In a comment yesterday, former Councilmember Michael Harrington laid the blame of the lack of the balanced budget on the current council, when he turned around and alleged that “all five CC members are pandering to the developers.”
He writes that “the CC is going to ram Nishi and Ramosville (reference to MRIC developer Dan Ramos) down the public’s throats, and make us spend thousands of hours of volunteer time to oppose them.”
However, what Michael Harrington appears to be missing is that, while revenue is a consideration for Nishi, the biggest driver there might be the need for student housing.
As Eileen Samitz put it at the Vanguard Growth Discussion, just as she did in a December column, “UCD’s negligence in providing this on-campus student housing is a main driver of any housing demand that exists in Davis. It is gross negligence, and simply unfair to the UCD students, that the university is not providing them with long-term, affordable, on-campus student housing.”
It seems that the problem of student housing is recognized by most as the driving force behind the broader housing crisis. While there may be emerging consensus on the cause of the problem, the solution is more elusive.
Bob Segar from the university reiterated two weeks ago what he told the council last fall, that while the university is looking at ways to develop more housing on campus, they cannot provide enough housing to accommodate all new students. Some of the areas where the university might look at new housing are likely to clash with existing residents.
Julia Ann Easley, in a January publication on the UC Davis site, wrote that “the campus is marshaling its efforts and resources to accommodate 2016-17 enrollment growth of 1,100 new undergraduates beyond last fall’s entering class.”
Driving this train are targets set by UC President Janet Napolitano “to increase systemwide enrollment of new California undergraduates by 10,000 over the next three years, including 5,000 freshmen and transfer students in 2016-17.” Moreover, last year “the Legislature allocated an additional $25 million to UC to increase the number of in-state undergraduates by 5,000 no later than 2016-17.”
“We are committed to serving California,” UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi said. “We will do all that we can to help the University of California meet this ambitious goal.”
Writes Ms. Easley, “For 2016-17, the UC Office of the President is asking Davis to enroll about 1,000 California residents, or 14.7 percent, beyond the 6,741 enrolled in fall 2015.”
She continues, “At the same time, the campus will continue to implement its 2020 Initiative, a long-range plan to grow the size of the undergraduate student body. That includes plans to enroll an additional 135 new undergraduates with national or international status, for a total of 1,750 new national and international students in 2016-17.”
The whopping total here: “The total estimated growth in new undergraduates — resident and nonresident — would be about 1,100, or 13.5 percent over fall 2015, for a total of about 9,500 new undergraduates.”
The problem is clear. The university has already acknowledged that it cannot or will not accommodate all new students with on-campus housing options.
The solution is not clear at all, and different people take a different view.
As we have noted, for Eileen Samitz, one answer is to pressure the university into accommodating additional growth. She wrote in December, “UCD owns more than 5,000 acres, so there is no excuse why it has not provided the student-only housing it has promised.”
Ms. Samitz recognizes the consequence of the current situation, writing that “a large, disproportionate amount of housing in the city is being occupied by students, and our city housing supply is increasingly not available for non-students.”
Don Shor, in an email to council yesterday, wrote, “It is time for the city leaders to urgently meet with university officials to develop plans for housing this additional enrollment on campus. It is time for city leaders to protest the adverse impact of double-digit enrollment growth, and, if necessary, take legal or statutory actions to forestall the adverse impact on the Davis housing market.”
Short-term solutions are non-existent.
In the longer term, there are several potential student housing projects, but each one faces hurdles.
Voters will decide in June whether Nishi can go forward. While Nishi proposes about 650 units and perhaps up to 1500 beds, the project still faces a perilous Measure R vote in June and, even if approved, might not be ready to accommodate student housing until 2020 or 2021.
There is also the proposed Sterling Apartments on Fifth Street that may also be able to accommodate 1500 students. But it faces considerable opposition, particularly from Rancho Yolo residents like Don Sherman who noted that the 244-unit building will have over 800 bedrooms, and each of those bedrooms could house two students each.
In the Vanguard version of his communication he asks, “Regardless of how you might feel about a housing project with 1,500 students, one thing upon which we can all agree is that this is a quality-of-life issue for at least two generations of our citizens. Is it unreasonable to ask, ‘Can we take just a little time to consider the consequences?’”
In the Enterprise today he writes of “the absurdity of the out-of-place Sterling apartments on Fifth Street: offensive, excessive and unneeded.”
Finally, there is the more modest Lincoln 40 proposal on East Olive Drive that could accommodate about 130 new apartments, which again could house perhaps 400 new students.
None of these are sure things, none of them are immediate fixes.
Discussions about mini-dorms has become an increasing theme in planning and land use battles in the interior. Homes that are intentionally designed at five or six bedrooms and six bathrooms are coming under increased scrutiny. But at the same time, more and more homes are being converted from single-family to multi-student use.
For students, packing them in at 10 for a five-bedroom house is a way to reduce costs of rent. But for the neighbors it means parking issues and noise.
Many are concerned that the student housing crisis is forcing families with children out of Davis. The town is increasingly becoming bifurcated between those who are students and those who are in their 50s and moving towards retirement – or in the 60s and beyond and already there.
