Op-Ed | Myths, Misconceptions, and Misinformation Used to Push the Poor Choices We’re Handed by Measure J/R/D

By The Davis Citizens Planning Commission

If nothing else, Measure J/R/D makes the planning of our city simple for us: it boils everything down to simply voting yes or no on development proposals prepared by landowners, and many would say that’s just fine. Some are more than happy to keep voting no, while others may occasionally hold their nose and vote yes. And maybe a few will vote yes enthusiastically.

In any case, there are several narratives floating around the consideration of the recent proposals named Village Farms and Willowgrove that are being used to justify voting one way or the other when they come up for vote in the next two years. You may be relying on some of them to inform your decision, or at least justify your predilection to vote a certain way, i.e.:

1. No, because we don’t need to add land for more housing in Davis, OR
2. Yes, because we do need more land for housing, and the current proposals for Village Farms and Willowgrove will deliver well enough.

We believe the narratives in favor of either position are largely false or inconsequential, and that’s leaving us with a pair of poor choices.

The opportunity to consider an amendment to Measure J/R/D, on the other hand, could add a third option, one that is crafted by the community rather than dictated solely by landowners, and hopefully can get closer to a true consensus on what we want Davis to be.

But where to begin? Perhaps going over the current narratives and considering their veracity can be a start. Here are our thoughts:

If your predilection is to vote “no,” you may be relying on the following:

1) “Whatever housing we may need can be built as infill, so we don’t need to expand our boundaries.”

This notion had a lot of traction up until a few years ago, but was pretty much debunked by the recent process of looking for infill sites that could be credibly listed in our Housing Element, the State-mandated plan each city has to prepare to demonstrate how they will accommodate the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), assigned in our case by the Sacramento Coalition of Governments (SACOG).

Now there are some who feel the State government has no business assigning cities anything like an amount of housing they should build, but most recognize the intent that we all shoulder part of the burden of digging out of the statewide housing deficit (which is even worse in Davis), and that leaving it to the cities to decide how to act is largely what got us here in the first place.

History has shown there are times when a collective mandate is needed for a common good—wearing seatbelts is a good example—and in fact the “mandate” in this case is pretty light anyway; simply show where housing could be built.

2) “The Baby Boom die off will free up many houses in Davis.”

True—between 3,000 and 4,000 single-family houses in Davis are owned by people over 65. But most of those houses are detached, single-family, with prices in our market at or above the median of $900k. The die off will facilitate upper-income people moving to Davis, but won’t help folks in the middle. Regardless of the specific types of housing listed in our RHNA, which essentially calls for half at the lower end of the price spectrum and the other half at the high, we believe Davis has a responsibility to backfill the middle and will be better off as a more income-diverse community. The Boomer die-off will contribute virtually nothing to that end, and we would have to wait at least 10 to 15 years before a substantial number become available.

3) “The State of California’s population has declined and will continue to do so because people are generally having fewer children.”

First part is false—the population dipped during the Covid pandemic but is increasing again. Second part is generally true, but inconsequential because California has created a localized shortage of housing, and we need to be building just to catch up to our current population and provide better opportunities (more affordable, closer to jobs) for the people who already live here.

The real indicator is that while the average number of children per household has declined statewide, the average number of people per household has increased by 10% from 2.9 to 3.2 over the last decade. This is one of the best metrics showing how we are in a housing shortage.

4) “Enrollment in Davis schools may be declining, but they simply need to ‘right size’ and not rely on out of district transfers or expect Davis to grow more housing to stabilize.”

Allowing schools to close would be bad for Davis. For one thing, the baby boom die off will still result in more students over time, albeit more likely for the high school than elementary schools due to the higher incomes necessary to purchase our houses which generally means parents and their children will be older.

Moreover, our community has thrived on a high population of school-age students and the social activities and bonds that result, so it’s not in our interest to stand by and watch the school population shrink, and providing out of district transfers isn’t a bad thing: we have the best schools in the region (including the private schools), and not caring if they wither is a callous disregard of a valuable resource that can improve the economic prospects of a lower income family, whether they live in town or can’t afford to but work here and send their kids to our schools.

Our school system helps advance our region’s economic/social well-being, and supporting that role helps spread the advantages we have by living here—a good thing, even if not strictly speaking our responsibility.

In any case, “right sizing” is unlikely to save substantial money because 1) much of the district’s costs are fixed payments for facilities that cannot be shed; and 2) the district loses funding from the state on a per student basis that shrinks faster than the reduction in costs. In other words, on net a smaller district actually will cost us more.

If you think the recent proposals to expand Davis are offering more or less what we need, you may be relying on some of the following:

1) “We need more housing of all types, because building new houses generally makes the existing ones relatively less expensive—i.e. they filter down to people with lower incomes. A related assumption is that any amount of additional supply will reduce prices.”

This premise is based on a presumption of “trading up” here. The problem is that, as happened in the Cannery, these premium houses are snapped up by out of town buyers from the Bay Area, and locals who may work in Davis but live elsewhere have little opportunity to buy into these neighborhoods. In fact, the Cannery has had no appreciable effect on housing prices in Davis even if it increased the supply slightly.

Instead, we need to target new housing toward buyers who currently are not able to enter the Davis market. There is a far greater need for more housing of certain types than others, and definitely not more of the detached, single-family variety.

“The current proposals for Village Farms and Willowgrove are offering substantial amounts of ‘Missing Middle Housing’ & housing that is ‘affordable by design,’ which will provide homeownership opportunities for our school teachers and other service workers.”

That’s what their information says, but an exaggeration at best of what is actually being planned. While it has emerged as planner’s jargon, “Missing Middle Housing” is very clearly defined by the group that coined the term and accurately describes housing that incomes between about 120%-160% Area Median Income (AMI), can afford.

