For some time now, Davis has been talking about declining school enrollment as though it were a mystery to be solved by the school board or by demographers. But the truth is that declining enrollment isn’t a surprise—in 2007 and 2008, community leaders were warning that our school populations were the canary in the coal mine.
More importantly, our analysis shows that it isn’t a natural consequence of statewide trends. It’s the predictable, self-inflicted result of Measure J, the voter-approval ordinance that for nearly a quarter century has made it almost impossible to build housing for families.
When you first look at Davis’s population data, it doesn’t seem so bad. On paper, the city doesn’t look “old.” The age chart is swollen with people in their twenties, which makes Davis appear balanced and youthful. But that picture is deceptive.
Those thousands of young people are almost all tied to UC Davis—they are students, graduate assistants, and postdocs who are here for a few years and then leave. Strip away the transience of the university population, and a very different community comes into focus.
Davis has fewer children and far fewer households headed by adults aged thirty to fifty-four than comparable cities. The apparent abundance of youth is an illusion, masking the fact that the city has quietly hollowed itself out as a multi-generational community.
The city’s 25-to-34 cohort looks strong on paper, but again, that’s misleading. It’s inflated by temporary residents—people connected to the university rather than by families putting down roots.
The groups that actually sustain schools, youth programs, and civic life—the parents, the volunteers, the coaches, the PTA presidents—are thin. Davis today depends on a revolving door of students while the population that once raised its children here grows smaller every year.
The data presentation itself hides the problem. Normalized percentages make Davis look stable, but once you correct for UC Davis’s massive footprint, the imbalance is stark.
The physical record tells the same story.
Since 2005, Davis has added only about seven hundred single-family homes. Most of the multifamily housing built in that period was designed specifically for UC Davis students.
Those projects were necessary—they relieved pressure in the student rental market—but they did nothing to attract or retain families. In fact, they made the imbalance worse.
We’ve built almost exclusively for students and seniors while doing virtually nothing for the middle of the community, and now we’re watching the consequences play out in real time.
That’s why enrollment is falling. Davis hasn’t stopped having children because the birthrate fell; Davis stopped having children because the families who might have them can’t afford to live here.
Our schools are shrinking because our city stopped renewing itself. Declining enrollment is not the cause of Davis’s demographic problem—it’s the symptom. It’s the warning light flashing on the dashboard, telling us that the engine underneath is failing.
Treating it as a school-district issue misses the point entirely. It’s a city-wide structural problem born of a policy that froze growth for a generation.
Many people have questioned whether declining enrollment should drive housing policy.
Enrollment itself isn’t the driver; it’s merely the evidence of what happens when a city stops making room for families.
The driver has to be something larger: a commitment to sustainability, to maintaining Davis as a living, balanced community rather than a collection of retirees and transient students.
That means building enough housing to meet the state’s current requirements—nothing more, nothing radical, simply fulfilling our obligation to plan for about two thousand homes in the next cycle.
We’re not talking about sprawl. We are talking about building to the state mandated levels.
We should stop pretending that meeting state law threatens the city’s character. The real threat is refusing to build at all.
A sustainable community is one that reproduces itself socially and economically. It has young families, working adults, students, and retirees in proportion, all contributing to the civic life of the city.
Davis once embodied that balance, but it no longer does.
The irony is that Measure J, sold as a way to preserve Davis’s identity, has eroded it. By cutting off nearly all new family housing, we’ve ensured that the very qualities we sought to protect—great schools, lively neighborhoods, civic participation—are now slipping away.
The question isn’t whether we should build for growth’s sake. It’s whether we want Davis to remain viable twenty years from now.
The city’s future depends not on endless expansion but on modest, responsible development that allows teachers, nurses, and young professionals to live where they work and raise their children.
The goal isn’t to transform Davis; it’s to keep Davis functioning as a real community. Meeting our state housing requirements is the floor of what sustainability demands, not the ceiling.
Right now, the numbers still fool us. The charts and graphs make Davis look young and healthy, but the truth is that the city’s social infrastructure is aging out. The civic institutions that once defined Davis—the schools, the volunteer networks, the public-spirited energy that came from having people at every stage of life—depend on renewal.
