOT be affordable by our inbound displaced population (the ones who jam up the Interstate 80 on/off ramps every rush hour). These commuters also frequently take their business out of town as well, reducing economic vitality here.
- Our shortage of student housing has forced many students into sharing single-family homes in the community. If we make more higher-density student housing available, especially closer to campus and downtown, we will actually free-up significant amounts of single-family rental homes.
- Single adults and families need apartment rental options too, and there currently are not many rental properties that are not designed for students. Apartments designed for families with larger floorplans and rooms are also needed in the mix.
- Purchasing a home is the first step in building family equity and wealth, but prices for single-family houses are too expensive to be “starter homes” for most; but single-family homes are not the only kind of housing in which you can build equity. Condos, townhomes and co-ops are property types that are more affordable by nature, and can serve as a more accessible first rung on the property ladder, but there is almost no available inventory of properties of this type.
- And if we want to reduce traffic, i.e. our community’s vehicle miles traveled, we should aim to provide housing for the 23,000 inbound commuters who are currently priced out of our market. The only way to do that is to build housing THEY can afford, and lots of it.
So in summary: There is simply a huge disconnect between our actual housing needs and what is being proposed by developers. They are the wrong kind of housing, being built to serve the wrong population.
The myth of “The Starter Single-Family Home”
This is another point which likely merits its own article, but the economics of our housing market mean that even “starter homes” need some kind of subsidy or (ineffective) financing gimmick such as down payment assistance or participating second mortgages in order to approach even the higher rungs of the market-rate affordable category—and when they are produced, they tend to be small homes on miniscule lots averaging 8-10 units per acre.
In our opinion, this category of housing shouldn’t even exist in our development proposals.
When you pack single-family houses that tight, there is no room for trees between them, any “privacy” you might want from your neighbors as compared to a multifamily structure are non-existent, and you have all of the energy inefficiencies of single-family homes.
At the end of the analysis, you are better off building townhomes, garden courts, or cluster homes. You can actually achieve higher housing densities, lower prices AND preserve much more common open space when you instead build multifamily housing. Maintaining the single-family home formfactor when the densities get much above 6 units per acre (gross) is actually a mistake.
That said, by all means we should be prioritizing the kind of housing that allows residents to get themselves onto the property ladder at the lowest rung. But that rung should NOT be a single-family home. It should be a condo, a townhome, or a co-op.
Are we letting the perfect be the enemy of the good?
This is the primary question that we get when raising these objections. Is it better to just let SOME housing pass for the sake of appeasing the state? To this question we have multiple responses:
- The framing of the question itself assumes that the baseline proposals are “good” and that we are expecting the “perfect.” Neither of these assumptions are true, given what we know about the impacts of single-family housing, economically, environmentally, and socially; and given that we know single-family housing won’t solve our housing problem AND will consume any opportunity to do it right. There is no reason to call these proposals “good.” None at all.
At the same time, the things we need to change to put them into the good category aren’t that extreme: We will get to the details of that in a follow-up article, but it really isn’t very hard to do a LOT better. We aren’t asking for “perfect,” just “good,” and the proposals aren’t there yet. - The ONLY way to see these proposals improve is to push back against them. Whether they get improved because the developers listen to our feedback, or the council does and requests changes… we don’t actually care. What is important is that these issues be raised, and alternatives explored. If we don’t push back, the chance of us getting something better is zero.
- We pay a particularly high opportunity cost if we develop these particular peripheral properties un-wisely. We can’t go back and change land use decisions once we approve these proposals (look at Mace Ranch), and certain opportunities like the chance to connect all of these peripheral properties via a coherent transit service will be lost if we develop half of the properties without that kind of high-level thinking.
- The scenario that we most hope for is that the projects get amended in a few important ways that address our concerns. If that happens, not only will we be for these proposals, we will help campaign for their passage. (The developer of DISC failed to make a commitment to City commissions to what the developer had already proposed, and the first one failed by a small margin as a result due to lack of that endorsement.)