With the Davis periphery is relatively locked down due to Measure R restrictions and vote requirements, this fight is increasingly between students and existing neighbors over infill sites.
So, where is the short-term answer here? The university is clearly driving this housing crisis. In a way, it is not UC Davis, but rather UC Davis responding to demands from the regents and the legislature, but nevertheless, the situation is coming to a head.
But this is clearly the crisis that we are facing now in this city, and we need to look to the council elections as a starting place to begin addressing it.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“With the Davis periphery relatively locked down due to Measure R restrictions and vote requirements, this fight is increasingly between students and existing neighbors over infill sites.”
The answer is to get rid of Measure R and open up the periphery to development releaving the constant conflicts that come from continued densification.
As for Don Shor’s letter what does he hope to gain from the city suing UC. Katehi crystallized the issue when she said “We are committed to serving California.” Note she didn’t say housing California.
For a generation Davis has been trying to be a rock in the river of that mission and is now suffering the consequences of its misguided adventure in small is beautiful visioning. The joke is that the people of Davis never realized they were the tail wagging the dog and now the dog is waging its tail. Being the host community for UCD has benefits and consequences that this community has been in denial over for too long.We accept the benefits but refuse to address the consequences. As a result of our refusal to allow peripheral growth and relying solely on increased density we are making the consequences of the growth of UC worse for the local residents than a more balanced approach would have done.
“The answer is to get rid of Measure R and open up the periphery to development releaving the constant conflicts that come from continued densification.”
You’re criticizing Don, but your suggestion is at least as much of a non-starter as you seem to deem his to be.
Maybe, but I’m also wondering what he is hoping to accomplish by asking the city to sue the university?
Measure R will come up for renewal and when it does I hope it faces serious opposition. Last time there wasn’t any organized opposition and we now have much more experience with the unintended consequences of having a growth line.
As for criticizing Don he has consistently opposed peripheral growth yet that is exactly what UC will do. It will build on the periphery on class one soils like at West Village with the difference being that the city will capture none of the tax revenue from the development. The argument that UC building will free up housing in the city would only be true if you could drop the housing from some drone but the reality is that it will take a long time and the pressure would be reduced faster if everyone pitched in because we are so far behind the curve.
No, I prefer that we (and UC, for that matter) not develop on prime agricultural soil. I currently support two proposals for peripheral annexation, and I am/was in support of the proposal for development near the hospital.
The university certainly needs to build more housing, a lot more, and do it fast. But we also need to build apartment housing in the city limits where possible, and may need to annex land to do so at some point in the near future.
Okay but when people talk about the land UCD owns they are talking about class I soils anyway so what difference does it make?
Not all of it, and many of the sites they could build on are not used or usable for ag.
Like West Village? The University was built upon some of the best farmland in the world. When the University expands, it does so onto farmland, just like with the City.
As noted before, the sites they could move on reasonably quickly (by UC standards, anyway) are along Russell, and finalizing the redevelopment of Solano Park and Orchard Park. Neither of those have been used for farming for quite awhile. They might as well finish their plans for West Village as well. But they really don’t need to expand their developed footprint to provide more housing.
Copy of letter to the City Council:
https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/campus-prepares-large-influx-students-2016-17
Excerpts:
“For 2016-17, the UC Office of the President is asking Davis to enroll about 1,000 California residents, or 14.7 percent, beyond the 6,741 enrolled in fall 2015.”
“The total estimated growth in new undergraduates — resident and nonresident — would be about 1,100, or 13.5 percent over fall 2015, for a total of about 9,500 new undergraduates.”
“Emily Galindo, executive director of Student Housing and associate vice chancellor for Student Affairs, said the housing office is taking a number of steps to accommodate 300 more students in the residence halls (for a total capacity of 5,672), and elsewhere in the community.
Triples — In a move that proved popular in previous years, more rooms in newer residence halls will be converted to accommodate three students.
Master leases — For transfer students, the campus is also in discussions with property managers to master-lease more apartment units in the community.”
It is time for the city leaders to urgently meet with university officials to develop plans for housing this additional enrollment on campus. It is time for city leaders to protest the adverse impact of double-digit enrollment growth, and, if necessary, take legal or statutory actions to forestall the adverse impact on the Davis housing market.
In particular, the “master leases” need to be banned. We have Davis residents whose leases are being cancelled so that the apartment owners can contract with UCD. This seems to be a direct form of housing discrimination.
Are leases being cancelled or not renewed? Non-renewal, while you may feel it is mean spirited, is the reason leases expire so that either party may do something different at a fixed date in the future with regards to the current agreement in regards to the property. How does non-renewal equate to discrimination?
Are you suggesting that UC not enroll the students that the citizens of California have demanded?
There’s no evidence that the “citizens of California” have demanded anything. The state UC system is mandating this enrollment growth.
Non-renewal for the purpose of discriminating against non-students is what I wish the council to address. The university has the right to discriminate in housing they own or that they develop on their own land. I don’t think it’s right for them to foster discrimination in privately-owned housing via contracts with apartment owners.
Unfortunately, this announcement of 1100 student increase for 2016-17 is on top of the Chancellor’s 2020 Initiative, which was to be about 5000 student enrollment increase by the year 2020. They are exceeding that goal already. So the university, in less than ten years, is adding something like 7,000 people to the Davis population. With a city population of 65,000 in 2010, a population increase in excess of 10% without any increase in housing stock has the obvious impact of grossly distorting the local housing market. And to do it by fiat without any consultation or cooperative planning simply makes it all worse.
If they’re adding another 1100 students next year, they need to house all of them on campus. But they’re going to house 300 of them. There does come a point where the city council needs to look at all available options for mitigating the harm to Davis residents, particularly renters who don’t happen to be UC students, to reduce this harm.
Honestly Don, you don’t know about this? For starters the Governor put $25 million in the budget to increase instate enrollment. Second there has been a huge backlash from UC funding its budget shortfall by increasing full fare out of state and international students and the instate increases are the response.
Here is the lead from one article:
“A backlash by California parents has the University of California reconsidering its recently discovered cash cow: out-of-state and out-of-country students.”
Here is the link:
http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2014/10/22/uc-considers-limiting-out-of-state-students.html
I did a search of “UC out of state backlash” try it and come up to speed.
I am aware of the criticisms of the increased out of state enrollment. I do not believe that translates into public clamoring for massive increase in in-state enrollment. I believe that is simply UC administration’s response. Moreover, again, I think UC Davis has already done more than its part.
Misanthrop – The way I see it, the UC system is bloated from the decades of easy state money. As that money stopped flowing as well, instead of working to cut the fat, the UCD fat cats instead started thinking of ways to keep feeding their beast. Hence the strategy to increase out of state enrollment since the parents of those little darlings pay a premium. Don is correct that there is no outside demand to increase UC enrollment. However, there is outside demand to decrease the expense and increase access to a UC education. And housing costs certainly play a big part of the expense for college. It is the largest expense for most UC and CSU students in CA depending on where they live.
The outside political mandate is for the UC system to hold tuition levels and to increase enrollment of CA students. There are two ways for them to do this. One is to work on reducing their bloated costs. But as we see throughout the public sector industry, nobody does that… unfortunately. The other is to find ways to increase revenue. Hence the strategy to increase enrollment of out of state students. More money for the hungry beast.
Don is correct that this isn’t something the residents of CA are asking for. It is all UCD’s strategy. And for them to execute this strategy without including the housing component certainly opens them up for criticism.
i guess you haven’t been paying attention. The entire reason UC is increasing enrollment over the next two years is in response to demands by the citizens of California for UC to increase in state enrollment. Both the legislature and the executive have supported the plan.
And what form have those “demands by the citizens of California” taken? Rallies? Petitions? Letters to the editor? Please, some evidence that California residents are demanding that UC increase enrollment.
More to the point, the Chancellor’s 2020 Initiative more than meets any “demand” for increased enrollment, and is already causing significant problems locally.
If you have evidence that UC Davis is not meeting its share of the 9-campus UC system’s enrollment increase, please share that as well. It would be an interesting data point. But it wouldn’t negate the underlying problem. If UC Davis is to increase its population, UCD needs to mitigate its share of the housing crisis that creates. The LRDP doesn’t even begin to address this.
Pending legislation
It has been stated here that a ‘healthy’ rental market has about a 3-5% vacancy rate. When was the last time that Davis had a vacancy rate that was anything close to that level? The housing shortage in Davis is a long-standing problem, one that predates the University’s drive to increase enrollment. Blaming the University for what is the City’s problem is just a waste of time. Suing the Univerisity for what is the City’s problem is short-sighted, a waste of money as well as time, and will destroy any lingering feelings of cooperation between the two entities. We have no control over what the University does, but we do have control over how we respond. This is a Davis problem and requires a Davis-based solution. Build more high-density, multi-family housing, do it now (and again tomorrow), and stop whining about the University. Davis would be nothing more than a wide spot in the road (if that) without the University.
‘
In a town that hosts a major university, housing is a shared responsibility.
The City has already provided its share
They stopped building rental housing locally here about 20 years ago.
The City stopped building everything about 20 years ago
Don wrote:
> They stopped building rental housing locally here about 20 years ago.
Except for:
Avalon Apartments 44U 18 yrs ago
Adobe at Evergreen 120U 15 yrs ago
Allegre Apartments 153U 15 yrs ago
Becerra Plaza 21U 16 yrs ago
Parkview Place 4U 2 yrs ago
Tremont Green 36U 12 yrs ago
DaVinci Apartments 51U 11 yrs ago
Cesar Chavez Plaza 53U 7 yrs ago
Eleanor Roosevelt Circle 9 yrs ago
Glacier Point 98U 19 yrs ago
The Lexington Apartments 122U 13 yrs ago
Alhambra Apartments 160U 17 yrs ago
McCormick Building @ 4th & F
Moore Village 58U 16 yrs ago
New Harmony 69U 3 years ago
Oakshade Apartments 42U ~15 yrs ago
Pacifico (soon to be Symphony) 112U 16 yrs ago (city owned and sitting half empty for almost 10 years)
Seville at Mace Ranch 84U 17 yrs ago
Seville at Mace Ranch 70U 16 yrs ago
Twin Pines 36U 18 yrs ago
The U/University Village 132U 13 yrs ago
You seem to be conflating a lot of different types of rentals – a lot of these are “Affordable” (big A), some senior, regardless of the specific timeline, the city stopped expanding its pool of housing probably around the time it stopped building on the periphery.