In Davis today, that equates to units that cost between about $550,000-$700,000. The trouble is, a household supported by two veteran school teachers in Davis can only afford something between $550,000-$600,000 (and they make too much to qualify for Affordable housing), and our market drives even smaller detached, single-family houses to start around $700,000.

Examining the plot plans (and the EIR for Village Farms) indicates that both of the currently proposed developments rely heavily on detached, single family houses (73% of Village Farms, 57% of Willowgrove).

Also, per its definition, “Missing Middle Housing” is anything between attached units (duplexes, townhouses) and market-rate (not luxury) apartments. In other words, detached, single-family houses do not meet the definition.

Attached units, on the other hand, such as duplexes and townhouses are selling here between $500,000-600,000, which is within the affordable range of our more senior teachers, albeit not new hires nor custodial staff.

Attaching units is essentially the only credible way to make something “affordable by design” here, and Village Farms is proposing only 7% or 120 such units, and Willowgrove 15% or 188.

So yes, there will be some opportunities for the missing middle to purchase homes in both developments, a bit more in Willowgrove than Village Farms. But the dilemma we are facing is whether continuing to add more single-family detached houses on top of the inventory being freed up by Boomers and further skewering our median housing price (and our city’s median income) upward is worth gaining such modest amounts of housing for the missing middle.

3) “You can purchase a fully detached single-family house in Woodland or West Sac for the same price as an attached unit in Davis, and given the choice people will always opt for the former, so there’s really no point to building the latter in Davis.”

First part true; second part is patently false as shown by housing prices.

Homes in Davis enjoy a price premium of 57% to 62% over those in Woodland and West Sacramento. Fundamental economics tells us that a higher price in the market place means that it is more desirable–it’s probably the best indicator of expected demand for Davis housing no matter what the trade off is with living elsewhere.

The quality of Davis schools is much higher than our adjacent cities, and Davis is measurably safer and with more family-oriented amenities. As such, it’s likely that many younger and/or moderate-income families would opt for an attached house to be able to live here, especially if they work in town and would otherwise have to commute. But such units are relatively rare in Davis, and developers continue to favor mostly detached, single-family houses that are sold to older households.

4) “Detached single family houses will deliver more children to our school system than attached, smaller houses like duplexes and townhouses”

False. This notion comes from a study conducted by the Davis Joint Unified School District, but it relies on what happened at the Cannery, which contains only one, particularly unappealing example of an attached house: those three- to four-story, very closely spaced (17 units per acre) townhouses with no private outdoor space. It’s hard to imagine a less child-friendly housing design. But there are numerous examples in Davis, albeit relatively few in total numbers, of one- to two-story duplexes and townhouses that include private yard space, weigh in around 10-12 units per acre and are priced below $600,000.

Further the DJSUD study used the wrong metric—it should have been children per acre because many more apartments and multifamily units can be fit within an acre than single family. When converted to a per acre basis, even the DJUSD study agrees with this conclusion that these housing types will provide more children to the schools.

Again, given our extremely high housing prices, such units are likely to be appealing as starter homes to younger families with elementary-school aged children. But the DJUSD’s demographic study has no relevant information about the potential yield from such units, and instead gives the impression that only detached single family houses are the key to arresting the decline in students.

We are pursuing more research, but believe well designed clusters of duplexes and townhouses that include a modicum of private outdoor space—a small yard or court—could yield the same or greater number of children per unit, and would do more to arrest the decline in the elementary schools, where the threat of closures is most acute, than the detached houses that dominate the inventory of Village Farms and Willowgrove.

It’s certainly ironic that the current proposals for expanding Davis are offering the school district more students to keep the schools full, but very little in the way of housing that teachers can afford.

Bottom line:

So as it stands, our community is facing a vote on choices being sold via a lot of myths, misconceptions, and some serious misinformation, whether intentional or not. And what if we don’t like either?

The benefit of developing a Measure J/R/D exemption is that it could give us an opportunity to put a third option on the table. It’s a chance to have public discussions, workshops and hearings to assemble a community-preferred direction for expanding the boundaries of Davis and give a pre-approval to developer proposals that match (note that developers would still have an opportunity to submit something else and face the voters with their preferred plans under the existing rules for Measure J/R/D).

Sure, we could have had these conversations years ago if the General Plan had been updated in a timely way and we will get to some of them eventually now that it has begun. But even if so, the General Plan is always going to be pretty general, and has to consider a vast amount of possibilities and other areas of the city that aren’t up to bat right now like the East Covell corridor is. And while there will be an EIR, the General Plan will not be subject to a citizen vote like an amendment to Measure J/R/D would.

In any case, addressing the housing crisis is long overdue, and we shouldn’t squander time to wait and see what the General Plan looks like. We have developers willing to act now on properties that are the natural extension of Davis, if we could only have some say in what they build, not just whether they build.

To those who feel their democratic rights would be subverted by amending Measure J/R/D, we say the current set up has put a heavy finger on the scale in favor of “No” because it’s always going to be more likely for people to reject plans they had nothing to do with preparing. And developers face a serious gamble without any direction from the community on what would be acceptable. It can hardly be called “democratic” if every proposal comes in as the underdog.

The amendment would have to be approved by a democratic process and the project-specific democratic process would remain as an option for a developer who doesn’t want to comply with the expressed desires of the electorate. Instead of undermining democracy it enhances it by giving more power to the vote and enabling more direct citizen participation in preparing development plans.

Adding a choice that reflects wider community values and desires over those confined to private landowner interests will only increase the power of the electorate. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity and start talking about an amendment to Measure J/R/D.

Categories:

Tags: