Listening to the tape of the council meeting Tuesday 12/9/25, I was dismayed that so many commenters apparently believed that the council is trying to reverse Measure J/R/D. This is incorrect.
In our current cycle, the State did not accept our City Housing Element until the 3rd try. The approved version included the City’s commitment to consider revisions of the existing Measure J/R/D Affordable Housing exemption. The exemption states that a 100% Affordable project can be built without ballot approval from voters.
This exemption has been invoked by developers exactly ZERO times since JRD’s inception. Developers apparently can’t make enough profit with all Affordable even if they don’t have to incur the high cost of a ballot measure.
And yet, we need more low-income housing. The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) for the 2021-2029 Housing Cycle demonstrated a shortfall of 496 low-income housing units. If our City fails to meet our 2029 RHNA allocation, the State may intervene and force our City to accept any proposed housing development that is 100% moderate or 20% low income. This is not an idle threat (Google “Builder’s Remedy”).
We can quibble about the proper inclusionary percentage of Affordable Housing that JRD exemption should require, but it is clear that if we want to reach our low income RHNA targets and maintain some control of how we build, the best pathway is a common-sense revision of the JRD exemption.
Ellen Kolarik, Davis
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NO, It’s *replacing* it.
Apparently, developers can’t even make 100 Affordable units “pencil out” within 10 years on a portion of a 16 acre site (within a larger 400 acre site, with that remainder largely covered with market-rate housing). Even if some external agency pays for the Affordable development, itself.
That doesn’t sound like a problem with Measure J. It sounds a lot more like completely-unfeasible state “requirements” – statewide. Bureaucrats enacting laws and making threats in regard to realities that they have no knowledge of, with the support of their YIMBY friends.