SoD:
Thanks. I had no idea that there had been so much growth in the rental sector.
“the city stopped expanding its pool of housing probably around the time it stopped building on the periphery” TP
The SoD data demonstrates that this is not a true statement.
I know that there are a lot more in the past 20 yrs that I have forgot, but I just thought of the place (with ground floor retail) at the corner of 5th & G that opened ~7 years ago, the new big senior place on 5th and the new lofts (currently under construction) on 5th (just east of the senior place) Pyramid Lofts built ~15 yrs ago (see link below) and the brand new apartments built behind the little cottages on 8th between B & F…
https://localwiki.org/davis/The_Lofts
Absolutely it is a shared responsibility, but it does us no good to sit back and wait for the University to act. The only people who benefit from that approach are the ones who do not want any new developments (or people) in town. What you are now advocating will make the crisis worse, not better.
We need to stop worrying about what the University is ‘doing’, ‘going to do’, ‘needs to do’ or ‘should do,’ and get to work addressing the needs of our own residents. If we want more apartments in town, build them. If we want affordable housing in town, build it. If we want to reduce the number of ‘mini-dorms’ in town freeing up homes for young families, build more apartments and change the City’s regulations to make owning a ‘mini-dorm’ much more expensive. There are many steps that we can, and should, make that do not require the University’s involvement at all. Waiting and complaining about the Univeristy not doing their part just makes the problem worse.
Obviously I have never proposed doing the things you are asserting (‘waiting and complaining’ etc.), since I support the construction of housing at Nishi and Sterling.
So you are not the same Don Shor quoted above calling on the City to take legal action against the University?
My mistake…
Yes, your mistake.
“take legal or statutory actions to forestall the adverse impact on the Davis housing market. In particular, the “master leases” need to be banned.”
My particular focus is on the master leases. Suing the university directly over their enrollment plans would probably be quixotic at best, and wouldn’t achieve anything. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think the city would have any basis for such a lawsuit. But excluding particular types of tenants from privately-owned rental housing is problematic and should be addressed.
Residential development is a drain on city finances, over time. By dragging its feet on this issue, UC Davis is transferring the cost of housing students to the city. (Financial costs, impacts on infrastructure, water, etc.) Perhaps this is the real reason that UC Davis is playing “chicken”, with the city.
Maybe, but not building housing could be even more of drain on city finances over time. UC Davis adding students on campus could mean that the city gets the worst of both worlds – traffic congestion and drain on services without getting the benefits of development in terms of fees and taxes.
Housing on campus has neither impact
You might be able to make that claim if the students never set foot off-campus and their children did not attend local schools or use the local parks and other City services. Imagine, no more ‘slosh ball’ games at Slide Hill or drunken students downtown. In truth, your argument of ‘neither impact’ is a complete fallacy. Housing on campus will drain City services, but will bring in no additional tax revenue to pay for them. It is a net negative fiscal impact on the City.
The university provides all infrastructure and services for their on-campus population, discourages car ownership, and the number of children are, unfortunately, minimal (kids are a very good thing for Davis because we’re relying on inter-district transfers to help keep our schools open). When on-campus residents come into the city to spend money and participate as part of the fabric of the community, that is also a good thing. In contrast, housing students in the city is a huge drain on city resources on many levels.
CalAg, when one looks at the major categories of City General Fund expenses,
City Attorney
City Council
City Manager’s Office
Administrative Services
Community Dev. & Sustainability
Community Services
Parks & Open Space Management
Fire
Police
Public Works
Whenever UCD students living on campus leave the campus to avail themselves of life amenities that exist inside the City Limits (restaurants, cafe’s, coffee shops, book stores, clothing stores, bicycle shops, Davis Ace, Target, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods just to name a few) they are no longer a zero burden on the City fiscally. For example,
— the costs of the police investigation of the Ket-Mo-Ree murder has a substantial proportion driven by on-campus UCD students availing themselves of bar/nightclub and illicit drugs supply/demand. That has taken City Attorney time, City Council time, City Manager time, and Police time.
— Students and their parents and guests drive on the streets, increasing traffic congestion and adding to wear and tear and maintenance of the streets.
“… has a substantial proportion driven by on-campus UCD students availing themselves …” MW
Now you appear to be just making up “evidence.”
What proportion of the patrons were students? What proportion were students living on-campus? What is your definition of “substantial?” Unless you have specific data from the police investigation, I call b******t. The large majority of the on-campus students are freshmen BTW.
And what about those pesky students and their families using our city without paying. They act like they have some kind of special entitlement. The same goes for those freeloaders from El Macero and Willowbank.
Now you are just fighting for the sake of fighting.
