Davis, CA – As the City of Davis prepares to update its long-overdue General Plan, a new report from the Davis Community Action Network (DCAN) highlights the perspectives of over 225 residents who participated in 13 community conversations.
The From Voices to Vision report finds that the top priorities, concerns, and solutions voiced by community members include a strong focus on housing, land use, and sustainability.
“Participants were clear: They want City leadership to provide a vision and plan for addressing housing deficits, which will better equip our community to address the impacts of climate change,” states the report. “By amplifying resident voices, this report aims to contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable planning process—one that aligns with a new long-term community vision while addressing the immediate needs of its people.”
Housing not surprisingly emerged as a dominant concern in the community discussions, with participants advocating for a mix of affordability-focused policies and alternative housing models.
“Provide an adequate supply of housing for people of all ages, incomes, lifestyles, and types of households, including for households with special housing needs,” states the report, referencing existing General Plan goals. Participants supported policies to “increase affordable housing options,” “expand missing middle housing,” and “build community-oriented neighborhood and housing options (cooperatives, cohousing, village models).”
Concerns ranged from resistance by developers to the financial feasibility of these models.
“Developers may be disinclined to build smaller units and attached units due to lowered profit margins and challenges getting the necessary credit backing,” the report notes.
Participants strongly favored land-use policies that increase density while preserving open space. “The highest priority within the land use section by far is increasing density and infill development within our city,” states the report.
This included “raising the acceptable height of buildings,” “decreasing the share of new single-family home construction,” and encouraging “mixed-use developments, especially downtown.”
However, concerns about traffic congestion and neighborhood resistance were frequently cited.
The report highlights “the challenge of changing the underlying land use codes” and balancing growth with the existing “small town feel.”
Measure J/R/D was another major discussion point, with mixed perspectives.
“While there is considerable agreement from participants focused on increasing density, infill, and mixed-use development, results on Measure J/R/D were mixed,” the report notes.
While only one participant explicitly supported overturning the measure, others suggested amendments “to support increased density, an integrated growth policy, and possibly setting criteria that could allow bypassing the vote requirement if the proposal met or exceeded specific design elements.”
Participants emphasized the need for a citywide approach to climate resilience, calling for more sustainable building practices and neighborhood designs.
“This theme incorporated a number of related suggestions and ideas for increasing ecological resilience,” the report states. This included proposals to “install water-wise systems,” “expand tree planting across the city for shade and lowering the heat index,” and “utilize climate-smart energy generation and storage, and flexible renewable energy for new and existing housing.”
Cost was the most frequently cited concern. “Concerns for these suggestions were almost all related to cost as the top barrier for both the city and homeowners,” the report acknowledges.
While traffic concerns surfaced frequently, the report highlights an imbalance in priorities.
“Traffic is a major concern in Davis and was listed as the top concern for land use and housing ideas. Yet, suggestions specifically about improving circulation included 22 unique comments leaving transportation just slightly outside of the top three ranking.”
Top solutions included “expanding access to public transportation for all” and “protecting and expanding our bike paths and greenbelts with greater focus on pedestrians and bicyclists.”
Concerns from the participants centered on funding and feasibility.
For instance, participants noted that “adding bus stops requires adding street infrastructure, which brought concerns that adding more buses to the fleet could create increases in congestion for cars.”
The report found that the General Plan must address disparities in civic engagement and decision-making. “We hope the City of Davis will expand and deepen outreach in the upcoming general plan process to ensure traditionally underrepresented voices are considered in this process.”
Participants highlighted two major priorities: “Expanding opportunities for community education” and “investing in intentional community building.”
The report also found that education is key to “addressing myths about affordable housing,” and that “exposure to models and examples may help to overcome fears around change.”
A significant portion of the discussions revolved around funding mechanisms to support the city’s vision.
“We received consistent suggestions and ideas shared by participants related to fiscal issues as a barrier to realizing goals for addressing climate and housing in Davis,” the report states.
The top suggestions included:
- “Utilization of taxes and bonds to fund projects.”
- “Increase access to rebates and incentives for retrofits.”
- “A tax incentive to developers and homeowners to densify their projects and parcels.”
Additionally, “multiple participants suggested creating a vacant land property tax to reduce the commercial vacancies downtown.”
Concerns centered around whether such policies would lead to unintended consequences, such as landlords rushing to fill spaces with undesirable tenants.
The report identifies four key solutions for moving forward:
- Expand opportunities for community education. “Participants suggested an interest in research, best practices, and models to guide and inform the community on housing and climate issues.”