In a town like Davis, THAT is what you need for a housing measure to pass. You need engagement from the community and genuine local grassroots support if you want to get past 50% of the vote.
We WANT to be part of the solution, we WANT to be part of the campaign that pushes these proposals to victory at the ballot box, but there are a few things that need to change to earn that buy-in.
This is how democracies function. Its negotiation, it’s give-and-take. We as voters have a right to decide whether these projects are good enough to make it to the ballot. We the voters have the right to decide whether our council members have been receptive enough to community input. We do not need to be blackmailed with “this is what the developer wants… take it or leave it.” And frankly, if that is how a developer engages with the community s/he is building for, then “leave it” is undoubtedly the right response.
good planning means considering our economy, our housing and our transit systems simultaneously—that is not being done here, and if it were, we would have much better proposals coming before us.
The properties around the Mace Curve represent an 17% expansion of our city. Are we REALLY thinking that it is a good idea to push forward issues that affect such a huge corner of our community without any effort at high-level master planning? We certainly don’t think so.
It’s not unreasonable for us to be asking our city to do SOME master planning; it is unreasonable for developers and the city to expect US to approve massive expansions of our city without it.
The Davis Citizens Planning Group
Alex Achimore – Architect
David Thompson – Urban Planner / Affordable Housing
Anthony Palmere – Transit
Tim Keller – Economic Development
Richard McCann – Sustainability and Energy
Why else was Measure Q necessary?
Because we failed at economic development
Ron, how we plan for housing, transit, and commercial spaces IS economic development. Thats a huge part of the point here.
Our economy, ( both industrial and commercial) our housing, and our transit all need to work together.
That was the biggest and dumbest failure of Disc.. it was criticized both for not having enough housing and for having ANY housing ( because who wants to live next to a factory?)
In reality, DiSC should have been just part of a much larger plan that ALSO included an understanding of how we were going to provide housing, and commercial and everything else for the entire economy. Instead it was just a developer trying to push through what THEY wanted… which is pretty much the same situation we are in with these proposals.
A higher level view, a few tweaks ( in my mind at least) and we can have something much better.
Ron G
Are you saying that we get only one shot at economic development and then it’s gone forever? Or that economic development can only happen the way that you along envision it? Of course neither of those statements are correct. We need to be addressing real economic development if we aren’t going to plunge into a deep fiscal hole. Clearly we’re 50% behind Woodland and West Sac already.
As Keynes said “ In the Long run we are all dead.”
I guess we have different time lines but it’s been 18 years since the failure of measure X. I think your assumption that time is not of the essence is easy to say when you have no skin in the game and already own a home.
I keep trying to inject into this discussion the fact that there are in fact multiple clocks. If the state intercedes, the amount of leverage that residents have will be greatly diminished if not out right eliminated.
It’s true that if, at some point the state steps in Measure J could become moot, just as it did with the land next to Wildhorse. So maybe if it gets voted down it won’t be 20 years before the next proposal. But I’ll guess that if it’s voted down the owners won’t pursue anything there as long as Measure J exists.
I agree – I’m just pointing out there are risks and consequences in voting down a project at this point.
Ironically, most of the authors live in the kind of housing that they claim to be against. So not only do they not have skin in the game they also fail the test of leadership by example.
Ron
We don’t live in this type of housing Davis because it hasn’t been offered here yet. The closest is the Cannery but it doesn’t offer the amenities that we’re asking for such as transit and good bike access and walkability. That said, I live in a house that has 1300 sf of living space (with a 300 sf office attached), and I lived in Village Homes for a dozen years on a parcel that was a 0.1 acres. Leadership by example is a fallacy, and we’re not living contrary to what we’re suggesting. That sort of purity litmus test is a great example of why the Democrats lost so badly in this last election. Stop criticizing the messenger and get to the issues.
Your parcel size claim is misleading, because of the common areas, Village homes has some of the least dense housing in Davis.
Leadership by example is always the best kind of leadership.