Are you saying that on-campus students don’t eat and drink at Crepeville, or Burgers and Brew, or drink coffee at 3rd and U Cafe or Mishka’s or Delta of Venus or Cloud Forest? Are you saying that the G Street night scene doesn’t turn a blind eye to hundreds of fake IDed Freshmen each night? Are you saying that the recreational drug dealers who come to Davis from (for example) Vacaville don’t sell their supply to freshman. Money talks, nobody walks.
Further, the difference with respect to El Macero and Willowbank and Patwin residents is that they pay property taxes that all go into the massive revenues and costs sharing morass that exists between the County and the City. You may not like the split that exists in those situations, but by comparison to the $0.00 that the on-campus students pay, the amount paid by those unincorporated neighborhoods is “substantial.”
JMHO
Ron said . . . “Residential development is a drain on city finances, over time.”
Ron’s statement is only true because the City Council and City management have failed to pay any meaningful attention to containing the inflation of its costs. One go no further than when one employee group was given a 36% pay raise and another employee group an 18% pay raise.
Cost Containment as an Element of Fiscal Resilience
1a. Undertake a full staffing analysis to determine match between service delivery needs and staffing.
1b. FBC discussions have not only embraced a staffing analysis (building on John Meyer’s study last year), but we have also discussed the belief that a thorough Business Process Re-engineering engagement is necessary as well. Staffing poorly designed, inefficient, ineffective service delivery processes makes no sense. Einstein said it perfectly, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
2. Based on 1, consider best ways to provide services going forward with focus on (a) training workers to take on multiple tasks (as is happening already) and (b) consideration of targeted and appropriate outsourcing of services.
3. Examine all means to further reduce growth in compensation costs including analysis of OPEB options (as other CA cities are doing).
4. Create more transparent and accessible accounting systems that enable a more precise estimation of costs of specific services—building on work done by the Fee Study consultants.
5. Promote a more aggressive analysis with the County and other cities, via LAFCo, of shared bidding, service, and consulting options to reduce duplication and obtain scale efficiencies.
6. Determine what current city programs might be candidates for reduction or elimination and which we want/must keep.
7. Determine what current city infrastructure we could/should shed (buildings, properties) to reduce expenditures related to them.
Though not a cost containment item, we should also receive an analysis of all non-enterprise fund balances to determine if/how we can use these funds to meet current needs.
“The university is clearly driving this housing crisis.”
It’s nice to see the Vanguard has finally figured this out. The next steps in the path to enlightenment are (1) understanding that the City cannot realistically build its way out of this problem, and (2) recognizing that the blame falls squarely on UCD.
In a town that hosts a major university, housing is a shared responsibility.
The City has already provided its share
They stopped building rental housing locally here about 20 years ago.
The City stopped building everything about 20 years ago
CalAg said . . . “The City has already provided its share”
Here’s a question for the purposes of discussion. How was/is “The City’s share” determined?
1. The university’s systemwide goal of a 60/40 share.
2. UCD’s written commitments.
MW: That would need to be established via a negotiation between UCD and the City (with public transparency). Right now our share is being driven by fiat from the Chancellor … and it is patently unfair to the community. Two points:
(1) We are already devoting an unreasonable fraction of our housing stock to students. If we want that to go higher, then we need to grow the pie.
(2) The decline of the 25-55 demographic is a very serious problem, and we need to focus hard on restoring this segment of the community with both jobs and housing. The current focus on off-campus student housing is just making this bigger problem worse.
I understand your logic CalAg, and have no fault with your assessment of the facts on the ground. The key word in your statement is “patently.” That appears to be a subjective moral judgment on your part. Moral judgments are not universal, and rarely objective.
I personally also have that same judgment, but I realize that history has shown that neither the Governor nor the California Legislature nor the UC Board of Regents nor the UC Office of the President nor the other 8 UC campuses have shown any inclination (much less taken any action) to support the judgment that you and I share. The most recent reinforcement of that sad reality is that the California Legislature couldn’t even get a “reduce the Constitutional authority of UC” bill out of Committee, much less get it passed.
Both UC and the city are driving this crisis. Perhaps we will soon find out what happens when an immovable object collides with an unstoppable force.
UC Davis driving the development of Davis since 1908. Nothing new here except that the city went off the rails on accommodating that growth over the last few decades.
I reiterate point (1) – the City cannot realistically build its way out of this problem.
We already have more rental housing than non-rental housing. Should we go to 60 percent? How about 70 percent? Maybe 80 percent will fix the problem.
At some point we start looking like Isla Vista with a bunch of seniors, and the collapse of the 25-55 demographic becomes a vicious cycle (if it hasn’t already).
We needed about 8 – 10,000 beds total before the new enrollment announcement. I’d settle for a 4:1 split between UC and city. That might get the apartment vacancy rate back to 1.5 – 2%, especially if UC also absorbs most of their new increase proposal. They need to build dorms ASAP.
Davis has no shared responsibility for provide housing to mitigate enrollment increases that were implemented without joint-planning with the city
The university made housing commitments that they have failed to honor. Eileen Samitz has the details and will hopefully provide them. But basically, you’ve just shrugged it off. “Not our problem.”
It’s a huge problem … just one we can’t solve – like the daily traffic jam on I-80
“The next steps in the path to enlightenment are (1) understanding that the City cannot realistically build its way out of this problem, and (2) recognizing that the blame falls squarely on UCD.”
