The campaign over Measure V is over. The ballots have been counted, the election has been certified and the proposed Village Farms development has failed by 276 votes.
But if there is one lesson from the campaign, it is not that Davis has settled the question of growth. Rather, it is that the community remains almost perfectly divided over how to address housing, and the defeat of one project does nothing to resolve the larger challenges ahead.
In an interview with The Davis Enterprise, No on Measure V campaign leader Eileen Samitz reflected on the campaign that resulted in Village Farms’ defeat. She expressed relief that the project did not move forward and argued that the community can now begin to heal.
“The Village Farms project caused division in the community and pitted neighbor against neighbor, which hampered our ability to communicate the information people needed to have to understand the many problems Village Farms would bring,” Samitz said.
She later added, “We hope that now this issue is behind us, the community can come together again. We need better planning than Village Farms, and a good example is the Willowgrove project, which does not have the many problems that Village Farms has. It is a well-planned project primarily because the developers were responsive to what the community was asking for. As a result, it has broad support.”
Her comments raise an important question: Can the community simply move on?
The evidence suggests otherwise.
Measure V failed with 50.6% of the vote against 49.4% in favor. More than 23,000 residents cast ballots, and the margin separating victory from defeat was just 276 votes.
That is not a decisive mandate for either side.
Rather, it reflects a city that remains deeply divided over housing policy, growth, affordability and the future of Davis.
If anything, the narrow outcome demonstrates that nearly half the electorate believed Village Farms represented an important opportunity to address housing needs, while just over half concluded the project should not proceed.
The campaign itself reflected those competing visions.
Samitz argued that the project suffered from serious flaws throughout the approval process.
“For the first time in Davis history, the Planning Commission was forced to vote on an incomplete EIR which was not a Final EIR, imposed by the city so it could meet an election deadline that the developer desired,” she said.
She also criticized the environmental review and development agreement.
“As a result of the toxics, contaminated groundwater was likely to mix with Channel A runoff, then travel through Wildhorse, continuing east to the Yolo Basin and its habitat, eventually connecting with the Sacramento River,” Samitz said. “The rerouting of Channel A also threatened habitat along the channel as well as the vernal pools.”
She argued the affordable housing provisions were inadequate.
“The only exception was that the developer ‘may’ possibly be asked to build 100 affordable apartments, which would not even potentially happen until the last phase of the project, 10 plus years down the road,” Samitz said.
“However, the loophole word ‘may’ was in the Development Agreement, so there was no assurance that the affordable apartments would materialize. Also, the developer could simply walk away from building these 100 affordable apartments because 90% of the expensive market-rate houses would already have been built by the last phase, with a huge profit. This concern was brought up repeatedly by Council member Bapu Vaitla, who eventually voted for the agreement.”
Whether voters agreed with those arguments is ultimately less significant than recognizing that they represented one side of a broader debate.
Supporters of Village Farms argued the project would provide desperately needed housing, including hundreds of affordable units, generate funding for city infrastructure and schools, and help Davis begin addressing its long-term housing shortage.
Opponents believed the environmental risks, traffic impacts, floodplain concerns and project design outweighed those benefits.
Neither side persuaded an overwhelming majority.
Samitz also described the campaign as one built on factual analysis.
“Those voters understood that Village Farms would be seriously detrimental to the community and was not going to deliver what it claimed it would,” she said.
She argued the project should instead have been redesigned.
“They should have included the ‘reduced footprint’ alternative in the EIR,” Samitz said. “We formally proposed this alternative in writing and in testimony to the City Council early in the process when the alternatives were being determined for the Village Farms project, but we were ignored.”
She also pointed to the disparity in campaign resources.
“We were outspent far more than 10 to 1, with the developers spending over $780,000 using hired political operatives and professional PR firms,” Samitz said. “They also hired a huge number of people, including UCD students, to lobby the community and post on social media. California law requires hired campaign workers to disclose when they post advocating for Measure V, but they were ignoring that regulation throughout the campaign.”
Those claims formed the basis of the No campaign’s message.
But it is also true that the campaign itself contributed to the atmosphere of division Samitz now laments.
The campaign was not merely a disagreement over planning policy. It became one of the most contentious local elections Davis has experienced in years.
Developers, elected officials, city staff, school leaders, housing advocates, environmental organizations and neighborhood groups found themselves on opposing sides.
Claims and counterclaims dominated public meetings, social media and campaign literature for months.