As for why Trump won a big piece is the swing in the Latino vote because of the kinds of nonsense people like you are demanding making housing unavailable and too expensive.
By the way, Joel Kotkin predicted the swing in the Latino vote several years ago precisely pinning the blame on unaffordability because of the kind of nonsense you are proposing.
My feeling is that much of what is being discussed about the planning of these developments is based on flawed assumptions about how and where people will work and shop, how they will travel, and what kinds of retailers will be willing to locate there.
We deliver to Woodland nearly every week, to people who have found the s-f homes they want, with yards, in the subdivisions that begin 5.8 miles from Davis. Many are former residents of Davis who are still connected here by their jobs. The reason they ended up in Woodland is a lack of inventory in Davis in the category they prefer.
I think Don makes a good point here.
One question we should ask – can we build it? Another question is if we do, will anyone buy it?
One of the features in Village is the idea of subsidized housing by the developer to close the price gap between Davis and Woodland for example to make it more likely that someone will purchase the affordable by design house in Davis – but it’s a limited feature and a real problem that we have not solved.
“will anyone buy it?”
Two responses:
1) Of course they will.
What is our vacancy rate here? Do we have ANY vacancy in apartments / condos / townhomes? Nope not a bit. Are people building multi-family developments here in infill developments YES.
Those two facts mean there is zero basis for the concern you raise. It is a non-issue. Multi-family development currently clears the market, and there is no evidence to assume that it wont be at full occupancy the moment it is built.
2) The We dont need to care about people who are diehards for single family housing, nor should we.
Lets focus on building housing that is good FOR DAVIS.
Remember that we have 23,000 people commuting in every day. If woodland wants to bear the economic burden of providing money-losing / environmentally irresponsible housing for the people who really really want it, and dont mind driving here in their cars… that is totally fine.
We dont have to cater to people with those preferences because we dont have the buildable land area to accommodate ALL of our incoming commuters anyway! I have crunched these numbers. In order to do it the entire mace curve would have to be roughly the density that we currently see on Russell near trader joes. I don’t think that is going to fly.
So we dont need to worry about whether “some people will prefer to live in a single family home and commute.” There are plenty of people who would love to get on the property ladder, buying a condo or a townhome here in the city where they work. That is the kind of housing that is actually good for davis.
So as I have said before: Lets build missing middle and nothing but missing middle until we start to see softenss in the market for properties of that type. Once that happens, we can have a conversation about whether it is in davis’s best interest to start buliding single family housing.
No point in further engagement. Good luck with your project.
Thats a super interesting response from you Don. I had you pegged as an environmentalist. Im genuinely curious why you feel single family homes are so necessary?
“genuinely curious why you feel single family homes are so necessary?”
They are “necessary” because s-f homes are the simplest market-based approach we have to get housing built that meets the other housing needs. The mix of housing makes it work for the developer.
It would be great if one of the projects would include a gift of a few acres for the purpose of building Affordable Housing. For all the other types, my understanding is that they provide a lower return and there’s a tipping point at which the project doesn’t pencil out.
So then it’s not ‘back to the drawing board’ unless you have a very long-term definition of that phrase. In effect, demanding that there be no homes above xxx dollars, or no homes of a particular type, will likely scuttle the project.
The importance of single-family homes?
First, they don’t have to be ‘single’-family. They can be extended families or occupied by any mix of people. It’s a given that some will become student rentals, for example.
I think it is very important from a social and cultural perspective for people to have yards when possible, even a small one, to provide the ability to grow their own food and flowers. It provides not just food security, but greater food diversity and better health. You also get much greater species diversity from the eclectic plantings of private gardeners than just from commercial and public landscapes.
There are many other benefits of having private outdoor spaces and having privately maintained trees near shared areas. Private yards are great for wildlife, pets, kids’ activities. These benefits are true regardless of the size or cost, and people seek them. It is the strongest market preference.