If we continue to rely on students to give the illusion of youth while preventing families from putting down roots, that renewal will stop. Declining enrollment is simply the first visible sign of that process.
Measure J was born out of good intentions. People wanted to preserve open space and local control.
But the cost of that preservation has been paid in the slow loss of community balance. It’s time to admit that the law we once saw as protection has become a barrier.
Davis doesn’t need to abandon its values to fix this. It needs to live up to them—to be a model of sustainability, not a museum piece dedicated to what the city used to be.
Some of that renewal is already within reach.
The Village Farms project, currently under consideration, could meaningfully change this trajectory. According to a school enrollment study by Davis Demographics MGT, the project is expected to increase DJUSD enrollment by about 701 students, which would boost the district’s total by over eight percent.
Some have questioned whether that projection is too high.
But the experience of The Cannery suggests it may actually be conservative. The Cannery, at roughly 600 units, has already produced around 300 new students.
By comparison, Village Farms is planned at 1,800 units—three times the size. An increase of 700 students would be entirely consistent with that pattern and could provide a critical stabilizing effect for our schools while restoring demographic balance to the community.
Projects like Village Farms won’t solve everything, but they represent a clear path forward. They demonstrate that Davis can still plan responsibly, meet state housing requirements, and help sustain the very institutions that have defined the city for generations.
Rather than viewing new housing as a threat to Davis’s identity, we should see it as an opportunity to preserve what has always made Davis strong: its schools, its families, and its commitment to community renewal.
What’s at stake isn’t just a school district’s numbers. It’s whether Davis continues to exist as a full, functioning city. We can either build enough homes to sustain the next generation, or we can keep pretending that declining enrollment is someone else’s problem. It’s not. It’s the mirror held up to a city that has stopped making room for its own future.
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Enrollment has been falling statewide for several years and the whole state doesn’t have a Measure J.
Boy you didn’t even get to the second paragraph
I seldom do anymore…
While I’m certain measure J has had a major impact on student enrollment; I want to point out that your second paragraph doesn’t really address the statewide trend’s impact one way or the other. .
But I’m willing to wager that the state wide trend isn’t applicable to Davis. As they say real estate is about location, location, location…..meaning local…..local factors are usually the primary influences on local markets. So if manufacturing in the inland empire, or tech in Silicon Valley or in SoCal….probably has less effect on Davis which is mostly effected by UCD, state and federal jobs.
Based on your comment in yesterday’s crisis article, I understood that you were going to address the 1.6 kids nationwide statistic. Did you change your mind regarding that?
Also, as I recently mentioned, all of the schools I attended as a child in San Francisco (a much more expensive city than Davis) are still open.
Enrollment is declining in older sections of “dirt-cheap” Woodland.
But most importantly, you haven’t actually addressed the reason that declining enrollment is a crisis for a city (or even a school system, itself). Or, why it’s a crisis that the population is ageing in place (not just in Davis).
From a city’s perspective, there is no problem to be solved, here. Existing households simply don’t need the services that school districts provide, as much as they did in the past. Residents don’t move out of their homes simply because they’ve aged out of a school system.
Regardless of the size of a given city, there will still be some residual need for school systems since all residences eventually turn over. Once a city reaches a stable size, a stable school district will follow accordingly.
School districts don’t get to decide how large a given city should be. It’s ultimately the other way-around, just as it would be for any other supportive services.
No. The point of the piece was to address why Davis’ demographic problems are not related to birth rates but rather land use decisions. It needs one more level of analysis, but I will wait for the data for that.
It is likely true that communities which actively pursue sprawl comprise a larger share of the 1.6 kids (nationwide). So what?
Why is that a crisis that Davis doesn’t make that same choice to pursue sprawl to the same degree as Woodland, Natomas, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, etc.?
All you’re referring to is shuffling-around the same amount of kids BETWEEN communities – not creating “more” of them. (That is, unless you’re advocating for Davis to pursue sprawl in order to create more kids. With each tiny new house comprising a love nest, so to speak. Maybe Davis would then need to track how often they have unprotected sex?)
