As of Friday evening, Measure V appears headed toward a narrow defeat.
If the result holds, it will mark another chapter in Davis’ long and complicated history with Measure J. Since voters first approved the citizen-vote requirement for peripheral development in 2000, only two major projects have successfully navigated the process.
Every other proposal has either failed at the ballot box or never made it that far (another critical point that shows that Measure J is a constraint on housing because it acts as de facto gatekeeper).
Many in the community are already shifting their attention to the proposed Willowgrove project, hoping (or in some cases, fearing) that it can succeed where Village Farms appears to have fallen short.
But it is worth remembering that organized opposition to Willowgrove has not yet emerged.
Village Farms entered the campaign with broad support from city leaders, labor organizations, environmental advocates, affordable housing advocates and much of the local establishment, yet it still appears likely to lose.
At the same time, the underlying demand for housing in Davis has not disappeared.
I have seen recent polling showing that roughly 80 percent of Davis voters believe the city does not have enough housing.
And yet, even with that, Measure V could not win. And while you can argue that flaws in the project prompted that result – the overall history of Measure J suggests that the problem is more systemic than episodic.
The apparent contradiction between widespread recognition of a housing shortage and the repeated defeat of housing projects is precisely what makes Measure J such a problematic policy.
Measure V is not simply another election result but rather part of a pervasive pattern of land use issues that the community faces and represents another example of the structural difficulty Davis faces in producing housing under its current growth-control framework.
Throughout the election, we repeatedly analyzed the city’s housing obligations and available land inventory.
Our conclusion was that there is no realistic path for Davis to produce the approximately 930 lower-income units assigned through the current RHNA cycle without both Village Farms and Willowgrove succeeding.
Even under optimistic assumptions about infill development, accessory dwelling units and redevelopment opportunities, the numbers simply do not add up.
The question now is what happens next.
For years, some observers have dismissed concerns that the state might eventually intervene in Davis’ housing process. Others have argued that Measure J is not truly a housing constraint. Yet the state’s own housing officials have repeatedly raised concerns about exactly that issue.
In its Housing Element update, the city argued that Measure J was not necessarily an obstacle to meeting housing needs. According to the city, “While Measure J adds costs, extends processing times, and has been used to halt development projects that would convert agricultural land to urban development, it is only a constraint to meeting housing needs if the city lacks sufficient infill housing sites.”
On Dec. 8, 2021, the California Department of Housing and Community Development responded directly to the city’s analysis.
“As recognized in the housing element, Measure J poses a constraint to the development of housing by requiring voter approval of any land use designation change from agricultural, open space, or urban reserve land use to an urban use designation,” HCD wrote. “Since the ordinance was enacted in March of 2000, four of the six proposed rezones have failed.”
The state agency went further, noting that because Davis had identified a need for rezoning additional sites to accommodate its housing obligations, the city needed to analyze the constraints Measure J might impose on future development opportunities.
That warning came nearly five years ago.
As Councilmembers and city staff have acknowledged, Davis has realistically exhausted the inventory of infill sites that can realistically be rezoned or redeveloped.
The debate that once centered on whether infill alone could satisfy housing needs has gradually shifted toward whether enough infill opportunities remain at all.
That concern was publicly acknowledged by city leaders.
In December 2023, then-Mayor Will Arnold cautioned residents against assuming that Davis could satisfy future housing obligations entirely through infill development.
“I would just say to those who have said that we will be able to meet our next RHNA cycle numbers without going outside of the city limits… I suggest they tune in or watch the recording of this meeting as we really try to meet our current requirements simply with infill and the difficulty we’re having in doing so,” Arnold said.
For the last several years, many residents have remained largely unaware of the implications of these warnings. Others have attempted to downplay them. But if Measure V ultimately fails, those concerns become much more difficult to ignore.
The central question is no longer whether Measure J creates challenges for housing production. The question is what happens when voters continue rejecting projects while the city remains legally obligated to accommodate housing growth.
One commenter on the Vanguard recently argued that “The closeness of the result undermines arguments to weaken Measure J.”
In reality, the opposite conclusion may be more accurate.
When projects lose by overwhelming margins, it is easy to argue that the voters were reacting to fundamental flaws. Covell Village, Wildhorse Ranch and the second DISC proposal all suffered decisive defeats. When the defeat is resounding, it is easy to dismiss the problem as specific to the project – i.e., those projects were poorly timed, inadequately designed, politically mishandled or simply inconsistent with community preferences.
But a different pattern emerges when examining the close losses.
The first DISC proposal narrowly failed in 2020. Measure V now appears poised to suffer a similarly narrow defeat. These outcomes suggest something different than outright community rejection. They suggest a system where projects that address documented housing needs can still fail despite substantial support, extensive revisions and years of planning.
In that sense, close defeats may be more concerning than landslides.
A project that loses by 30 percentage points tells state regulators that the community clearly rejected a proposal. A project that loses by a few hundred votes despite years of review, significant affordable housing commitments and demonstrated housing need raises a different question: whether the process itself has become an obstacle to meeting state housing requirements.
Preliminary precinct-level results appear to reinforce that concern. As with DISC in 2020 and again in 2022, opposition was strongest among voters living closest to the proposed project site. Traffic concerns once again emerged as the dominant issue.
That pattern is unlikely to disappear. Most remaining peripheral development opportunities are along arterial routes. Future projects will therefore almost certainly generate similar concerns about traffic, circulation and neighborhood impacts.
We have yet to see a project pass that has generated significant and realistic traffic concerns.
The reality is that the two projects that have successfully passed Measure J elections were able to avoid many of those concerns. Future projects will not be so fortunate.
That leaves Davis facing a difficult reality: the city remains under pressure to accommodate housing growth, has limited remaining infill opportunities, must secure voter approval for peripheral projects, and continues to see those projects rejected at the ballot box—even when the margins are exceedingly narrow and when significant swaths of the community recognize the need for housing and the value for that project.
The question now is what will happen, as the status quo is increasingly untenable.
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