In fifty years, the most habitable places in Davis during heat waves will be the neighborhoods that include open landscaped areas with many large trees. For those who work outside regardless of weather, as many of us do, that will be a matter of public health and safety. From that standpoint, it’s best to have a mix of housing types with open space maintained both publicly and privately to get those cooled and shaded areas.
“I had you pegged as an environmentalist.”
I support a mix of housing types in new developments in Davis because it will lead to better, healthier neighborhoods with more diversity of all types. The environment I am most concerned about is the one where people live where I can make a difference. That’s why I encourage people to plant trees.
“genuinely curious why you feel single family homes are so necessary?”
Because that’s what the market dictates. You want professional workers to live here? Well, they want to live in HOUSES not condos, townhomes or apartments. You can’t get the perfect solution where you satisfy the market and the environment. Right now Davis needs family housing. So IDEAL environmental housing solutions aren’t viable…..ya know that whole “perfect being the enemy of good”.
Don, we should sit down for a beer sometime. I think we are a lot more on the same page than you think.
I share your desire to have neighborhoods with lots of greenspace and trees, and one of the reasons I really feel this is important is that when you look at the details here, you find that developers drive to really keep the single family form factor (for sales price reasons) means that you end up with really zero space for trees or usable open space.
Here is a gallery of various housing density examples that I have been collecting: https://airtable.com/app3e4HYWp59Z5SDN/shrMCmRSTsd7a1op7
I use google earth to find the acreage and count the numbers of houses ( for multifamily I need to scout it from the ground). But if you look at these examples you will see what I have seen: Once you get more than roughly 6 houses per acre, you no longer have the usable “yards” that can be used to grow anything, and the is so narrow that you cant put trees in between the houses at all for the natural shading effects.
Look at the cannery houses and the “S Cowell HD houses” as examples. 8 and 11 units per acre respectivley. there are both street view and aerial images in that databse… and from the aerial it is clear: No trees are to be found when you build like that.
Then look at College town commons which is “denser” at 14 units and is right across the street from the S cowell houses and what do you see? Lots of trees and plenty of open space… because they are 4-plexes. The Drake Circle townhomes at 10 units per acre… probably too much parking, but a big shared lawn and lots of trees…
Developers want to
Sorry… my previous post auto-posted itself when the website hiccupped…
In any case, developers want to make “single family homes” because they can charge more for them. But in order to try to make them affordable they make really crappy way-too-dense housing. No yards, no trees.
I would rather have more units be produced, and just accept that they are townhomes, which then actually leaves room in the land budget for actual trees and usable amounts of garden / open space. Thats a better built environment for the residents who live there
And yes im not buying the argument that people dont want to live in townhomes. Every townhome in this city is occupied. And multi-family developments are being built in infill areas acros the city… ALL OF THIS meets the market. That is a total non-issue.
I have no problem with townhomes and all other forms of multi-family housing. I support a mix of housing types in new developments in Davis. You don’t. You’re the one who is trying to restrict the types of housing that can be built.
Actually the vacancy rate is up to 2.5% exactly because the city and UCD has built lots of apartments. What we need are homes for families with children.
Don, there is no inventory in ANY category.
The way you phrased it implies that they are in woodland because they like single family homes and they have passed over the option to live in some other category of housing in Davis that DOES have availability. But that isnt true. Not at all.
You cant speak to peoples preferences when they don’t have choices.
We have LOTS of single family housing here. Lets build something else to give people that choice and see how the market responds
Actually I can speak anecdotally of my friend who left Davis to buy a single family home in Spring Lake, Taking her little ADA’s and parcel tax money out of DJUSD.
The entire attitude of this article is pretty much what is wrong with Davis. It’s a belief that it can dictate to builders and the market their utopian view of their community. Builders build to make money. But here in Davis it’s build here if you Manhattanize our city, have a negative carbon footprint (plant a rain forest), include 4 lane bike paths on every new street…and MAYBE we’ll approve your project (but probably not).
