By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – We received a lot of interesting feedback both on and offline on Saturday’s column, suggesting that the city work with the university to pursue housing south of Russell.
From my perspective there were several advantages to it:
First, the city is in need of housing and, as I have explained this week, I don’t believe the downtown will be able to provide the housing opportunities—certainly not in the short-term—that the city is hoping for.
Second, the city has a lack of internal vacant land that could accommodate large scale housing.
Third, Measure J makes planning for housing on the periphery at best problematic. Moreover, from a planning perspective, putting housing closer to campus is ideal anyway.
Fourth, many in the slow growth community have pushed for more housing on campus anyway.
Fifth, you could largely do it without a Measure J approval vote.
There are of course a lot of complexities to doing this kind of planning, and there would need to be all sorts of agreements with the county, city and university. Figuring out the revenue and cost sharing would be complex.
I mentioned a need to connect it through Russell and that clearly still causes problems for some in West Davis.
One of the more interesting responses I received noted that “the argument for housing south of Russell makes sense from a planning perspective due to its location.”
The person noted, “Actually faculty/staff housing has been planned between the student apartments and Russell Blvd for years.”
But, “because it has (been) interpreted that any housing project on UC land must pay prevailing wages (something not a common practice in residential construction) it (is) difficult to deliver in a manner that is ‘affordable.’”
They continued, “Unless the university can provide housing within reach of faculty/staff salaries there is no policy support for building it on UC land. Also any tax revenue generated from the student housing and faculty/staff housing out there goes to the county.”
Thus, “the county (and university) would have to agree to annex any property to the city. So while the site makes sense, the constraint of construction being subject to prevailing wage and other UC requirements would likely be a nonstarter for any builder/developer.”
To me that’s probably not a deal breaker. Instead, it would probably require additional subsidies—finding ways to tap into monies that will help to develop housing next to transit and workforce opportunities, and subsidizing affordable housing through monies available for such features would be a requirement.
There is a high degree of complexity here that someone would need to navigate, which is likely the reason one response was that “Ockham’s principle argues that simplicity supersedes complexity. If you have two competing alternatives, then the simpler explanation/alternative is to be preferred.”
Then again it seems like land use necessitates navigating through complexity in order to find solutions. In this case, you would have to weigh the advantages of location against the complexities of making such a project pencil out and navigating through the minefield of three overlapping jurisdictions.
Seems like (generally) the best spot for it, if UCD is planning to continue growing.
Certainly a lot better than the city continuing to sprawl eastward, some 5 miles or so from campus.
It would be helpful to see a map showing the location.
Of course, Woodland is already accommodating a lot of UCD’s growth, approximately 7 miles from campus. And they will continue doing so no matter what Davis does. (And since it’s cheaper, it’s always going to attract newcomers in particular. Especially anyone who wants a garage, etc. In other words – younger, less-established families, with parents working at more than one location, etc.)
By the way, NOW (or soon – e.g., next year) is the “right time” to buy a house, according to experts. Housing prices are expected to continue dropping next year. Alternatively, you could wait for the housing market to recover, and pay more.
Actually, it might be best to hold off until next year, at least:
Real estate investors are pulling back from the housing market with home buying down 30%, report says (msn.com)
This is one of the times in which Davis homeowners (and taxing authorities) might be thankful that their homes don’t fluctuate in value as much as other communities experience. It’s pretty disconcerting to purchase at the top of a housing market, and then find that you could have saved a lot of money by not “panic buying”. (“Fear of Missing Out” is a real thing, and leads to mistakes.)
Of course, a lot of people have “locked in” low interest rates, and are not motivated to sell right now. But there’s always some who need to do so.
When you plan now, you are planning for housing five years from now, not today.
That is what developers do. And they’ll sit on land, while waiting for the market to recover.
I like your idea regarding the campus location for housing, IF UCD is planning to continue growing.
On a broader level, California’s continued growth seems to be less-assured (despite the efforts of connected politicians). Underlying business interests are the ones pushing for that growth, and are supporting those politicians in the first place. But demographics and exodus from the state are telling a different story. Not to mention predictions of a recession, which may have already begun.
And in the case of UCD, they function much as a business interest does. “The bigger, the better”. We’ll see if demographics (and the continued decline in other alternative colleges – such as community colleges which feed the UCD system) continue to support UCD’s goals. But sure, let them address the need that they’re attempting to continue creating. (And for that matter, they can control housing prices, as well as “who” gets to live on campus.)