Missing the point. But you just gave me an idea. Thanks.
An unwelcome picture just popped into my head . . . Please make it go away.
Though it is true that older people get it on, as well. (An even-worse picture.)
RO say, “Maybe Davis would then need to track how often they have unprotected sex?”
DG say, “Missing the point. But you just gave me an idea. Thanks.”
I’m scared now :-|
I’ll give you that one
It’s a “crisis” because it effects the quality of life in Davis.
I’ve stated in the past that I think DJUSD should close one of their schools if necessary. I’m a pragmatist.
That doesn’t mean I’m unaware of how it impacts the community. The families in West Davis are in alarmed at the prospect of closing Patwin. I get it. No longer being able to easily have elementary school kids walk to their school. That’s a big deal. Contracting classrooms will take and adjustment period which will result in sub-optimal teacher to student classroom/ratios.
You automatically equate expansion growth as “sprawl”. But that’s how growth happens in this region….despite what the silly New Urbanists here want to believe. Now you can have controlled sprawl or uncontrolled sprawl….those are your two options. Or the city can contract which will cause much decline in the quality of life in Davis before it stabilizes and resets. And it’s not like the people that would have moved do Davis went away….they just moved to Woodland, Dixon, West Sacramento…etc.. They’re still around clogging the freeways. I do not advocate local growth without some benefit for the existing community. But some growth does need happen in order to preserve the quality of life in Davis. But the key is balancing out those impacts….because for example Village Homes will provide homes to those families the school district needs. But the cost of ongoing infrastructure and maintenance will negatively impact Davis. And most immediate will be the traffic impact. So there are negatives as well as positives.
THe problem is closing a school is a bandaid and doesn’t address the problem
@david
“THe problem is closing a school is a bandaid and doesn’t address the problem”
It is an it isn’t. It’s a solution to the shrinking student population. Will it continue to shrink? Maybe? If does will the close more schools? Maybe. Will student to school ratio eventually (relatively) stabilize? Yes. I’m not sure how you can look at a school closing as a band-aid. A band-aid would be adding portable classrooms to a growing school district.
Will it continue to shrink yes it will. The problem is that it’s got to shrink for a number of years before you close a school. It’s a big problem for school districts. It will mean cutting programs and a worse educational outcome. Closing schools has other costs as well including disruption to students and neighborhoods. The fact of the matter is that by state housing law, the city has to add housing anyone.
As a resident of Woodland, not Davis, you have no say in what Davis should do going forward. You even have a conflict of interest as more housing in Davis instead of Woodland lowers your property value. We don’t need you tell us how run our city or our lives.
Regardless, Davis is not pursuing sprawl. The VF proposal would create a form of sprawl since the proposed density is similar to what exists in the rest of the city. We can accommodate that growth is a measured controlled way. And in doing so we reduce the amount of sprawl that would happen in other regional cities like the ones you listed instead.
Richard: As a resident of Davis, it appears that neither the developer nor the city is listening to you or the other 4 people in your group.
Didn’t you explain to them that you live in Davis?
Tell you what: When I’m out handing out flyers or some such thing, you can hand out your own flyers to those same people stating that I don’t live in Davis and that the information on “my” flyer is therefore invalid. If you’d like, I’ll try to let you know in advance where and when I might do so, to provide plenty of opportunity for you to prepare for that.
How does that sound?
So apparently, this is the “crisis” that David is referring to:
“The civic institutions that once defined Davis—the schools, the volunteer networks, the public-spirited energy that came from having people at every stage of life—depend on renewal.”
Let’s take these one at a time.
Schools – a cost for residents and the state. Why is it a crisis that fewer of them may be needed?
Volunteer networks – older, retired people generally have MORE time than anyone else to volunteer.
Public-spirited energy – don’t know what this means. (Are spirited campaigns opposing sprawl included in this category?)
(As a side note, you do realize, I assume, that there’s communities which legally FORBID anyone below a certain age from living there. Are they in a constant state of “crisis”?)
“We’ve built almost exclusively for students and seniors while doing virtually nothing for the middle of the community, and now we’re watching the consequences play out in real time.”