You want to fix housing availability problems? Go full measure. Half measures with all the environmental, transportation, logistical, political….just keep on adding on the the list of reasons why no one really wants to make the effort to build housing to a significant degree in Davis. If you really want houses built; build them first and fix all the other issues later.
You want middle of the market housing. IT’S CALLED EXISTING HOUSING. You build new top of the market houses and the existing houses all get pushed down closer to the middle market. You don’t build middle market housing. Sure you can build smaller units but they’re not going to be affordable (or not for long).
Your “give and take “democracy”….Jesus….if that’s the attitude of a community…as a builder, I say screw it; I’m building in Woodland, Dixon, West Sacramento….why would I want to bother to deal with a bunch of nut ball locals trying to dictate a project to me….WHEN THAT COMMUNITY HAS NO TRACK RECORD OF GETTING THINGS ACCOMPLISHED. If you’re hired to build a custom home for you; and the customer has long list of unreasonable demands; including building a 5 story homes an a roof that grows kale and bike ramps that go to every story of the home….YET that customer has never had a house like that built and has a 600 credit report. Are you going to build a home for that person or for their very reasonable and reliable neighbor next door?
“You cant speak to peoples preferences when they don’t have choices.”
Of course they have choices. THEY CAN LIVE OUTSIDE OF DAVIS. You want to attract workers? If you build nothing but high density; most of the people you’re housing are students, grad students and some small families. But a professional looking to live in house with a family (say 2 kids); are going to live in freakin HOUSE; not a condo or a townhouse. You want workers to live here; build them something they want to live in. THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH YOUR ARTICLE; IT STARTS WITH THE PREMISE THAT DAVIS IS AN ISLAND THAT ISN’T SURROUNDED WITH ALTERNATIVES (and in many cases BETTER alternatives).
I will remind the readers that I used to get paid to analyze communities in growing areas for the prospect of new residential development.
“And frankly, if that is how a developer engages with the community s/he is building for, then “leave it” is undoubtedly the right response.”
And yet you complain that there’s a housing problem in Davis???? (actually an overall development problem cause new industrial and commercial requires those pesky developers too). It’s like this group thinks they’re the Soup Nazi…”NO SOUP FOR YOU!!!!” they believe their community (soup) is so awesome that they can turn away customers/builders.
Spot on Keith
Keith, Im not going to respond to the places where you are exaggerating / ad-libbing/ or taking what we have said out of context, but I do want to point out one thing:
You said:
“You want to attract workers? If you build nothing but high density; most of the people you’re housing are students, grad students and some small families. But a professional looking to live in house with a family (say 2 kids); are going to live in freakin HOUSE; not a condo or a townhouse. ”
That is exactly what we want to do: Make more housing that works for students, grad students and small families. EXACTLY.
( Also included however in that list is: the people who cut your hair, who run the registers at the supermarket, toss your pizzas, and who teach your children.)
These people cannot afford a home in Davis and there are 23,000 of them commuting into town every day at the moment,
We have a LOT of students living in single family homes. We also have a LOT of people who are paying way too high a % of their income on housing living in single family housing. (DCANN has data on this). Both of those populations would also be happy to inhabit a less expensive form factor, especially if it meant that they could own versus rent. And that means we get “free” single family homes in the market as well when those people move into better-fit housing.
——-
All of that said, the responses I have seen to these ideas are the same that I have heared other housing reformers talk about when describing the pushback to making more missing-middle housing in their own communities, so none of this is surprising.
People look at housing proposals through the lens of “would I myself want to live there” and that is not the correct way to look at it.
its a kind of narcissism that people think that the housing we propose needs to be something attractive to YOU… You might not think its attractive to buy a townhome, right now at this point in your life, But 20 years ago, a younger version you might have been thrilled to find a townhome you could afford. Or to rent a studio apartment. What is so wrong about building for other people at earlier stages of life? Or people who have chosen a lower-paying profession? Just because its not the kind of housing YOU want, you assume that nobody wants to live there… and that just isn’t freaking true. Im sorry. this isn’t about YOU.