Responsibility for that polarization cannot reasonably be assigned to one side alone.
Nor should it surprise anyone.
Measure J itself encourages precisely this outcome.
Unlike most California cities, Davis requires voters to approve peripheral housing developments through citywide elections.
As a result, complex land-use decisions that ordinarily would conclude through planning commissions and city councils instead become political campaigns.
Those campaigns require fundraising, advertising, direct mail, endorsements, public forums and increasingly sophisticated political operations.
Each side has incentives to emphasize risks and benefits in the strongest possible terms because every project ultimately becomes a public referendum.
The result is a process that rewards political mobilization as much as land-use planning.
Village Farms was not unique in this respect.
Previous Measure J elections have produced similarly contentious campaigns, and there is little reason to believe future proposals will be different.
The more fundamental question facing Davis is what happens next.
The defeat of Village Farms did not reduce the city’s housing obligations.
City planning efforts continue to identify the need for thousands of additional housing units over the coming decades through the General Plan update.
The city’s housing element remains subject to state requirements, and California has continued increasing oversight of jurisdictions that fail to accommodate housing production.
Those realities remain regardless of whether one supported or opposed Measure V.
The debate over housing is therefore far from over.
Future projects will almost certainly return to voters.
Some may resemble Willowgrove. Others may look very different.
Some may gain broader consensus. Others may generate the same divisions that characterized Village Farms.
The challenge for Davis is that defeating one proposal does not answer the larger question of where future housing will be built.
Nor does it resolve longstanding disagreements over Measure J itself.
Some residents continue to view Measure J as an essential safeguard that protects local control and community character.
Others increasingly see it as a structural obstacle that makes it extraordinarily difficult for Davis to meet housing needs or comply with state housing policy.
That debate is unlikely to disappear simply because Measure V failed.
Samitz expressed hope that “the community can come together again.”
That is a worthy aspiration.
But reconciliation will require more than moving beyond one campaign.
It will require acknowledging that nearly half the community supported Village Farms, nearly half opposed it, and both sides remain convinced they are protecting Davis’ future.
Until the city finds a way to bridge those competing visions—or fundamentally rethinks how housing decisions are made—the next major housing proposal may once again pit neighbor against neighbor.
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“BUT DAVIS’ HOUSING DEBATE IS JUST BEGINNING”
Are you kidding me, you’ve been debating this for at least 10 years now, almost daily.
Ohp . . . KO stole my comment
The people who lost (some of whom were in it as a result of self-interest) are the ones who view the result as “divisive”.
And perhaps the people like Eileen, who had to hear the brunt of it from those folks.
Though I didn’t much care for the divisiveness within the local branch of the Sierra Club, regarding this issue. Alan Pryor caused much of this – but not all of it.
I’m also pretty sure that had it not been for Eileen, the local branch of the Sierra Club might have endorsed Village Farms (as a result of Alan P.’s determined advocacy – which already existed as soon as the proposal was announced, as I recall).
I personally thought that the Sierra Club’s potential endorsement was irrelevant, since they also endorsed the Willdhorse Ranch proposal that failed about a decade ago which lost badly (despite it being much smaller, etc.). Palomino Place is now being built on that site regardless, and bypassed Measure J due to its unique circumstances.
Willowgrove will almost certainly pass. The question is what comes next.
“Until the city finds a way to bridge those competing visions—or fundamentally rethinks how housing decisions are made—the next major housing proposal may once again pit neighbor against neighbor.”
That isn’t the city’s job.
Bridging competing visions is what Leadership is all about. If leadership isn’t the city’s job, whose job is it to provide Leadership for our fair city?
“whose job is it… ?”
Yours. It is now up to the opponents of Measure V to come forward with your vision. It would be a waste of city resources for staff to be involved. If you want a different city council approach, elect a different city council.
Previous discussion here from 2022. Not much has changed.
https://davisvanguard.org/2022/06/commentary-skepticism-that-things-are-doable-in-davis/
Don, in numerous comments here on the Vanguard and elsewhere, Richard McCann and Tim Keller and others have pointed out that Measure V wasn’t not a decision that had anything to do with a broad, holistic Vision for our community’s future, but rather a narrow, constrained decision about a specific proposal for a specific parcel. Vision is much more than an individual Measure J vote … and the vast majority of land use decisions for our fair city don’t even qualify under the provisions of Measure J.
With that said, for the purposes of moving the conversation about Vision forward, let’s talk about Vision. Recently the Science Cafe hosted a presentation by Planning Commissioner and UCD professor of Community and Regional Development. Catherine’s topic was Making a Utopia Together: The Science of Planning Your City The venue was packed with over 100 people in attendance. One of her questions focused on Vision. She led into that question with a PowerPoint slide featuring Plato’s aspirational approach to Vision. Between 10 and 20 people gave her answers. My answer was, “A City that generates enough municipal revenues so that it can afford to pay its bills.”
It turns out I was jumping ahead to Catherine’s second slide, which featured Aristotle’s building on Plato’s aspirations with a reality approach. Paying our bills and maintaining the community infrastructure is about as real as it gets, but neither the proponents of No on Measure V nor the constituents at large of Davis really know enough about the details of running our City to provide that kind of visionary guidance/leadership. That is what staff and our elected officials are for.
That kind of leadership is proactive. Our government and our various elections are reactive, and we have been reactive for the last 30 years, with the result being that our current City Budget document reports the City has amassed $264.77 million of unfunded Capital Infrastructure repair/replacement/maintenance costs because we have no money to pay for those costs, and have chosen to defer (not do) them ( otherwise known a kicking the can down the road … which is the epitome of failed leadership.
That $264.77 million is made up of $78.8 million for streets, $12.5 million for bikeways, $28.1 million for buildings, $64.3 million for parks, $76.4 million for traffic, and $4.7 million for parking. In addition the unfunded Employee Pension liability is $178.3 million and the Retiree healthcare unfunded is $38.4 million.
All totaled that is a half a billion dollars of unfunded liability.
To complete the picture, No on Measure V did provide the following vision for the Project site.
found:
(A) Build below Channel A
(B) Build smaller, denser, lower priced market-rate affordable houses that do not need governmental subsidy dollars or income restrictions.
(C) Address the Trust issue by including the commitments to small footprint, market-rate, missing-middle homes in the Baseline Features
Interestingly enough, all of those have been done by Willowgrove in their proposal.
I would say that the housing/growth monkeys have already inflicted some damage, given that no one is even stepping up to oppose Willowgrove so far. And if they do, they might find some of the “usual suspects” (the slow-growthers) turning against them.
There was a comment on NextDoor noting that commuters living at that site will likely access I-80 to Highway 113, just to drive to the campus. (But ironically, that commenter was noting this as a “good” thing so that commuters to UCD don’t have to drive through town.)
I suspect more of the commuters from that site will work in Sacramento (compared to UCD), however.
And like Don Shor, I suspect that approval of Willowgrove will simply lead to more approvals along the Covell/Mace corridor to I-80.
Willowgrove is in a much worse location than Village Farms for housing. I don’t know why some folks get so tied up in the “type” of housing in these proposals – as there’s no evidence at all that they’ll house “local workers”.
Both Ron’s have “recorded loops” that they trot out with regularity. O’s loop today (above) is there’s no evidence at all that they’ll house “local workers”.
Both Ron’s need to listen more. O’s statement above has been answered multiple times by multiple commenters, but it never hurts to repeat the answer one more time … in hope for a miracle. Specifically, there is clear repeatedly collected and shared evidence that 17,000 plus “local workers” commute into Davis to go to their place of work. For Willowgrove, if only one in 12 of those workers chose to inhabit a Willowgrove residence, then close to 100% of the Willowgrove residences would have one or more “local workers” living there.
For Willowgrove, if only one in 12 of those workers chose to inhabit a Willowgrove residence, then close to 100% of the Willowgrove residences would have one or more “local workers” living there.
What?
Last time I checked, “one in 12” = around 8%. (That seems about right.)
It’s a commuter site to Sacramento, for the most part. And usually, households have more than one worker working at more than one location.
For that matter, Village Farms also would have had some people commuting to UCD.
What’s with the obsession of “poor local workers” – the very population that seeks housing elsewhere because they get more for their money? (And when we say “local workers”, we’re really referring to non-faculty UCD employees, right? The institution that isn’t increasing the number of staff members in the first place?)
And what’s to become of their “existing” home outside of an expanded Davis? (The new occupants would supposedly be banned from working at UCD?)
It’s almost as if zero thought went into any of this. And yet, it’s the ENTIRE BASIS of the push for growth.
When you state that 17,000 local workers commute into Davis, this is not only incorrect (since they’re working at UCD), but it also completely disregards Davis residents who work elsewhere, themselves (e.g., Sacramento).
Also, does that 17,000 include Davis residents commuting “to” UCD as well? I ask because you’ve previously counted them as “commuters” to a locale (UCD) which is outside of the city, as I recall. (Or perhaps it was just the DISC supporters who claimed that, to justify more jobs in the city.)
The fact is that Davis itself doesn’t have sufficient jobs to support its OWN population. That’s why almost all of them “commute” to UCD or to places like Sacramento (assuming they’re not already retired).
The LAST thing that Davis needs is to increase the “imbalance” regarding an excessive amount of housing compared to “local jobs” that are actually in the city.
“And when we say “local workers”, we’re really referring to non-faculty UCD employees, right?”
The Davis work force:
Employee of private company: Davis: 47.8% (15,047)
(California: 65.1%)
Self-employed in own incorporated business: Davis: 2.5% (789)
(California: 4.2%)
Private not-for-profit wage and salary workers: Davis: 13.6% (4,294)
California: 8.1%
Local government workers: Davis: 6.1% (1,912)
(California: 8.7%)
State government workers: Davis: 26.6% (8,378)
(California: 4.4%)
Federal government workers: Davis: 0.4% (124)
(California: 2.0%)
Self-employed workers in own not incorporated business: Davis: 2.9% (901)
(California: 7.4%)
Unpaid family workers: Davis: 0.1% (29)
(California: 0.2%)
Read more: https://www.city-data.com/work/work-Davis-California.html
Disclaimer: I don’t know where or how city-data derives its stats.
Add those numbers up, and compare it to the working population of Davis and you’ll see why there’s “too much housing” compared to the number of jobs.
And most of those employees are already living in Davis.
For sure, some single, retail nursery worker who doesn’t already live in Davis isn’t going to be able to afford ANY new development. They probably can’t even afford West Sacramento, on their own.
Point being to remove all of the non-career jobs, when you’re talking about local workers – which would include removing all of the jobs occupied by students (who already have housing – and aren’t going to be buying a place at Willowgrove regardless, unless Mom and Dad buys one for them).
Then again, Davis doesn’t need more jobs anyway, since there’s an increasing percentage of retirees.
Honestly, what we have here are solutions searching for a problem.
By the way, when are they going to close down Patwin as promised when Village Farms failed? And can someone like me volunteer for the school closure committee, if the board doesn’t want to take the heat?
RonO, you’ve provided lots of words, but little constructive content in your comment above … providing one more example of the point I made earlier … that both Ron’s have “recorded loops” that they trot out with regularity.
Your Paragraph One is simple math. Well done.
Your Paragraphs Two and Three are opinion and irrelevant to whether applying the mathematical calculation of one out of 12 to 17,000+ commuters would produce a number equal to the number of units Willowgrove has proposed.
Your Paragraph Four asks about obsession. A ratio of one out of 12 … approximately 8% as you correctly point out … is hardly an obsession. It is actually a very modest ratio. Further, UCD may not be adding lots of jobs, but they definitely are not reducing their number of FTEs. So proportion of the 17,000 that are UCD employees is hardly imaginary.
Your Paragraph Five is a straw man. People move from one residence to another with considerable regularity. I personally have lived in 24 different residences in my life. Never once was there any problem getting someone else to move into the first 23, and I’m still living in the 24th, but am sure it will quickly be inhabited whenever I move away from it. The Real Estate resale and Real Estate rental marketplaces are very active … with no shortage of demand.
Your Paragraph Six shows you really didn’t understand (A) the numerical premise of the provided hypothetical scenario, or (B) the meaning of the expression “For Willowgrove, if …”. You are so hung up on your “recorded loop” message that you skipped over reading with any comprehension.
Your Paragraph Seven is pontificating. Both Ron’s are good at that.
Your Paragraph Eight is rhetorical and obtuse. The provenance of the 17,000+ number has often been discussed, and you have even been a part of those discussions. Feigning ignorance is beneath you. You can do better.
Your Paragraph Nine is irrelevant. The 17,000+ number is clearly the inbound number. The outbound number is a good argument for not building more commuter-oriented homes designed for the economically-elite, but that is a different issue.