Interestingly-enough, I don’t recall that housing prices were all that much higher during the last housing bubble. (For example, I think that new houses in Woodland were around $500K some 15 years ago or so.)
As noted, the site is already slated for faculty/staff housing. The prevailing wage issue is a concern, but when it meets the university’s goals to provide lower-cost housing for their staff, they will do so. Until it meets their goals in any way, I see little likelihood of a city/county/UCD collaboration for that site. There are other properties UCD could look at, notably south of the freeway. Asking UCD to donate land and spend considerable resources on providing housing for anyone other than their own students, faculty, and staff will likely go nowhere. It needs to meet their goals, not ours.
The land in question has been regraded to collect rainfall water and help recharge the ground water, and will be landscaped to create an attractive open area between the city and the new campus housing. Traffic will not be allowed onto Russell from the UCD side, so building further and further west just leads to greater isolation of the students and others living there. Annexation isn’t even on the table. Continuing to reduce the area of land available for ag research is not sound policy. Other sites for housing would be less problematic in many ways.
I think that disrupting the UCD long-range planning process would be a serious problem that would yield countless delays. At best, with a dedicated committee of city/county/UCD, ground might break on a housing project in 4 – 5 years. It’s about as likely that UCD will simply initiate building on that site for their own purposes by then anyway.
In the long run, urging our local legislators to push to change the prevailing wage laws for special projects would be likelier to lead to housing sooner.
I don’t disagree with Don’s point. However, the prevailing wage issue really boils down to a difference in money. If the State and/or UCD really want to provide additional housing then the State can provide UCD with the necessary additional funding to cover the added cost that the current prevailing wage laws create. Urging our local legislators to increase UCD’s funding from the State budget is another (perhaps even faster) alternative action. If that housing is also affordable, the State achieves progress toward its housing affordability goals as well.
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Sixth, and perhaps most important, UCD has access to State funding that neither the City nor any potential developers have access to
I would be very interested to know what happened between the University and Carmel Partners, the developer that was supposed to build staff Housing at West Village. I have never seen an explanation for why Carmel Partners was suddenly dropped and the project halted after the roads and other infrastructure had already been built.
Carmel Partners reputation has taken a turn for the worse after they were got caught up in the Jose Huizar Bribary scandals in LA.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/developer-agrees-pay-12-million-resolve-criminal-probe-executive-s-relationship-ex-la
The project ran into the prevailing wage issue cited previously. Building single family housing didn’t pencil out under those cost conditions. The revised plan is to construct apartments et al instead. Much less attractive to staff and faculty though.
Can you point me to any official statement?
No it came up several years ago. I can’t remember if I saw it in a press release, news report or conversation with individuals directly involved.
Are you sure that covers all possible “sources”?
Maybe it came to you in a dream – seems about as likely (and as equally-supported).
Why do you want to build housing South of Russell? Or housing at all? Housing may be required by the RHNA but I hardly think that requires developing south of Russell….and honestly, I’m content to wait to see what happens in the power play between the state and local governments.
Now reason why the city should plan something is if it benefits the city. ANY PLANNING SHOULD BE FOR A COMMERCIAL REGION/PROJECT(S). Housing if necessary should be supplemental used to finance and enhance a commercial neighborhood.
How do you annex something to something else? Wouldn’t it be the city annexing the property from UCD/County? Wouldn’t the UCD constraints on construction be irrelevant if the project is annexed at a paper lot/entitled stage because then it’s no longer in UCD’s jurisdiction? The inherited entitlement means the property is no longer zoned as open space or Ag so it clears any Measure J requirements.
The City considered annexing West Campus in 2008 but rejected it for several reasons including fiscal costs. UCD was interested in the transaction but may not have been willing to provide the supporting in-lieu of property tax fees.
So we reject the idea of developing housing on agricultural land, but then propose to build on some of the best agricultural land that is used to research the means of increasing global agricultural productivity? What kind of weird short sighted hypocrisy is that? If we want to build housing and realize that it will require expanding into agricultural land, and we realize that we will need to retire land due to statewide groundwater pumping restrictions (that will affect Yolo too), then we should build on ag land that is supplied from groundwater. And not on UCD research land.
Perhaps that’s something that UCD should think about, if it wants to keep growing.
But building on campus is certainly “closer” to the campus itself, compared to “100% Housing DISC” (or Woodland, for that matter).
Maybe at some point, the city will stop worrying about what UCD (or the school district) is doing, and focus on itself instead.
