For the last 18 months, the biggest issue has been over student housing. While the slow-growth community, joined by the council and others, took on the issues of the LRDP (Long Range Development Plan), and while the voters voted down Nishi, this is the first time that the council could weigh in and have the final say over a student housing project.
Sterling Apartments, at 160 units and 540 beds, will not resolve the housing crunch, but its resolution – possibly tonight – may well go a long way toward determining how the council plans to tackle this issue and how the community responds to that.
Can conflict resolution work? At a late moment in time, a conflict resolution process was implemented during the Hyatt House discussion, and the results after about two months of work were an agreement that both sides could live with even though it was ideal to neither.
The city tried to enact the same process here, and, while the negotiating team reached agreement with the applicants, neighbors were not satisfied. As Marjorie Beach wrote last week, “The Rancho Yolo community continues its absolute opposition to the now ‘revised’ Sterling Fifth Street Apartments proposal.”
She would add, “For those who think we at Rancho Yolo have ‘dropped our opposition,’ we have not. For those who think we are now ‘happy’ with the project, we are not.”
But in many ways this is not about one project.
For residents like Ms. Beach, she notes, “We are very opposed to this massive, mostly four- and five-bedroom apartment project, which places too many students in a dorm-like situation without the amenities and support system that are provided in a college campus dorm.”
Community activists like Eileen Samitz put out a “red alert” on Monday calling the project “Mega Dorms” and writing, “The Sterling Apartment proposal is still an enormous project at 3 and 4 floors creating a ‘wall-effect’ along Fifth Street just east of the post office.”
She added, “It will create even more traffic back-ups along Fifth St., since the east end of Fifth Street will be narrowed, like the west end has, and this project will add hundreds more cars and more than a thousand student bicycle trips daily to an already impacted street, even more dangerous for the many students trying to navigate Fifth Street at night and in adverse winter weather.”
She also complained about it being single-room-occupancy (a mega-dorm, renting by the bedroom and targeting students) which would “have expensive rents and have inadequate parking.”
On the other side of the coin, the Davis Enterprise in an editorial argued that the current planning process serves the needs of no one.
They write, “While we all bemoan the 0.2-percent apartment vacancy rate that results, and the accompanying cramming of UCD students into residential neighborhoods, when push comes to shove we vote instead to protect our property values.
“To be sure, Measure R also hamstrings the city’s planning efforts. It’s certainly not conducive to any sort of overall vision when hundreds of staff hours of work go up in smoke on Election Day, but that doesn’t mean the City Council can’t show leadership on the issue.”
But others have argued that the Enterprise and the Vanguard have it wrong. The city, they argue, already has the 2008 Housing Element Steering Committee report and, as projects have come forward, most have been approved. That is how we got Cannery, Willow Creek, Grande, Chiles Ranch and others. Nishi was among them but failed. This CC led on that and the others.
But, for me, the telling information came from the applicant’s presentation at the planning commission meeting.
They presented the following: “According to the City’s 2016 Residential Report, of the 266 residential permits issued, Zero (0) were issued for market-rate/student apartments.” Furthermore, “While the city is meeting the targets for all residential categories, they are not meeting targets for market rate/student apartments.” And finally, “The majority of the apartments developed over the last several years have been dedicated affordable units.”
The city can say, hey, we have moved forward these projects – and they have, but they are not providing the student housing numbers we need. They cannot answer how many beds we need or where we are going to put them.
As leaders, the council has the opportunity to set the agenda. When the city put out RFEIs (Requests for Expressions of Interest), they got three proposals for innovation parks that turned into two applications. That those applications didn’t turn into projects is noteworthy, but also not relevant to this particular issue as we are dealing with infill projects that will not require Measure R votes.
I agree with Eileen Samitz and the city council – the university needs to step up with on-campus housing. I fully support 100/50 (100 percent of new students and 50 percent of all students housed on campus), but even at 100/50, which UC Davis has not agreed to, we need housing in the city to alleviate the rental housing crunch.
We can debate whether this particular form is appropriate. From our analysis, however, the issue of bed leases and even one bathroom per room are not unprecedented. Even in my home, we have three bedrooms and three bathrooms. It helps serve not only students, but multigenerational homes.
Is the project too dense? That’s in the eye of the beholder, but it is worth noting that there are 6 apartment complexes with more than 160 units, 6 more with 160 units, and 27 existing apartment complexes with 120 units. Yes, some of these, like the huge University Court apartments, are close to campus – but not all. Cranbrook at 216 units is 1.8 miles from campus. Renaissance at 177 is 2.4 miles from campus. Alhambra at 160 units is 3.5 miles from campus. In West Davis you have Stonegate Village at 147 units and Arlington Farms at 138 units – both are about 2.5 miles from campus.
Opponents have argued two miles from campus is a long distance, but it is worth noting that basic travel characteristics show about 55 percent of those who live at that distance bike to school while another 30 percent use the bus. This is not going to add hundreds of cars to the road.
There are complaints about not enough parking spaces, but, by current measures, the parking lot has more parking spaces than needed if 42 percent of those residing there have cars.
Water usage and water waste would be significant, because each of the 540 bedrooms has an individual bathroom. While it is true there is no individual metering – as is the case with virtually all multifamily units in the city – the amount of water wasted is rather limited.
Students for the most part do not engage in outdoor irrigation, which is the largest water use. They will not have their own laundry facilities in their own units. That leaves showers, toilets, and washing dishes as three main uses of water.
The bottom line is this is not a fight over the specifics of the apartment building – it is a fight over the number of stories, the density – and, even more broadly, over where students should live.
The slow-growth advocates have made the issue of on-campus housing their rallying cry. They have a point and it’s a strong one. Where I think it breaks down is at the margins – even if we go to 100/50, we still need more student housing in the city.
Sterling figures to be just the first battle here – but Lincoln40, which is currently proposed at just over 700 beds on Olive Drive, figures to be the next one. The resolution of Sterling figures to tell us a lot about what this battle will look like in the coming months and, most likely, years.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Haven’t read the piece, yet, but your “headline” is spot on. It isn’t about Sterling, per se…
And what about staff housing? That will not be on campus, but should be in our community if are being truly environmentally aware.