Do we say: “Sorry teachers and people who work for non-profits, and families where one parent wants to stays at home for the kids. You should have chosen a better paying career path! Off to Dixon with you! ”
No. A lot of people would be wiling to live in a condo, or a townhome in the community where they work, rather than commute out of town every day. Lets get over ourselves and building some housing for THEM too.
We need an entire SPECTRUM of housing here in town, for the kinds of people who work here across a similar economic and career and life-phase spectrum – and we don’t have it. We have a lot of single family housing, and a lot of rental student housing… very very little in between, and its all FULL. Its not crazy to suggest that we need to significantly diversify our housing supply right? Any good market has a balanced buffet of options… and given the absolute swarm of single family homes in this town, that is why I have said we could stand to ONLY build missing middle for some time…. It is going to take quite a while before we run out of takers for more affordable forms of housing, and given that missing middle out-competes single familt on EVERY metric… it makes inherent sense for us to prioritize that.
And its important that we do so, because If we don’t make significant amounts of for-sale multifamily housing, we eliminate the entire first rung on the property ladder for a HUGE segment of our population. The “starter” single family homes are already 2 rungs up from where the bottom should be. The numbers are pretty clear on that too.
You’re the one who is trying to restrict the types of housing that can be built.
I’m in favor of the approach put forth by the Davis Citizens Planning Group. The long-standing absence of such an approach is the reason we got Measure J in the first place. And unless/until the state takes Measure J away from us, I believe we should continue to use it to prevent the kind of development that fails to address the housing and transportation needs of the city.
So what you’re saying is that you oppose development. Requiring developers to jump through hoops for a project that MIGHT pass a vote (when there’s no recent track record of one passing) isn’t going to fly. So by supporting this obstinate and quite frankly ignorant “plan” you’re essentially opposing development in Davis; residential, commercial and economic.
Should the city update it’s General Plan? Sure. But it shouldn’t hold up proposed projects. All the rest of the requirements/considerations are just obstacles to development in a place that really hasn’t been friendly to developers. And it’s relationships that get things built….you gotta trust and be able to work with your partners; financial, operational….and political. And right now Davis hasn’t endeared itself to anyone.
“Requiring developers to jump through hoops for a project that MIGHT pass a vote (when there’s no recent track record of one passing) isn’t going to fly.”
And yet the developers keep coming back, year after year, with more proposals. Perhaps developers are as stupid as I am obstinate and ignorant.
What you call “hoops” I call “standards.” And if the City Council had vision and guts, it would promulgate standards for the kind of development that will serve the city well, instead of just sitting on its hands and waiting for a developer to propose a project that the city actually wants.
Jim – if Village Farms goes forward in 2025, it will be only the 8th project to go to the voters in 25 years. So far, two have passed.
David, in your life which is more important to you, quantity or quality?
My life is immaterial. The question is whether the current system is such that our legal requirements can be met. If they cannot, there may be consequences. Thus there needs to be a balancing between quantity and quality.
I would also point out that there is a considerable debate going here (and elsewhere) between conceptions of “quality” is not an objective standard.
Each of our lives is absolutely material. That is a fluffer-nutter answer.
The reason only 2 out of 8 have passed is because their were grossly deficient in quality planning.
Regarding your second sentence, the key word is “may.” You are taking the Sky Is Falling approach … once again.
“And if the City Council had vision and guts, it would promulgate standards for the kind of development that will serve the city well, instead of just sitting on its hands and waiting for a developer to propose a project that the city actually wants.”
You have to do both. My point is that a city can’t just dictate what it wants developed to a degree that kills development when that city needs development. What do you do about housing if “what the city actually wants” isn’t desirable or feasible for a builder to build?
“And yet the developers keep coming back, year after year, with more proposals.”
No they don’t. It’s generally the same local little developers that think they have the tiniest in road with the locals. And what has that produced; a small smattering of homes.
Keith, it isn’t “what the city actually wants.” The RHNA allocations very clearly show it is what the State wants as well.