Not following this. You’re suggesting urbanizing areas that rely upon groundwater?
I really don’t know why you keep saying this. It isn’t true. We aren’t going to have to take any land out of production in Yolo County to my knowledge, and I really do follow this topic quite closely. Please cite some evidence that Yolo County farmland is slated for retirement for climate change reasons. I don’t think you’ll find any.
Yolo County has conjunctive water use. Groundwater used by farmers is recharged by surface water used by other farmers via Indian Valley reservoir or, in a few cases, Sacramento River. We are not critically overdrafting the shallower aquifers here to my knowledge, nor is there much connection between the water use by farmers and what is supplying the cities in Yolo County. The cities long ago stopped using the shallower (intermediate depth) aquifers except as backup to our backup: Davis has five wells from the old days that we use to supplement the deeper aquifers if necessary. The other groundwater that Davis uses is from very deep wells, not directly affected by contemporary rainfall. Indian Valley reservoir has been adequate for its customers nearly every year except one or two since it came on line in the 1970’s.
It is best to conserve the highest quality farmland to the greatest extent possible. Both the city and county general plans call for conservation of ag land. Sometimes developing it will be unavoidable. But there are areas of poorer soils that are suitable for development, especially north of the existing city boundaries.
The university’s farmland west of town is very high quality and is presently, if I recall, irrigated by deep wells on the campus. They draw from the deep aquifer. But UCD has lots of places that could be developed for housing, notably on the south end of campus (largely in Solano County). They have very little incentive to do so, since as far as they’re concerned IMO they think they’re building enough housing right now.
It would be best if UCD could conserve their own farmland and develop on sites that aren’t currently in ag research use. But their water use, and city water use, and water use by Yolo County farmers, is really irrelevant to this whole discussion.
The majority of GSPs submitted to date have been non compliant because the GSAs are unwilling to acknowledge that either land will have to go out of production or water will have to be acquired from outside the region. (Not sure why you bring up the different levels of aquifers–the overdraft issue is largely driven by ag.) See the SGMA Portal: https://sgma.water.ca.gov/portal/gsp/status
There is no reason to believe that land in Yolo or Solano Counties would need to be taken out of irrigated farm production.
Yolo County is not in critical overdraft, so the YSGA groundwater management plan was submitted in January 2022 as required by law (those in critical overdraft were required to submit in 2020). Yolo’s GMP is under review, as are most of the GMP’s in the state. A small # have been officially rejected, mostly (by quick review) in areas of critical overdraft.
In my opinion, in a region with a relatively robust and even redundant water supply, it would be unwise to take land out of irrigation. Irrigating crops and landscapes provably cools the air locally, reduces average high temperatures on a regional basis and makes a region more habitable. In effect, irrigation is a form of adaptation to higher local temperatures and likely has health benefits. Irrigation sustains woody crops on farms and nearby wild areas, and is often critical for wildlife habitat. There would be adverse consequences from removing farmland from production.
It may prove to be appropriate to take land out of production where there is not sufficient water supply for perennial crops. There are areas in the San Joaquin Valley (and the Central Coast) that have unsustainable groundwater use. Farmers in those areas are seeking more reliable surface water supplies. Some districts may be unable to achieve that surface/groundwater balance. Water banking may be their future, as with the Kern Water Bank.
Since those critically overdrafted areas are very high-value farm regions, any attempt to remove farmland from production there will be a big, big battle and will certainly be in the news. We’re talking about the highest-value farm counties in the country (Kern, Tulare, and Fresno, apparently in that order in 2021 — first time in years that Fresno hasn’t been the highest ag-value county in the US).
But none of that is relevant to Yolo or Solano Counties.
In addition to what Don noted (in regard to Yolo/Solano counties), only someone who fails to understand and acknowledge the consequences would advocate continued sprawl as a “solution” to water shortages – which are ultimately the result of that sprawl (and resulting greenhouse gasses) in the first place.
While also advocating for increasing food shortages/rising cost of food, as a result of converting farmland to sprawl. (Thereby further ensuring additional climate change, to boot.)
Not sure what planet you think this works on, but maybe you should join Elon Musk’s efforts.
Do you also advocate drilling for more oil and building more freeways (to support said sprawl), as a solution to climate change? In addition to destroying farmland?
Might also be noted that once farmland is converted to urban use, access to water is no longer “optional”, as it is with farmland. The land itself survived for millenia, without irrigation. (And provided habitat, to boot.)
Per your logic, it’s a miracle that Native Americans were able to survive at all.