It seems like the Vanguard has done most of that.
Not even close
So the blame for the City’s housing shortage is entirely the University’s because it refuses to build more student housing? Have I got that right CalAg?
How is that different than proclaiming that the City’s housing shortage is due to Woodland, Dixon and West Sacramento refusing to build enough housing for University employees? Oh wait, maybe it is Sacramento’s fault for failing to build enough housing for all the State Employees currently living in Davis. Then again, maybe it is the fault of the Federal Government for not building enough housing for the University and State employees whose jobs are funded through Federal Grants. See, the City’s housing crisis is entirely Obama’s fault (Frankly was right!).
Davis has a housing crisis because Davis refuses to build enough housing. The fact that the University has a similar problem is beside the point. How about we try solving the problem rather than wasting time trying to assign blame.
“So the blame for the City’s housing shortage is entirely the University’s because it refuses to build more student housing? Have I got that right CalAg?
Nope. Lot’s of factors contribute to the overall housing shortage in Davis. The student housing crisis is entirely the University’s fault.
No, this is between some developers and some existing neighbors.
Yes. And this will never happen. Measure R is the “landowner land value protection act”. Most people’s primary holding of personal wealth is their house, and most voter are land owners. As a whole, Davis is not going to ever vote for a Measure R with housing (I’m hoping Nishi is an exception with perception of housing being mostly student, along with business park), much less tank Measure R.
It doesn’t . . . although some soils are more equal than others.
I don’t think they’ll be farming along Russell Blvd. near Anderson again any time soon.
Mark wrote:
> The housing shortage in Davis is a long-standing problem, one that
> predates the University’s drive to increase enrollment. Blaming the
> University for what is the City’s problem is just a waste of time.
If we look at this a different way UCD is like a parent that does not give their kids enough fruit and the developers are like parents that want to plant fruit trees to sell the kids fruit, but the “slow growth” people (as they complain about UCD) are the ones laughing all the way to the bank as they have the ability to sell fruit at higher and higher costs and they get to see the value of their fruit trees skyrocket as long as they can stop anyone from planting of any new fruit trees.
If we look at it differently once again, UCD is like the neighbor who is great in so many ways — keeps an eye on your house when you’re gone, is there when you need to borrow a cup of sugar or a tool, brings you cookies during the holidays. But that same neighbor can be a total pain — parking six cars around his house (including one that blocks your driveway) blaring music until 2 a.m., trashing his front yard and attracting police attention a little too frequently. When you try to talk to him about the problem, he just pats you on the shoulder and says he’ll try to do better. And nothing changes.
The root of the problem is that the UC campuses are trying to dramatically increase out-of-state tuition receipts in order to help fund their operations.
This has resulted in pending legislation to reign in the problem and a counter-proposal from Napolitano to increase the number of in-state students (which appears to be a UCOP effort to placate the legislature so that they don’t cap the out-of-state tuition gravy train).
Some facts about the 2015 freshman class for the UC system:
California residents – decreased by 1,039
Non-residents – increased by 3,453
http://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/factsheets/2015/fall-2015-admits-summary.pdf
Still looking for the UCD data.
CalAg wrote:
> The root of the problem is that the UC campuses are trying to dramatically increase
> out-of-state tuition receipts in order to help fund their operations
It is important to note that most (but not all) of the out of state and foreign students paying ~$38K/year tend to have more money on average than the in state students paying ~$13K/year and poor affirmative actions students who pay no tuition.
Yesterday I saw a ~20 year old kid get out of a late model Maserati downtown wearing Prada shoes and sunglasses. I’m guessing that he does not have a twin bed in a 10’x12′ room that he shares with another kid like I did as a 20 year old kid.
As the wealth of the average student increases it will get harder to find housing close to campus since (for the most part) rich kids don’t (and never have) shared a room.
Yep. And this is the type of student that is likely to predominate at Nishi – which will be some of the most expensive rental housing in the city. Rich and mostly out-of-state (remember that 95% of the increased enrollment under Katehi’s 2020 plan is out-of-state).
Maybe some of the benefits will trickle down to the average California kid when their wealthier classmates vacate less desirable housing.
I think it is really simple.
First, it is not only UCD putting pressure on growth. Davis has built its fair share of housing going back about 15 years ago for the proceeding 25 years. But all of that housing has been consumed by people and families eager to live here. Ironically those people are generally the first to demand that we close the door and build no more housing.
But the point here is that the region has grown. And the region is still growing. In fact, it is poised to be one of the fastest growing regions in the nation over the next 20-30 years. There are large housing projects being proposed in Natomas and other areas of Sacramento. Woodland and Yolo Country are both working hard to grow… especially commercial. Dixon is working on a growth plan. Winters is growing.
The Bay Area is becoming over saturated with humanity and housing prices are too high and people are eager to, again, cash in their equity and move to the Sacramento area.
So Davis will really never really be able to build enough housing to push the vacancy rate down far enough to make housing more affordable for students, etc.
We should stop trying.