I thought the argument was that when you build for students and seniors, this opens up the remaining housing for other demographics.
“Davis stopped having children because the families who might have them can’t afford to live here.”
Families with children and enough money can; the rest are banished to Woodland. The horror :-|
“Our schools are shrinking because our city stopped renewing itself.”
Renewing?
“Declining enrollment is not the cause of Davis’s demographic problem—it’s the symptom.”
Tomato Tomaatoe
“It’s the warning light flashing on the dashboard, telling us that the engine underneath is failing.”
Maybe leave the car by the side of the road and buy a motorcycle.
“Many people have questioned whether declining enrollment should drive housing policy.”
I resemble that remark.
“Enrollment itself isn’t the driver”
Is it the passenger?
“The driver has to be something larger: a commitment to sustainability, to maintaining Davis as a living, balanced community rather than a collection of retirees and transient students.”
How balanced is balanced?
“That means building enough housing to meet the state’s current requirements—nothing more, nothing radical, simply fulfilling our obligation to plan for about two thousand homes in the next cycle.”
Or we could put an initiative on the ballot to repeal all the Weiner laws.
“We should stop pretending that meeting state law threatens the city’s character.”
Have you been to Orange County???!!!
“The real threat is refusing to build at all.”
The 700 students looking down at my house belie that notion.
“A sustainable community is one that reproduces itself socially and economically.”
I’d like to type that statement into an A.I. Illustration program and see how many birds and flowers are in the picture.
“It has young families, working adults, students, and retirees in proportion, all contributing to the civic life of the city.”
What proportions are you talking, exactly?
“But the cost of that preservation has been paid in the slow loss of community balance.”
How about balance between city footprint and open-space/farmland?
“It’s time to admit that the law we once saw as protection has become a barrier.”
It’s still ‘protection’ from what it was intended to protect from, you just moved the goalpost. Actually you turned the goalpost into a kindling and dug a pit of mud. (Note: Alan C. Miller is not a fan of Measure J/R/D, I’m just writing stuff for the heck of it)
“Davis doesn’t need to abandon its values to fix this.”
any . . . particular . . . values . . . ?
“It needs to live up to them—to be a model of sustainability”
Define exactly what you mean by sustainability.
“not a museum piece dedicated to what the city used to be.”
Well that ship sailed :-|
“I thought the argument was that when you build for students and seniors, this opens up the remaining housing for other demographics.”
That was Taormino’s theory, we’ll find out when those homes start going on the market.
Old age and death ultimately “opens up” every single house for someone else.
And since Davis apparently has a larger portion of that population . . .
“Patience, grasshopper.”
On a related note, I would think that the existing senior mobile home park has higher turnover as a result of that, as will Bretton Woods.
Also – not sure why, but the mobile home park seems like an outstanding deal, based upon the home I saw sitting for sale for an extended period of time a year or two ago. That mobile home park is the best one I’ve ever seen, and includes some kind of large community center.
I’m sure the “Davis Buyers Somehow Related to Davis no more than Twice Removed Program” will ensure this will occur.
I always knew that one wasn’t going to fly
On THAT we agree
Also, UC Davis has grown in enrollment. In fall of 2000, UCD recorded 26,000 students. In fall of 2024 it was 41,000. During that time the City of Davis grew by roughly 6000. Even with UC Davis providing more on-campus housing, those enrollment numbers have a displacement impact on other potential residents.
Uh…I think I’ve made this point since I first started commenting here 6-7 years ago?
Keith Y Echols: “Strip away the transience of the university population, and a very different community comes into focus.”
Right, please explain if there’s a point I’m missing?
They may be transient, but there’s a high likelihood that other students will come in to replace them after they move on.
That part of the comment was supposed to be blockquote text that was taken from the article.
But the comment was supposed to highlight the UCD student population has on housing in the city of Davis.
David, may I ask where you found these numbers on the Cannery?
“But the experience of The Cannery suggests it may actually be conservative. The Cannery, at roughly 600 units, has already produced around 300 new students. ”
And I am most interested in how many of those 300 were already going to school in Davis if that number can be found?
