As Davis prepares to send the proposed Village Farms development to voters in June, a recent Sacramento Bee report frames the decision as a referendum on whether the city has priced out its future and lost a critical “missing generation” of families.
The framing is consistent with a long-running Sacramento Bee narrative that portrays Davis as an unusually resistant, anti-growth community whose housing politics are disconnected from demographic, economic and institutional realities.
In that telling, Davis is presented as an outlier city where voter skepticism toward development has produced consequences that are now unavoidable, particularly in the form of declining school enrollment and rising housing costs, and where local decision-making is depicted as lagging behind broader regional and statewide pressures to build more housing.
The Bee’s reporting centers on the argument that rising housing costs have pushed out residents between roughly ages 30 and 50, particularly families with young children, hollowing out school enrollment and threatening the city’s long-term fiscal and civic stability.
Former Davis mayor and City Council member Lois Wolk told the City Council that past leaders were themselves newcomers who came to Davis to work and raise families.
“The City Council on which I served in the 1990s was composed of men and women, none of whom were born in Davis. Each and every one of us had moved to Davis from somewhere else — to work, to raise our families,” Wolk said. “Our children went to Davis schools.”
The Bee notes that declining enrollment is now one of the most visible consequences of that demographic shift. Davis Joint Unified School District has lost roughly 380 students since 2014 and projects a further decline of about 1,000 students over the next decade, a trend that would reduce outside funding and could force school closures or boundary changes.
“Our schools’ problems reflect that missing generation you are being asked to provide for — the new members of the community who, like you and like us before you, will become part of the life of this community,” Wolk said.
According to the report, the scale of enrollment loss has prompted the school board to take the unusual step of weighing in on city housing decisions.
“The schools are speaking up,” Wolk said, calling it “a real departure.” She added, “The school board recognizes that if the city doesn’t restore a balance of new homes they’ll have to close or restrict schools.”
Village Farms, a proposed 498-acre development that would add about 1,800 homes on the city’s northern edge, is presented in the Bee’s coverage as a potential remedy.
The project would require voter approval under Measure J/R/D and is expected to appear on the June ballot.
Supporters argue it could gradually restore family housing and stabilize school enrollment over the next 10 to 15 years.
Public opinion, however, remains sharply divided.
The Bee describes a marathon Davis City Council meeting at which more than 50 speakers addressed the project before the council voted to certify the environmental impact report, the final step needed to send the proposal to voters.
Supporters emphasized schools, workforce housing and community vitality, while opponents raised concerns about infrastructure strain, flood risk, toxic runoff and density.
The Cannery, approved in 2013 as Davis’ last major residential project, features prominently in the debate as both precedent and warning. UC Davis professor and Wildhorse resident Nicholas Pinter told the council, “Davis needs to say yes to some of the projects being proposed, but as a Davis resident, I will vote against any project that looks like the Cannery.”
Other Cannery residents expressed support, citing the risks to local schools if housing does not expand. “We are at a pivotal moment for our city,” said Krista Hoffman, a Cannery resident with children in Davis schools. “This project could prevent devastating school closures.”
The Bee also situates the Village Farms debate within a broader imbalance between the city and the university.
Between 2014 and 2024, UC Davis added about 5,500 students, mostly undergraduates, while the city added little family housing, intensifying pressure on the rental market and pushing many graduates and young families out of Davis.
“The UC has grown enormously,” Wolk said. “The city has not provided similar expansion.”
Affordability remains a central concern. The Bee reports that the median home price in Davis is about $790,000. While Village Farms includes 280 affordable units, 80 moderate-income units and 70 homes with down-payment assistance, roughly 1,300 homes would sell at market rates, with prices starting around $750,000.
Measure J/R/D, which requires voter approval to convert agricultural land to urban use, is described as both a gatekeeper and a constraint. Voters have reaffirmed the measure several times, but Wolk argued that it has failed to produce balanced growth. “Measure J hasn’t produced balanced, careful growth for our community,” she said. “This is not working.”
As framed by the Sacramento Bee, the June vote carries implications beyond land use.
The outcome could influence school district planning, city finances and whether Davis can retain the next generation of families needed to sustain its civic life, making Village Farms not just a housing proposal but a test of the city’s future direction.
What the Sacramento Bee ultimately does not resolve is whether Village Farms will actually deliver the families it is being asked to save.
The article frames the project as a plausible corrective to demographic decline, but plausibility is not proof.
Housing supply matters, but which housing, at what price, and for whom matters just as much, and those questions remain only partially examined.
Market-rate homes starting near three-quarters of a million dollars may add residents, but it is far from clear they will meaningfully restore the cohort of teachers, nonprofit workers, city employees and mid-career families that Davis is losing.
If the “missing generation” is priced out today, there is no guarantee it returns tomorrow simply because more units exist.
Without deeper attention to affordability, ownership pathways and income alignment, new housing can just as easily reshuffle who lives in Davis rather than broaden who can.
There is also a risk in treating Village Farms as a binary choice between growth and decline.
