DAVIS, Calif. — With Davis voters preparing to decide another major housing proposal in November, supporters of Measure W are arguing that the 1,250-home project offers something previous developments have not: a substantial infusion of housing, nearly half of it affordable or attainable, combined with an approved subdivision map that campaign officials say gives voters unusual certainty about what will actually be built.
Austin Heyworth, spokesperson for the Measure W campaign, acknowledged that the project enters an electorate with a long history of skepticism toward peripheral housing proposals, but said the narrow defeat of Measure V earlier this year showed that Davis voters may be increasingly receptive to adding housing.
“Since J/R/D went into effect, the batting average, if you will, is not great on approving projects like this,” Heyworth said. “(The margin), it’s ranged from large to small.”
Heyworth said the Measure V election, despite ending in defeat for the Village Farms proposal, demonstrated how closely divided Davis has become over housing.
“While we do not want to juxtapose ourselves against Measure V, there’s a lot to be learned from Measure V just from having gone second of just the raw vote count that the community is very close to saying yes to housing,” he said.
Measure W would authorize a 1,250-home development that includes 20% deed-restricted affordable housing and another 23% of homes designed as attainable townhomes, according to Heyworth.
“The 1,250 homes is sort of the right mix where I think there’s a sentiment of it’s not doing too much at once, but it’s also making a significant footprint,” Heyworth said. “This isn’t going to solve the city’s… entire housing issue, but it’s a pretty significant step in the right direction.”
He added, “I mean, that is a number that is going to change a lot of lives very quickly.”
Heyworth said the development could particularly benefit families that want to live in Davis but have been priced out of the community, drawing on his own experience after leaving UC Davis.
“When I first left Davis, I was, in ambition, to buy [a] really cheap, affordable home,” Heyworth said. “I ended up buying in West Sac because Davis wasn’t really that reachable.”
He said he would have preferred to remain in Davis and commute to Sacramento.
“I would’ve loved even when I started working in the capital to commute from Davis because that’s where I’d love to raise my kids,” Heyworth said.
The project’s housing mix, he argued, is designed to create opportunities across different income levels rather than relying exclusively on market-rate single-family homes.
“The 20% deed restricted, affordable, 23% attainable town homes, it makes a mix of about 43%, damn near half the development is going to be affordable by any sort of relative standard in the Sacramento region,” Heyworth said.
“We should be really proud of that,” he added. “It’s also going to have a mix of some smaller lots for single-family homes, and that mix really does make a community.”
Housing affordability has become an increasingly prominent issue in Davis, where Heyworth noted that the median home price approaches $1 million.
“You look at the median house price in Davis, it’s near a million dollars,” he said. “For a young graduate, a teacher, a nurse, someone sort of servicing the university, that’s really not attainable.”
Heyworth said the project anticipates some homes in the $400,000 to $500,000 range and some attainable townhomes in the $700,000 to $800,000 range, although actual prices would depend on market conditions when the homes are built.
“That makes it a lot more realistic that someone can actually start a family here earlier in their career and doesn’t have to live with that uncertainty of being so strapped with the mortgage payment that it really encroaches on the rest of your life,” he said.
Heyworth noted that the campaign views Measure W not as a complete answer to Davis’ housing shortage, but as a significant contribution.
“This project, again, like I said, is not going to solve it all in one fell swoop, but it’s a significant step in the right direction,” he said.
A major distinction the campaign is highlighting is the project’s approved subdivision map, which Heyworth said provides voters with significantly more certainty about the development they are being asked to approve.
“This approved subdivision map is the first of its kind in Davis where we’re bound to that legally,” he said. “What we’re showing and what is on that subdivision map in these renderings is what the community’s going to get.”
Heyworth said the development team invested significant resources before the election to obtain those approvals rather than seeking voter authorization first and resolving major project details afterward.
“Big engineering investment and a lot of time and money spent on the front end to get this approved prior to a vote,” he said. “So this project is shovel ready.”
That could allow construction to begin rapidly if voters approve Measure W in November.
“With this approved subdivision map, we have those approvals in place where if this is approved in November, we can break ground in January 2027,” Heyworth said.
He said the development could begin opening homes in 2028, though he cautioned against treating that timeline as a guarantee.
The affordable portion would also begin early in construction, according to Heyworth.
“The commitment that we’re bound to legally as well is that in phase one, the affordable component of the development is built first,” he said. “So that is a real commitment.”