EPS
Second question no way to know
David T: That’s a great question, and would also apply regarding all of the people that proponents claim will move to Davis (e.g., from Woodland). (That is, how many ALREADY attend DJUSD?)
Bingo, this is the crux of the problem. We’re losing the dynamism of youth that has made Davis what it is today. I’ll note that almost all of us commenting here are at a late stage. We are not hearing from younger people because they are missing from our community. All of those heroes of the past who created what we value in Davis were in their 30s and 40s–we have many fewer of them today.
When we moved to Village Homes in 1996 with our two year old son the neighborhood was crowded with children in every common area. We moved out in 2007. When we moved back for a year in 2016, the children had disappeared, their parents had aged into their 70s and 80s. The VH residents had pulled back into their homes and didn’t freely interact as they had when we were younger. The neighborhood had lost its vitality.
Japan and Korea are struggling with this situation now. Their societies are becoming stultified as the elderly and superelderly predominate. Both are considering opening up to more immigration as the solution. The US already has the solution to a lower birth rate in that we are a nation of immigrants and we have always renewed our society and culture through immigration. That’s why America has been the envy of the world. We’re 250 years old yet we’ve been viewed as a youthful country. It’s now a problem that we have both closed our borders and embedded policies that slowed the rate at which people move from place to place. The average period of residency has gone from 7 years to 13 years in the last two decades.
Davis had renewed itself through the turn over in its faculty and staff. UCD was a waypoint in the academic latter–part of the problem may be that the UCD has become prestigious enough to retain senior faculty until they retire. Now we’ve thrown up enough barriers in housing prices, lack of space for new businesses and hostility to UCD that younger families can’t move here easily. And now Davis is losing the vitality that made it the place we wanted to live (except for Ron O who has chosen to live in Woodland).
A sustainable community has an array of housing that meets the needs of people at different stages of their lives. Right now Davis does not offer affordable housing for those between 26 and 50. Falling school enrollment is the symptom of this problem. Unfortunately, Village Farms and Willowgrove as conceived don’t address this problem because the large single family houses will be too expensive for the families we need.
The MGT study on school enrollment is misleading because it extrapolated school enrollment for multifamily from a four-acre plot in the Cannery. IF we look at that data on a per acre basis, multifamily produces twice as many children per acre than single family housing, even if the sample size is so tiny as to be misleading. (That the consultant offered this study to the District as a serious projection is troubling in itself.)
“We are not hearing from younger people because they are missing from our community.”
And how old are YOU, and who appointed you as a representative of anyone?
Of the two of us, who do you think is more-qualified to address what families moving to the area are looking for? You, or me (the guy who actually LIVES around younger families)?
Here’s what they’re looking for: A two-car garage (at a minimum), a yard, a sufficient number of bedrooms to accommodate their families, etc. And they’ll pursue it where they can get MORE FOR THEIR MONEY.
Truth be told, almost all of them eventually get MORE than two cars, when their kids become teenagers.
They are a high-impact, costly cohort.
I think the point of his post is that most of us commenting are older. That would include him. Even me. I still have kids in the schools but they are winding down as well in 10th and 8th grade.
You and Richard both have an apparent obligation to vacate your homes, so that new families can move in – for the sake of DJUSD.
12 years maximum – for each resident. (Well, maybe 13 if you send the kid to a local kindergarten, first.)
Now that I think about it, I did my part – according to Richard himself.
Do you need the phone number of U-Haul?
It seems odd that I’m apparently the one who left Davis – and not you two. Shouldn’t it be the other-way around, given our respective advocacies?
I’m a perfect old coot for Davis, and you’re a strapping middle-age lad with a slightly-ageing family which will soon age out of the school system.
I still have kids in the school dude
There’s more than one way to skin a cat (which as my calculus prof used to say, is a very bad thing to do).
8th grade – 4 more years for you and your family.
Maybe you can make sure he/she doesn’t graduate and buy yourself some more time?
Come over to the dark side (e.g., Woodland). You might even be able to buy a house like this one which just sold for more than $1.4 million. (Another nearby one sold for something like 2.4 million. Interestingly-enough, I heard that the purchaser of THAT one has some kind of connection to the school district.)