Your Paragraph Ten is an opinion, and you have every right to your opinion. However, it is an opinion that looks at the whole picture with tunnel vision. Life is a series of tradeoffs. In this case your very valid point has a tradeoff partner of Greenhouse Gas production, as well as the social development impact on the DJUSD students who live in neighborhoods outside the DJUSD district, and as a result have very few or none of their school classmates who they can play with in their home neighborhood.
So feel free to repeat your recorded loops, or listen to others. The choice is yours.
I would acknowledge, however, that if Willowgrove was actually near UCD (or on campus, such as the development behind Davis Commons shopping center), then it actually would house “local” (UCD) workers.
But it’s not – it’s clear on the other side of town. It couldn’t be much farther away, unless it was located in the Southeast part of Davis – where the high-end Warmington houses were built about 20-25 years ago (just north and adjacent to El Macero).
So let’s not kid ourselves at least, regarding who is likely to live at Willowgrove. It would be a combination of households with NO connection to UCD, and some with a PARTIAL connection to UCD (e.g., perhaps one person in the household working at UCD. And UCD is not an employer located in the city in the first place.)
Also, for those who claim they won’t be driving to UCD, see my other comment above (referencing a comment on NextDoor).
Statistics which show that Davis residents bike or walk to campus are likely highly dependent on exactly how far a given neighborhood IS to campus. Just as housing prices are not the same in all neighborhoods in any given city.
What’s your point Matt? Are you for Measure W or against it?
“The Village Farms project caused division in the community and pitted neighbor against neighbor…”
“She later added, ‘We hope that now this issue is behind us, the community can come together again.'”
Not likely. The process we have is the process people want. Amend J? A heavy lift that’s for sure. And it isn’t a bug of this campaign its a feature of a process that demands an election. Who can forget the nastiness of the Ramos property campaign, with lawsuits and recriminations long afterwards, against both Carson and Partida.
This time its attacks on the school board for making clear to the public what was at stake in the election. People whose service to the community should be applauded are now being attacked about a campaign that is over.
I’m ready to move on to the Willow Grove Project, Measure W, on the November Ballot. I’m glad to know that Eileen is on board too.
Ron G.,
While I, and many others support Willowgrove, the School District deserve no applause. Quite the contrary, they overstepped, and mislead the community.
The School District has never involved itself in a land use issue like this before, and it was very apparent that they were doing this primarily because they have gotten over $500,000 from the Village Farms developer John Whitcombe and his partners over the years.
So, please, let’s not try to re-invent history here.
You are assuming motive. And in traditional Measure J style you won but want to keep beating a dead horse while claiming to want to bring the community back together.
David,
As we try to move forward as a community, it seems, as usual, you try to move us backward. Your article thrives on the division and wants to continue it, while the No on Measure V side wants to move forward and to find solutions, rather than harping on differences as you do constantly.
Your articles in the Vanguard are a broken record of “build anything, no matter what the consequences” as if that is a solution. Over the last years, your articles have become more and more anti-environment and anti-democracy on land use issues. As usual, you ae trying to blame the victims (the citizen-based No on Measure V campaign) for the division caused by the Village Farms project, the worse project ever proposed in Davis.
The Yes campaign was pushing a plethora of misinformation and disinformation. We pushed back with the facts, backed up by many professionals with expertise. But now you are trying to blame the opponents of the project for the division. I mean seriously? Maybe the reality is that Village Farms was a terrible project, and that caused the division, not the opponents of the project.
Fortunately, enough people were able to get the information in time to vote “No” to reject this seriously flawed Davis can and needs to have good planning and not accept abominations like Village Farms. The project has serious toxics exposure and flooding potential issues, unsafe access, infrastructure costs, massive traffic at an already heavily impacted area, significant habitat destruction of Channel A and threatened vernal pools with an endangered species, unaffordable housing and a seriously inadequate affordable housing plan which was a scam.
Why do you think Whitcombe got this handicapped 398-acre parcel for only $3.2 million in bankruptcy in the mid-1990’s? It was because the previous developer knew it was a loser of a site to try to develop, so they abandoned it at a huge financial loss. But then after buying it for pennies on the dollar, John Whitcombe and his partners tried to use his connections and influence to push it through with all of its problems, more than once.
You neglected to mention that this project was rejected for the same reasons 20 years ago as Covell Village, yet the same developer (Whitcombe) brought back the essentially the same project with the same problems and impacts and tried to ram it down our community’s throat, again. Did that many any sense? Particularly when a better proposal of a Reduced Footprint project (similar to the “Environmentally Superior” Covell Village alterative) was being urged by citizens from the beginning of the Village Farms process to avoid some of the major serious impacts and City liability. The answer is, no, it did not make any sense. So, it should not be a surprise that the project was rejected again and for the same reasons, and more reasons which were revealed.