The project already has an affordable housing builder involved, he said.
“That’s the promise to the city is what you see is what you’re going to get,” Heyworth said. “You get to share this vision before you’re asked to make a vote on it without any of the historic sort of uncertainty of, well, what is this actually going to translate to and when?”
Traffic is likely to remain one of the campaign’s biggest challenges.
Results from the Measure V election showed particularly strong opposition in neighborhoods closest to the proposed Village Farms development, reinforcing the difficulty peripheral projects can face among residents concerned about nearby traffic impacts.
Heyworth said Measure W includes $11 million in developer-funded traffic improvements.
“Part of the baseline features and the commitments that are bound to the approval itself is $11 million in traffic improvements that are totally developer funded, signal coordination,” he said.
The project also includes a grade-separated crossing beneath Covell Boulevard intended to improve bicycle and pedestrian access.
“There’s going to be a subgrade crossing underneath Covell to get over to the school area,” Heyworth said. “And so it’s actually going to very naturally pull away from car trips altogether by making that a more bikeable realistic path for school-aged children and the families that are going to live there.”
Heyworth also argued that the broader traffic discussion needs to account for workers who currently commute into Davis because they cannot afford to live in the city.
“You zoom out from a regional perspective by housing more people that are commuting to Davis every day here, it is going to have a net beneficial effect on traffic,” he said.
He said the project’s environmental analysis similarly found that adding housing could reduce regional vehicle miles traveled because some people who currently commute from communities such as Woodland and Sacramento could instead live in Davis.
Traffic concerns cannot simply be dismissed, Heyworth acknowledged.
“Voter research that we’ve done is that is a big issue that is a sticking point for many people,” he said. “And you don’t address that by ignoring it.”
“We’ve got a solution,” Heyworth added. “We’ve got a solution bound to the actual project development itself.”
The campaign also plans to make the case that additional housing could help DJUSD, which has confronted declining enrollment and accompanying financial concerns.
Heyworth cautioned against portraying one housing development as a complete solution to the school district’s problems.
“You can’t overuse the school element here because framing a housing development as the entire solution to that is going to lead to a lot of skeptics,” he said.
But he said housing remains part of the equation.
“We got a great school [district] here, but we’re in a really precarious financial situation,” Heyworth said. “Losing seats is something that we need to take a serious look at, but housing is part of that solution.”
Heyworth said the campaign intends to have parents, students and school leaders make that argument rather than treating declining enrollment simply as another campaign talking point.
“The quality of our schools, the future of our schools is something that is very near and dear to the hearts of many, many families and not something to be used flippantly or sort of in a token way in a campaign,” he said.
Measure W also comes as California increasingly pressures cities to accommodate more housing, particularly communities that have failed to keep pace with regional housing obligations.
Heyworth said the campaign does not intend to use the threat of state intervention as its primary argument, but acknowledged that the broader political and legal environment surrounding housing has changed.
“You look at what’s happening in other communities that have been slow to address housing,” he said. “The notion of state mandates and a push to sort of take this sort of local choice away is very real.”
Heyworth said the campaign instead wants voters to view Measure W as an opportunity for Davis to determine how it grows and to approve a project shaped through local review.
“This really was a product of a lot of rigorous community input in which the development team said yes to almost everything and did it with joy,” he said.
He pointed to regional parks, sports facilities, an urban forest and trails among the community benefits incorporated into the proposal.
“It is a very, very Davis project,” Heyworth said.
Ultimately, he said, the campaign believes the question extends beyond the details of a single subdivision and touches on whether Davis will make room for additional residents in a city where housing costs have placed homeownership beyond the reach of many workers and younger families.
“Every year, every election cycle that we miss opportunities like that, the more difficult it is to get back to baseline out of this hole,” Heyworth said.
As a UC Davis graduate, Heyworth said he wants the community to remain accessible to future generations rather than becoming increasingly difficult for younger residents and families to enter.
“When I come back and I bring my kids back as an alumni, I want to feel that Davis has grown,” he said. “I want to feel like it’s a big college and I want the downtown area to be thriving.”
That, he said, is “made more possible by more people being able to open a door here.”
“It’s a hope that Davis can say yes to housing on its terms in a project that really has its fingerprints all over it in a way that it does set a standard for the next development of look at all we were able to get committed to that aligns with our values here,” Heyworth said. “There’s a lot of reasons to say yes to this project despite the political history around housing.”
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