What we should do is simply increase housing by 1-2% per year on average. And maybe a bit of front-loaded increase in housing because we have not done our fair share over the last 15 years. Everything else over that related to the challenges for adequate student housing is UCD’s problem.
What is driving the current crisis is a lack of rental housing. UC’s role in that is that they have been adding students without providing them with places to live.
Frankly: I completely agree. The only vacancy rate that matters is the one on campus. It is currently 0%. If it was running at 1-2%, the Davis rental market would be fine and the kids living on campus would be much happier.
The same could be said for the city’s rental market.
I find this statement by the Chancellor astonishing because if it were true, then why did UCD’s 2015 freshman class admit 25.5% out-of-state students and 34.4% international students totaling 59.9% non-resident UCD freshman, while reducing the in-state California resident student admissions by 11.2% from the previous year? Worse yet, UCD had no plan as to where to house this enormous influx of new UCD students.
This Sac Bee article “UC Davis and other campuses boost nonresident enrollment” explains how badly UC and UCD has been handling this whole situation of increasing nonresident student population to extract the almost three times higher tuition from them. Meanwhile, there was no plan of where to house them. Then to make things worse, the University denies the California taxpayers kids from admission to UC try to make room for the nonresident students.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article26205811.html
Public outrage and their input to our state legislators resulted with our State Legislature telling UC that this was unacceptable and they wrote AM1711 capping nonresident UC students systemwide to be 15.5% . Also, half of the tuition extracted from the nonresident students was to be spent on the UC resident student enrollment. Credit goes to Assemblyman Kevin McCarty who is Chair of the Assembly Subcommittee No. 2 ,and Assemblyman Medina who is Chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee for co-authoring this bill.
http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/state-government/legislators-seek-to-cap-ucs-out-of-state-enrollment/
To try to compensate for this bad policy, UC President Napolitano, then decided that she will add another 10,000 California resident students to the UC system within 3 years. So UCD got another 1,000 students added to be enrolled. So the tally for UCD’s additional students beyond the 36,000 enrolled last fall, is 5,000 more by 2020, now another 1,000 by 2018, and 7,000 more between 2025-2050. That’s 13,000 additional UCD students. Added to last fall’s 2015 UCD student population of 36,000 students, this would mean 49,000 UCD students by 2030. Our City population is only 67,000, so UCD students will eventually outnumber non-student Davis residents.That will certainly affect our elections eventually since it will be to the advantage of UCD’s to register in the City. This plan is undoubtedly underway for the Nishi Gateway election coming up. This is why Lydia Delis-Schlosser is working on the Nishi Gateway campaign for Whitcombe like she did for the Covell Village project which was infamous for the “pizza-gate” scandal by the “Yes on Measure X” campaign exchanging pizza for UCD student votes.
Since complaints apparently were getting back to UC President Napolitano about the lack of student housing issue, she then said that UC was going to pursue adding 14,000 more student beds for UC systemwide. That is a step in the right direction, but that’s for ALL the UC campuses, and is only it is a “drop in the bucket” of what is needed. UCD alone can use at least 14,000 more on-campus beds, particularly to help catch up with the huge deficit of student apartments on-campus that UCD has neglected to build over the years, and particularly if UCD really intends to add 13,000 additional students.
But note in this following article that while UCLA and Berkeley will be capping non-residents UC was silent on UCD capping nonresident student admissions, and UCD has become one of the highest nonresident student UC campuses.
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ln-uc-enrollment-20150303-story.html
Yet there was no action to prepare by UCD to accommodate housing this deluge of UCD students other then renovating and expanding their outdated and out-of-code compliance one-year freshman dorms to secure this large influx of freshman for only one year. After their freshman year, these students are forced out of their dorms to fend for themselves to find housing. Of course this housing winds up being in our community where mini-dorms and all the other parking, traffic, and circulation impacts have emerged as a result.
Now UCD wants to reserve more of our community’s rental housing with “master leases” reducing the availability of rental housing in Davis for non-student residents. This is why some leases are not being renewed no doubt. And I’ll bet Tandem Property’s who own around 25% of the apartments in town, is negotiating with UCD for lot’s of “master leases” in town. John Whitcombe, partner in Nishi Gateway, is also the major partner in Tandem Property’s, has more to gain than anyone else by UCD not building on-campus student housing. Meanwhile, UCD can just keep stalling to see how much of this housing the City will build for them. After all Whitcombe also built Aggie Village and “The Colleges” on campus so he has had a long relationship working with UCD.
But now, UCD has admitted that they can not even handle housing their new student admissions on-campus for even a year. And UCD has stated that they plan to add 13,000 more UCD students by 2030. Yet, UCD have emptied Orchard Park, which is likely to be empty for at least two more years, and UCD has not built 1,000 of the 3,000 beds they said they would at West Village, yet they keep bringing in more new students with no place to house them.
The biggest insult is that the Chancellor basically complained that the City has a low rental vacancy rate in this last Sunday’s Davis Enterprise. Well that is primarily due to UCD’s negligence in providing the housing demand for almost three decades that UCD is causing, and depleting our community’s rental housing in the process. But the Chancellor’s comment instead of taking responsibility, is basically pitting the students against the community due to the lack of rental housing. Likewise, the Nishi Gateway developers are hiring and recruiting UCD students to help run their campaign to complain about the rental housing shortage in the City.