The other main reason that the project was rejected because the No on Measure V campaign was able to reveal the plethora of misinformation and disinformation from the Yes on Measure V campaign.
Your negativity is wearisome and it is hard to believe how relentless your “build anything, no matter what the consequences” advocacy has become. The Vanguard has become a broke record of this. By the way, can you share with us the amount of “donations” to the Vanguard that you have gotten from the Tandem properties investors over the last few years?
Also, you also keep bringing up the narrow margin of the election, but I can promise you this much, if the No on Measure V campaign had $786,000 to spend on the campaign like the Yes on Measure V campaign had, that margin would have been substantially wider.
The bottom line is that the Village Farms project was an abysmal project with massive impacts and unaffordable housing. Yet, you continue to complain about it not passing. So, it is clear that you are a “build anything” advocate no matter how detrimental to the environment, no matter how unaffordable the housing and no matter how damaging to good planning.
What our group wanted, and what our community deserves, is good planning, which the City is completely capable of, like the Willowgrove project. However, in the case of Village Farms, we got a disastrous project with impacts, costs, unaffordable housing, and City liability which should have never been placed on the ballot.
So, you can continue with your broken record articles of trying to brainwash people to advocate for crappy planning for Davis and to build anything no may what the damage. But it is not resonating.
The outcome of the Measure V election is not complicated. This was not a majority vote against more housing: it was a rejection of bad planning. The voters rejected Village Farms because they understood it was a terrible project with far too many impacts, costs and unaffordable housing.
I’m going to admit to my initial skepticism regarding the latest attempt to convert farm land to housing at the corner of Pole Line and Covell. I’ve lived here since the Covell Village balloon was floated years ago with a predictable rejection by the will of the Davis voters . So I’ve been to this Rodeo before, and regardless of the Vanguard’s narrow definition of “Democracy “, our city’s progressively written Measure J/R/D is exactly what our Nation’s Founders would celebrate as representative governance. Yet the Davis Vanguard brought us “Measure J-The Illusion of Democracy” (June 28, 2026) Please Mr. Greenwald, it’s the 250’th anniversary of our American Democracy!
When Village Farms was proposed I went to or viewed scoping meetings, developer Pizza Restaurant presentations, Multiple City Council Meetings, a Planning Commission Meeting, Davis Downtown Business Association Meeting, DJUSD School Board Meeting and a Yolano Sierra Club Meeting. I feel I did due diligence, but I remained unconvinced and when allowed, I gave public comment in opposition to the any endorsements or organizational support for Village Farms/Yes on V.
It is clear to me that the City Council ultimately failed our community by not insisting on certification of the “Environmentally Superior Alternative” for Measure V/Village Farms. Instead, the massive VF proposal went to the voters as nearly all local politicians jumped on board to praise and promote it. The problem was all the mascara and makeup in the world couldn’t cover up its significant and dangerous flaws. One only had to scratch the surface to see that. Let’s hope as we move forward with reasonable housing decisions, the adults in the room can be enlisted. Please point me in their direction, I’d like to help.
Matt Williams says: “For Willowgrove, if only one in 12 of those workers chose to inhabit a Willowgrove residence, then close to 100% of the Willowgrove residences would have one or more “local workers” living there.”
Not sure if I totally clarified my response to this absurd claim when Matt brought it up yesterday, but there’s no way that “100%” of households in Willowgrove would have ANY (or even a partial) household connection to UCD.
Maybe start out with something more-realistic, and then examine it from there. Let’s be generous and state that maybe half of the 1,200 households have some connection to UCD over time (the same entity that isn’t increasing the number of staff members).
So that’s 600 households with some connection to UCD.
Of that 600, let’s say that half contain another household member who works somewhere else (e.g., Sacramento). And that many of these people already live closer to the other
Now, we’re done to 300 households with a unique/sole connection to UCD.
Let’s then say that (given its distance to campus – compared to most neighborhoods in Davis), half of these people get on the freeway (via I-80 to Highway 113) in order to drive to campus.
Now, we’re down to 150 households in regard to reducing the total number of trips/miles they drive, compared to wherever they live now (assuming that they currently drive to campus). So, that’s something I guess – congratulations.