- Configure housing and neighborhoods to intentionally support community building. “Participants expressed interest in greater opportunities for community life through housing and neighborhood configurations that differ from classic suburban sprawl.”
- Expand funding sources to address goals. “This could include building coalitions of organizations within Davis that seek funding collaboratively or hiring city staff to have the sole job of identifying funding opportunities.”
- Strengthen community vision and leadership. “The general plan amendment is named specifically on 13 separate occasions, indicating strong community support for embarking on the amendment process.”
The From Voices to Vision report presents a comprehensive community perspective on the future of Davis. “Davis residents envision a future that prioritizes creative land use, climate resilience, and a diverse array of housing options,” the report states.
The challenge now lies in translating these insights into concrete policy. “The city intends to update the general plan to come into compliance with SB 1000 by including environmental justice, climate, and health aspects,” the report notes.
As Davis moves forward, the question remains: Will city leaders fully integrate these voices into the decision-making process? Or will this report, like so many community input efforts before it, be a well-intentioned exercise that fades into the background?
From article: “As Davis moves forward, the question remains: Will city leaders fully integrate these voices into the decision-making process? Or will this report, like so many community input efforts before it, be a well-intentioned exercise that fades into the background?”
It will be option “b”, though I’m not sure it should be described as well-intentioned in the first place (at least on the part of some).
But mostly, it has no focus, no actual goal, and is based entirely on false premises. (“Solutions” searching for a problem.)
This is a useful summary of citizens’ concerns. It also highlights some misconceptions that need to addressed through education, e.g., that increased bus stops will increase congestion when the opposite should happen as ridership increases.
In the Bay Area, public transit ridership is down significantly across all systems (and never did recover from the pandemic and the shift toward telecommuting).
BART and MUNI, for example, are in real trouble.
If the city of Davis ever does pursue high-density housing in the eastern half of the city (e.g., Covell Village, Shriner’s, etc.), the REAL public transit that would serve that area would be headed to/from Sacramento – where employers actually exist. Yolobus already does so.
Then again, a lot of state agencies offer telework options these days, as well.
Bottom line (as usual) is that there’s no “problem” to be solved – other than the ones that some are attempting to create.
I have the feeling that Ron’s position that there is no problem to be solved will tend to remove him from most of the conversations in the community going forward. Davis residents need to figure out what their city is going to look like, part of that will depend on state housing mandates that will continue to come down.
Despite Ron’s claims to the contrary, the housing crisis in California—and specifically in Davis—is well-documented.
The lack of affordable and available housing affects students, workers, and families, contributing to displacement, long commutes, and economic inequality.
Even if telework has reduced some commuting demand, it hasn’t eliminated the need for housing near job centers.
Many workers—especially those in essential industries, service jobs, and education—cannot telecommute.
UC Davis continues to expand, meaning more students and faculty need housing. I know some of you think you can change that – but that’s not realistic either.
The city also has an obligation under state law to plan for new housing, including for low-income residents.
Additionally, the decline in transit ridership is an argument for better planning, not for ignoring transit needs altogether.
Investing in transit-oriented development (TOD) near job centers—such as in Sacramento—can help shift travel patterns over time.
A well-planned expansion of housing in Davis could integrate improved transit options rather than relying solely on existing systems like Yolobus.
In short, the “problem” isn’t manufactured—it’s a combination of housing shortages, rising costs, and transportation challenges that require long-term solutions rather than assuming the status quo will work indefinitely.
And ignoring those problems will make them worse, which is why what was once a problem now reaches crisis levels. This is bad public policy.
Interesting results and it’s great that DCAN is doing this.
Obviously this is a self-selected group and the demographics may not represent the city as a whole. Looking into the results of that part of their survey (which you can find here https://www.daviscan.org/community-voices), I do see one significant anomaly: of those attending the workshops who provided demographic data, 82% travel less than 5 miles per day between home and work. That seems way out of proportion to the reality of people who live and work here.
It’s a good point. The other data that would be helpful are the people who work in Davis/ UC Davis but have to commute to town.
Yes, that would be useful for UCD to know (though it would likely be more accurate to state “choose to live outside of town”, since they get more for their money when doing so).
Also, whatever happened to the staff housing that UCD was planning to build?
And is UCD actually increasing the number of its employees? If so, by how much?
Good thing a local group that has no agenda did an unbiased study with objective questions.