Framing the project as the solution collapses a complex structural problem into a single vote, while obscuring the cumulative effects of decades of policy decisions, university expansion, regional housing pressures and state mandates.
Even a yes vote would not erase those forces, and a no vote would not absolve the city of the need to confront them.
At the same time, the Bee’s broader framing reflects a familiar impatience with Davis itself, depicting the city as unusually resistant to reality rather than a community grappling — imperfectly — with competing values.
Voter oversight through Measure J has constrained housing supply, but it has also reflected a long-standing demand for accountability and deliberation in how the city grows.
The tension is real, but it is not reducible to caricature as the Bee has been wont to do over the years.
The June vote, then, should be understood less as an answer to whether Davis can “find its missing generation” and more as another chapter in an unresolved civic debate.
Growth alone is not a strategy, but delay is not the solution.
What remains missing from much of the coverage — and from the decision itself — is a clear articulation of how Davis intends to grow with intention, not just with urgency.
This is a debate the Vanguard has been grappling with as well — one that moves beyond the blunt question of housing versus no housing, but remains unresolved, particularly in the context of an election that is likely to be polarizing and divisive.
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” I will vote against any project that looks like the Cannery.”
Its funny how people who don’t live there complain about the Cannery. When the Cannery was being planned there was a lot of community input and the builder responded to those demands even though a grade separated crossing didn’t get built. Now people complain about what all that community input produced. Could it be that the result that people don’t like is the result of what people said they wanted?
In a word Ron, “No.” The Cannery was changed after the fact with three major amendments to the Development Agreement, one of which imposed a more than $21 million Mello-Roos Tax on the Cannery residents without giving any of them the opportunity to approve or reject the tax in a vote.
Further, the developer agreed to include underground fiber optic communications conduit throughout the project, but never did so before paving the streets, and the City staff who were supposed to inspect the developers work willfully turned a blind to that contract violation.
Cannery is anything but what the people said they wanted.
I don’t think the guy I quoted above was referring to fiber optic cable or the CFD because he used the words “that looks like.”
Ron G
You’re ignoring why the pro-housing proponents are concerned about the issues highlighted in the Cannery about the lack of accountability that can be unleashed by simply approving everything brought before us. Matt’s listing of just a couple of the many issues at the Cannery shows how trust in the City’s planning process has been undermined. We need strong limits such as baseline features to overcome this lack of trust. It’s this lack of trust that led to Measure J in the first place. You need to come up with a proposal that addresses that original motivation if you want to make a change in the direction that you prefer. Until you do that, what you say is basically irrelevant, on the scale of proposing scheduled commercial service to the moon.
From article: “The City Council on which I served in the 1990s was composed of men and women, none of whom were born in Davis. Each and every one of us had moved to Davis from somewhere else — to work, to raise our families,” Wolk said. “Our children went to Davis schools.”
And supposedly, that’s not the “goal” in the first place – it’s simply the result of expanding the size of the city.
And every kid that a city like Davis “poaches” from somewhere else is one less kid attending their original district – with all of the impacts that entails.
Seems like the Bee doesn’t know that enrollment is significantly declining across the state (and probably the country – given the 1.6 kid birthrate nationwide.
Left unsaid, of course, is why so many politicians and media sources look at this in a negative light. In fact, it’s ultimately the only way our entire species will continue. The earth and and its resources aren’t “expanding”.
David Greenwald said …” The Bee describes a marathon Davis City Council meeting at which more than 50 speakers addressed the project before the council voted to certify the environmental impact report, the final step needed to send the proposal to voters.”
Red Alert! Both the Bee and the Vanguard are playing fast and loose with the facts. The Bee’s actual statement in the article is “more than 50 speakers, most in favor of allowing the development, shared their opinions before council members.”
The Bee is duplicitous because (1) there were 73 total commenters with 36 for either (a) moving the decision forward to the ballot or (b) support of the project itself or (c) both a and b. In the first place 36 is greater than 37 and as such “most in favor” is a lie. Second, many of the 36 spoke only in favor of moving the decision to a vote so that the people can speak. The question of whether to vote for or against the project was never uttered by the commenter.
Why did the Vanguard edit the article’s statement to remove/hide the Bee’s lie? Especially when the Vanguard explicitly knew it was a lie.
“Why did the Vanguard edit the article’s statement to remove/hide the Bee’s lie? Especially when the Vanguard explicitly knew it was a lie.”
Good question.
Wait Matt, I’m a bit confused, where is the lie other than the Bee wasn’t quite as precise as it could have been?
David, the lie is very simple. They said, “more than 50 speakers, most in favor of allowing the development, shared their opinions before council members.”
“More than 50” is true … “most in favor” is a lie. 36 out of a total of 73 is not “most.” And to make the lie even larger, not all the 36 were in favor of the project, they only were in favor of “it is time to vote,” which is an opinion I personally share, just as it was time to vote on DiSC II. Sometimes it is best to put a fatally flawed plan and process out of its misery.
David
Good insights here. Keep delving in.