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2265-Somerset-Cir-Woodland-CA-95776/89574571_zpid/
But seriously, you do need more than a half-million for a new one in Woodland.
New houses are never the best deal, but they do offer financing – which is probably one of the biggest reasons that first-time buyers are attracted to them. (Until they get the Mello Roos bill, at least.)
Who says I’m not planning to have additional kids?
Besides who here has brought more kids to Davis than David Thompson?
“Who says I’m not planning to have additional kids?”
You did seem to imply something like that, earlier today.
Who am I to say that someone living in Affordable housing and running a blog can’t afford having more kids?
In any case, this seems like ALL THE MORE reason to move to some place like Woodland. After all, you can still send your kids to Davis schools. (And you already live on an “inconvenient” side of Davis, so it’s not likely to get any more inconvenient than that.)
But it is odd that the people on here who live in Davis are the ones who don’t seem satisfied with it. And yet, they stubbornly never leave – while simultaneously trying to make it more like Woodland, Natomas, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, etc.
While the guy who lives in Woodland wishes it was more like Davis (but without the local growth monkeys).
Did I mention the technology center that they’re planning (with 1,600 more housing units)? The one that failed in Davis before even being presented to voters? (And whose site is now being covered by Bretton Woods?)
It’s funny how little you know about all sorts of things.
And yet, I’m the only one spewing out facts/observations on here.
But seriously – you and Richard should consider coming over to the dark side. Free up some housing for some younger families in Davis – the ones you’re so concerned about. You owe it to DJUSD. Bonus points if you can ensure that equity is one of the results.
Income threshold for affordable housing in Davis?
I understand that there’s different thresholds, depending upon how it’s designated.
You might have to turn over the blog to newcomers when you vacate your residence, as well.
Woodland doesn’t have such a blog. Most people (other than me, apparently) actually do some work. (Probably half the time, those blue-collar jobs support Davis. Turns out that the geniuses in Davis aren’t always that good at such work. Neither am I, for that matter – so I must be a Davis-type genius.)
Again, it seems to me that I’m a perfect Davis type, while some of the Davis complainers would be better off in the communities that they’d like Davis to emulate.
You’ll realize the Vanguard is a non-profit that operates in eight different counties plus numerous prisons, the Davis Vanguard is only a small part of it.
“You’ll realize the Vanguard is a non-profit that operates in eight different counties plus numerous prisons, the Davis Vanguard is only a small part of it.”
In my opinion, at least one person associated with the school district should be one of your readers (while in prison), in light of the “sprawl for schools” campaign. This is not an appropriate position for anyone in an official capacity.
Did we learn nothing from Dan Carson’s adventure?
At this point, I’m thinking that anyone associated with Davis should be advocating for removal of the superintendent, in light of this campaign. And truth be told – if I was making that type of salary – I wouldn’t be risking my job, at least. But at this point, I think he should step down at least.
RMcC say, “We’re losing the dynamism of youth that has made Davis what it is today.”
We’re losing the dynamism of youth in Davis, a college town?
RMcC say, “I’ll note that almost all of us commenting here are at a late stage.”
Late stage? You make being older sound like a cancer.
RMcC say, “We are not hearing from younger people because they are missing from our community.”
Young people are missing from Davis. I’m gobsmacked.
RMcC say, “All of those heroes of the past who created what we value in Davis were in their 30s and 40s–we have many fewer of them today.”
So ‘young’ to you is people in their 30’s and 40’s. And when they get into their 50’s and 60’s they are ‘late stage’. And who are these ‘Davis Heroes’ of which you speak? Curious. You know that people in their 60’s can be Davis Heroes too . . . have you ever heard of Alan C. Miller?
RMcC say, “We moved out in 2007. When we moved back for a year in 2016, the children had disappeared, their parents had aged into their 70s and 80s.”
In nine years the parents aged into their 70’s and 80’s ? Sounds like an episode of Lost in Space.
RMcC say, “The VH residents had pulled back into their homes and didn’t freely interact as they had when we were younger.”