#cough-cough-choke#
Name once when a “non-profit” #cough-cough-choke# came up with a study they commissioned that didn’t return the results they wanted. Like how is the housing issue being important to people the least bit useful in a survey, and more than that people think pink puppies are cute?
There is a cure for DCAN – it’s D-CAN’T. Our motto is “Davis Can’t Save the World – So Please Stop Trying!” The president of D-CAN’T is Alan C. Miller. There is no treasurer because we have no money. All twelve board members are named Alan C. Miller, and they all look like me. Our “non-profit” is structured this way because the worst thing about organizations is the board and the members and the licensing and the money. With this structure, I can bah-humbug the entire City unfettered by annoying people.
As for the response to RMcA regarding the fantasy of people in Davis riding public transit . . . nope. There isn’t the demand until we are as dense as Geary Street in S.F., and that day is never, no matter how many San-Diego-style through-the-cracks A.D.U.’s one builds in Davis. Local transit use is down statewide and will probably continue to decline, and local agencies are going bankrupt with the effects of the pandemic and inflation catching up and the Biden-dollars running out.
We do need a complete re-think of how we invest in transportation so in many, many decades things are slightly better. We need to invest many billions in the Capitol Corridor so it goes directly to downtown San Francisco and down the Peninsula to San Jose, takes one-hour-ish, and runs every hour with half-hour intervals in peak hours, and eventually half-hour all day (decades in the future). But our short-sighted city, county and transit officials can’t even make a token gesture of support by saying “NO” to expansion of 80 and instead making a statement of support for the rail concept. Nope, federal transit dollars now — even if they promote the automobile and more VMTs — free money for politicians to wave around is more important. Regional rail actually can make a difference in reducing traffic over the causeway, by giving people a useful choice between the Bay Area and Sacramento area. Despite all the benefits of this, there isn’t a large coalition of support — because it’s simpler to ‘talk green’ and make your constituents think you know what you are talking about.
Such as: we turn to this fantasy of ‘public transit’ without flushing out the details or the practicality. Such statements are green-washing in it’s most destructive form — giving hope and giving politicians a fake concept they can promote forever until it doesn’t happen. My passion and my career is public transit, and working with the modeling of public behavior choices. There is no way buses work to divert a large number of people in Davis, it’s pure fantasy. If you doubt me, take a busy day with a few errands and rides for the kids. How much time will it take? Now do the same day using Google to map out doing it by public transit. How many days will it take to accomplish the same? ’nuff said.
Where RMcC and I agree is on the need to make public transit more feasible in the future, and that means making DIRECT transit routes through all future developments, and requiring all developers to put the route to connect all neighborhoods on their route, and have density greatest along the route at the stops and becoming less dense moving out from the transit route. That way we build a future with transit incorporated, and then people will make the choice because for some trips it will be convenient — and as a side benefit this also provides direct bike routes.
But no, our delusional City and think-nothing “non-profits” say we have to Build-Baby-Build because there is a “crisis” and we can’t plan for the future because we need to build NOW NOW NOW – AAAAAAA! Hair on Fire!!!!! This despite the fact the vacancy rate has gone up each of the last few years, population growth is down, and likely immigration will be down for the next four or eight or twelve years #scary-music#. How about taking a pause and doing some actually sane planning so we can make a tiny dent in transit emissions decades from now? But no. I’m really sick of the lot of you deluded greenies and you can all go . . . (fill in the expletive verb and target object of the action).
The solution: DCAN’T !!! The voice of one — who knows what the F they are talking about — is more powerful than the voice of all others . . . and will not be listened to 😐
After deconstructing this rant, it was actually kind of amusing.
Thank you.
I aim to please
The “housing shortage” is fake – doesn’t exist.
https://news.ku.edu/news/article/study-finds-us-does-not-have-housing-shortage-but-shortage-of-affordable-housing
The state’s mandates are fake, in that they’re failing everywhere.
The push toward public transit is fake (other than for Sacramento/government employers who pay for that cost for their own workers). Again, see the Bay Area, which despite having a very robust system – is experiencing declining ridership and a resulting ACTUAL fiscal crisis.
As far as low-income Davis workers, does anyone really believe that housing is going to be built for that small population of people? In addition to the Affordable housing that already exists?
And what’s to keep “low-income workers” (e.g., who work in Sacramento) from occupying “low-income housing” in Davis? Davis is a much nicer place to live than Sacramento.
I am not sure this is really where Ron wants to go… But okay. First of all, he chooses a national study rather than a Davis one. Second, it’s one that argues for a huge shortage of affordable housing.
The study from the University of Kansas challenges the widespread belief of a general housing shortage in the United States. Instead, it highlights a critical shortage of affordable housing, particularly for very low-income households.
Researchers Kirk McClure and Alex Schwartz analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data from 2000 to 2020 and found that, while housing production exceeded household growth by 3.3 million units during this period, the availability of affordable rental units remains insufficient. 
This distinction between overall housing supply and affordable housing is crucial. While there may be enough homes in total, many are priced beyond the reach of low-income families. Nationally, the U.S. faces a shortage of 7.3 million affordable rental homes for extremely low-income renters, with only 34 affordable and available units for every 100 such households.
That’s their study. Another one I wrote a few months ago argues that the problem is not overall housing but where the housing is being built as opposed to where people are living and have jobs. In any case, if you really want to hang your hat on a study that finds a shortfall of 7.3 million affordable homes, then so be it, I’m not going to spend a lot of time refuting it. I would argue it’s all part of the same piece – scarcity of housing and a housing mismatch leads to a market problem that you are not solving.
Here’s what the report actually said (since it seems like you didn’t read it). Also, do you think that Davis (or the Sacramento region) was one of the “four” metropolitan areas that experienced a housing shortage?
“The researchers found only four of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas experienced a housing shortage in the study time frame, as did only 19 of the country’s 526 “micropolitan” areas — those with 10,000-50,000 residents.”
“The findings suggest that addressing housing prices and low incomes are more urgently needed to address housing affordability issues than simply building more homes, the authors wrote.”
“There is a commonly held belief that the United States has a shortage of housing. This can be found in the popular and academic literature and from the housing industry,” McClure said. “But the data shows that the majority of American markets have adequate supplies of housing available. Unfortunately, not enough of it is affordable, especially for low-income and very low-income families and individuals.”
You focused on that aspect of the study.
I focused on this aspect – no state has sufficient affordable housing. (Link)
In addition, the KU study focuses too heavily on population and not enough on household formation – they need to better consider the evolving patterns of household formation driven by remote work, economic factors, and demographic changes. These elements suggest that housing demand can intensify due to shifts in living arrangements and preferences, even without significant population growth. Therefore, addressing housing affordability and availability requires more a nuanced understanding of these dynamic factors.
Here’s what the study said about household formation:
“The numbers showed that from 2010 to 2020, household formation did exceed the number of homes available. However, there was a large surplus of housing produced in the previous decade. In fact, from 2000 to 2020, housing production exceeded the growth of households by 3.3 million units. The surplus from 2000 to 2010 more than offset the shortages from 2010 to 2020.”
And this:
“When looking at the number of housing units available, it becomes clear there is no overall shortage of housing units available.”
(Sounds like they need to tear down some housing, based upon “household formation”.) 🙂
I ask because it’s pretty much the opposite of what you said.
It’s “low prices” that are in short supply, not “supply” itself.
Or, an oversupply of “low wages”.
And the authors of that study arrived at a completely different conclusion than what you think should be done about that.
But there’s lots of places where wages are better-aligned with prices.
A more recent study from Brookings: “ Over the past two decades, housing costs have outpaced income growth in the United States, increasing the rent burden and heightening barriers to homeownership (Treasury 2024). Policy experts and academics widely agree that these trends reflect a long-run housing supply shortage, which is a key driver of housing unaffordability (Bernstein et al. 2021, Khater, Kiefer, and Yanamandra 2021; Lee, Kemp, and Reina 2022). However, there is less consensus on the scale of the shortage. Recent estimates range from 1.5 to 5.5 million units, with variation driven by a combination of methodological differences in calculating the shortage and different characterizations about what constitutes equilibrium in the housing market. In this brief, we examine the assumptions underlying existing shortage estimates and offer an updated estimate based on our preferred methodology. Our calculations show that the U.S. housing market was short 4.9 million housing units in 2023 relative to mid-2000s. ”
Link: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/make-it-count-measuring-our-housing-supply-shortage/
Planetizen underscores that while the total housing supply may meet overall demand, the scarcity of affordable units for very low-income households remains a critical issue nationwide.
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2024/06/129638-study-housing-crisis-about-affordability-not-supply
The number do indeed differ. The other study indicates an “excess” of supply.
“The surplus from 2000 to 2010 more than offset the shortages from 2010 to 2020.” And this: “When looking at the number of housing units available, it becomes clear there is no overall shortage of housing units available.”