What type of on-campus housing is needed is another major issue. UCD needs to build student apartments in very large numbers on-campus for the full four years they are attending UCD, not more dorms for housing freshman for only one year. The apartments would have the flexibility of being used by any of the UCD students for the whole four year term they are at UCD. UCD has plenty of land owning 5,000 acres to provide this needed 0n-campus housing. Much more on-campus housing would be more “green and sustainable” as UCD claims to embrace, due to reducing the commuting needs of the UCD students. This would do more to reduce Davis’ carbon footprint than anything else.
Finally, UCD needs to stop or drastically slow down their accelerated New UCD admissions, until they not only have a plan, but actually build the needed on-campus UCD housing that they have promised the City, but not delivered on. UCD has broken their commitments to the City in the past, and their integrity is now on the line. If they want a positive “town and gown” relationship, this is how they can make that happen, instead of deferring their avalanche of housing needs on our community which is the primary cause of any growth pressures on our City.
Eileen wrote:
> why did UCD’s 2015 freshman class admit 25.5% out-of-state students and 34.4%
> international students totaling 59.9% non-resident UCD freshman, while reducing
> the in-state California resident student admissions by 11.2% from the previous year?
They did it to get more money to pay the pensions on the link below:
http://transparentcalifornia.com/pensions/search/?q=university+of+california
Maybe the City and the U could agree to jointly build and host a new town of student party animals and name it “Isla Vista North”, west of town just past past the airport, on the north bank of the mighty Putah. The “island” in “view” could be a cluster of branches washed downstream in the last storm.
Allen Miller wrote: “Yes. And this will never happen. Measure R is the “landowner land value protection act”. Most people’s primary holding of personal wealth is their house, and most voter are land owners. As a whole, Davis is not going to ever vote for a Measure R with housing (I’m hoping Nishi is an exception with perception of housing being mostly student, along with business park), much less tank Measure R.”
I think there is a lot of truth in what Allen wrote.
I’ll soon have a beefed-up Measure R initiative to the City for title and summary. I think the public will like the changes that promote a better, more transparent public process. Then we hit the streets with it, and then we will see which of these candidates will support slow, reasonable growth as decided by the voters, or will instead try to kill R.
One question I have for the DV readers: what about bumping up the required passage to 55% of the votes cast?
The timing is not right for any of this. You end up risking the entire measure R. You guys are underestimating the impact of these many dorms on people that had previously been supportive of slow growth policies. If you do not have a release valve the pressure could explode and I could take down measure R. I know you’re going to ignore this warning and do whatever you want to do, but it’s a real danger
Eileen: Tandem Properties and other major apt owners are tight as ticks with UCD administration, and why do you think that UCD is going to “bite” that group of local wealthy families by building massive new government housing on campus, rather than making the City and its local developers build private housing that adds huge new wealth to what these families already enjoy? And of course, our own city Planning Dept makes its money from private development, rather than campus housing, so why on earth would anyone think that City Planners would support campus housing over private projects that our city government gets to make planning money off of?
A study of these town-gown familial and financial relationships would make a fascinating study for some graduate student in UCD Sociology.
Michael wrote:
> Tandem Properties and other major apt owners are tight as ticks with UCD administration
Tandem had built and manages a lot of the housing on the UCD campus including this one:
http://www.tandemproperties.com/communities/the-colleges-at-la-rue/
Oh oh … I’m being controversial again. But it’s all so obvious.
You’re certainly not being realistic.
It’s all so obvious, isn’t it, DP?
South of Davis-“Except for:..”
Are you kidding? I count 272 housing units built since 2003, many of those designated for seniors and others won in a lottery. To call your assertion ludicrous is damning with faint praise.
True, but you are not the one that said:
“They stopped building rental housing locally here about 20 years ago.”
Don’t forget that we had the “great recession” from 2008-2014 when even if you had the city begging you to build an apartment it would have been tough to finance one…
Yeah. I wasn’t going to bother.
Regarding today’s article in the Davis Enterprise (link below).
Assemblyman McCarty, the same legislator who is sponsoring the AB1711 bill to mandate limiting the excessive number of nonresident students being admitted has also called the Chancellor (Katehi) “on the carpet” on another issue. As a result, Katehi wisely resigned from a for-profit company (“DeVry Education Group”) for a $70,000 position for her to serve as a director on their Board of Directors. Meanwhile, Katehi apparently makes an annual salary of $424,000 as UCD’s Chancellor. Katehi job is supposed to be about focusing on UCD. Talk about ethical conflict…
Looks like our State legislators are pretty fed up with the shenanigan’s at UCD and UC. I am in complete agreement with Assemblyman McCarty on this issue and the AB1711 bill that he co-authored holding UC and UCD accountable.
Also, it looks like there is a commentary and two other letters expressing our community being really fed up with UCD trying to push off their housing needs on our City. I’m not surprised to see Davis citizens starting to finally object to all the housing problems that UCD is causing us.
Here’s the link:
http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/katehi-resigns-from-for-profit-higher-education-board/