Shocking.
RMcC say, “The neighborhood had lost its vitality.”
Try an Elk Grove suburb sometime. Lots of kids. Zero vitality.
RMcC say, “Japan and Korea are struggling with this situation now. ”
You’re comparing Davis to Japan and Korea ?
Did it occur to you that a lack of kids (“vitality”) is a great thing to reverse climate change? Probably THE most important thing to reduce impact on the planet. Less people, less emissions. Vitality be d*mned !!!!!
Today’s real estate reality popped up on my computer.
$995,000 $55K PRICE DROP
2248 Cannery Loop
Davis, CA 95616
North Davis Neighborhood
Estimated payment $6,608/month
Total Views
34,818
3 Beds 2.5 Baths 1,978 Sq Ft
$503 Price per Sq
Can it be viewed by 34,000?
These price drops have been going on for the last two years, en masse. Ask anyone who subscribes to Zillow alerts in their email. Before two years ago, not a chance.
In addition to noting the similarity to Dan Carson’s campaign (on behalf of DISC), I have another question for the superintendent:
I saw an article which stated that he was “forced” to live in Sacramento (or was it West Sacramento?), when he was a principal at DJUSD. My question is, why didn’t he just get a job in his OWN school district, at that time? Why did Davis “owe” this non-resident a job in the first place, when he could have gotten one where he ACTUALLY LIVED?
I bought my first Stanley Davis house in 1978 for $37125.00. Raised my family there along with all the neighbors who also bought their first house. The problem now in Davis is that there there are no Stanley Davis builders offering affordable housing. New homes here are not starter homes by any means and adding more homes does not guarantee they would be affordable. Measure J simply stopped the uncontrolled growth that was happening, it did not ask for affordable housing. I considered moving from my 1970’s Davis home in University Estates and checked the new Senior housing at Breton Woods. My house is a block from schools and would be perfect for a family. Unfortunately the $950,000 price for the Bretton Woods home was more than my Senior budget could stand. So my perfect family home in University estates will not be on the market and its $800,000 price will not be affordable to families looking for their first starter home. Davis could start building hundreds of new homes tomorrow but none would be single family affordable.
Personally, I think that Stanley Davis homes are STILL a perfect opportunity for families. A much better deal than a new one in Woodland (which are in the mid-500K range, for the smallest ones on the smallest lots, with the narrowest streets, and plenty of Mello Roos).
Looks like there’s about 100 homes for sale right now in Davis. Just found the one below, which is apparently part of the city’s Affordable “for sale” housing program. (I was wondering why it’s so inexpensive.)
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4100-Hackberry-Pl-Davis-CA-95618/111438236_zpid/
As far as moving to Bretton Woods, not sure why anyone would want to sell their current home, but at least you could take your low property tax with you (as a result of Proposition 19) if you’re so inclined.
Then again, if you have any kids who want to live in your current house someday, I understand that they’d lose the opportunity to do so if you sell it. (There are other restrictions resulting from Proposition 19 in regard to heirs, however.)
Bottom line is that people need some pre-existing MONEY to buy a house these days. And there’s plenty of people who have it, or the housing wouldn’t be selling (though prices have been dropping).
(Clarification: Anyone’s kids will lose the opportunity to keep their parents’ property tax, if they sell their home and move to some place where their kids can’t move to, due to age restrictions or just lack of desire.)
Parents must be thinking about this, these days. (I know someone in Davis who is keeping their home for their own kids, and is renting it out until such time.) Interestingly-enough, he is a “person of color”, I believe (I think he’d consider himself black) – who said something about providing his own kids with an opportunity to continue living in a safe, middle-class neighborhood – something like that.) One of his kids apparently has a developmental disorder, as well.
But I believe he has to move back into his house before he dies, for his kids to retain his property tax (again, as a result of Proposition 19).
I don’t think people have realized the impact that Proposition 19 has had (in regard to Proposition 13). It is a massive tax increase overall, over time.
Someone who logged in under a non-real name asked for the source on the Cannery student factor…
It’s from the Davis Demographics analysis.
Probably worth doing a separate article on this at some point here.