By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – On the consent agenda for Tuesday the city council will receive the 2022 annual Housing Element Progress Report. The portrait it paints demonstrates the city’s overall housing problem.
City staff notes that this is the 15th annual residential development status report. The original intent was to provide a check-in with the council to ensure consistency with the one percent growth resolution. However, with the passage of SB 330, the one percent growth cap requirement has been suspended until 2030.
According to staff, the growth cap equals approximately 260 “base” units per year, but does not include, “exempted units” including affordable housing, accessory dwelling units, and units in mixed use buildings.
The 2021-2029 Housing Element was adopted by Council but not certified by HCD. The city will have to revise the current Housing Element and resubmit it for the city to be in 
compliance with state housing law.
Staff notes: “The RHNA establishes the amount of housing units that the City is required to
provide adequately zoned land to meet the regional projections for housing needs for
the 8-year period from 2021 through 2029.”
For this period, RHNA calls for 2075 housing units including 290 of extremely low, 290 of very low, 350 of low, 340 of moderate and 805 of above moderate.
In 2022, there were just 23 building permits issued which included 6 single family homes, and 17 ADUs.
All units were recorded in the moderate income category, and all ADUs were unrestricted.
Compared to 2021, housing production in Davis “decreased dramatically from 340 units in 2021 to just 23 in 2022.”
According to staff, “This decrease is likely due to a combination of the higher financial rates, regional construction labor shortages and increases in the cost of building materials. There were no new apartment complexes started and only 6 new single family homes.”
The chart shows the number of building permits issued per year. Over the 14 years covered in the data, only four times has the city reached the 260 unit threshold for one percent growth, but six times, it did not even break one hundred.
Broken out by type, one can grasp a clearer picture of the city’s housing crisis.
From 2009 through 2022, there were just 2208 units built. That comes to roughly 157.7 units per year. That’s around a 0.6 percent growth rate annually over that 14 year period.
But drilling down further paints a fuller picture. Just 702 of the units or 32 percent are single family either detached or attached units. Another 155 are multi-family ownership, while more than half are multi-family rental—much of that student housing.
In a discussion with DJUSD last month, the school district and city noted the lack of new single-family homes which has led to a decline in enrollment.
While student housing remains a concern—the city has approved a number of projects in the last eight years—several including Sterling, Davis Live, and Ryder have come on line. However, Nishi remains to break ground and represents more than 2000 beds.
In January, many students came forward during the city council meeting to complain that they were forced to camp outside rental offices in frigid temperatures attempting to secure a spot for next year.
On the other hand, the data shows an even more concerning trend with respect to single-family housing—the lifeblood for families and school age children.
With just 700 building permits of single-family housing approved over the last 14 years, that comes to about 50 per year. That represents a 0.19 percent annual growth rate.
According to the chart above, the city has fallen short on ownership units either single family detached or attached, or condos. The city projects between 40 and 60 percent of units to be single family whereas the actual number was 32 percent. It also fell short on multi-family ownership units at just 7 percent where as the target is 10 to 25 percent.
Finally, the city made up for much of this shortfall with multi-family rentals which accounted for 61 percent of all housing units (this includes ADUs, but the actual number of ADUs is relatively small with just 158 units).
The data here bare out the concern by the school board and city in March—there simply have not been enough single-family units build in the last decade and a half—and I suspect the same would show up if we went back to the start of Measure J in 2000.
“…there simply have not been enough single-family units build in the last decade and a half—and I suspect the same would show up if we went back to the start of Measure J in 2000.”
Is that the same measure J you have supported all these years?
Think about the implications of this comment for a moment.
What the school district is stating is that there needs to be an ever-increasing supply of new single-family housing units to avoid downsizing.
And people actually take this comment seriously as a justification to increase the supply.
There’s your problem in Davis. There really is no way to discuss this in a logical manner, with beliefs like that.
An important aspect of the Davis rental market is that many SF and duplexes are rented to students, and the addition of MF apartments should divert a significant portion of this market segment. That should then increase available SF/duplex housing for working families. It will be interesting to see if this market evolution occurs, but that probably depends on whether the overall housing demand is met in total.