COMMENTARY: Homegrown Models for Expanding Davis   

By Alex Achimore

I fall squarely in the camp that believes we need to expand the city boundaries sooner rather than later in order to provide our fair share of the additional housing California so desperately needs. 

Some may ask, “why can’t we build up and not out?” I think Davis finally has some new examples of what that entails, with several hundred units now in the planning and construction stages, and the limitations are very apparent. 

Certainly, for students and small households, living in a multi-story building may be just fine, and several of the recently announced projects are in great locations surrounded by services and amenities.  

For others, especially families raising children, an upper-floor apartment in a dense urban environment is less than ideal. It’s far more desirable to have ground level entries in low-rise buildings, close to outdoor playfields. 

But here in Davis, the traditional alternative to high-rise living—detached, single-family houses—is unaffordable to many who could most benefit. I continue to believe that in today’s market it’s impossible to build a detached house on its own lot here that is worth less than about $700,000 (affordable without permanent subsidy to families with an income greater than $160,000).

It’s also the most land-consuming model, which is the principal concern that brought about our own Measure J/R/D requiring voter approval for changes to agricultural land. I don’t think anyone wants to swap farmland for high-income housing, but if traditional suburban patterns are simply laid down over new territory added to Davis, that could be the result.
 

The debate over how best to expand naturally leads to a search for an appropriate density, one that can provide the benefits of living at ground level while conserving land and perhaps even lowering prices. 

Most of us can point out an example of “Low Density Residential,” the zoning term for less than 6 units per gross (includes streets) acre like our single-family detached neighborhoods (typically about 4), and “High Density Residential,” over 14 units per gross acre like those multi-story apartment buildings going up in downtown (typically about 20).

What’s less well understood is the in-between range of “Medium Density,” and whether or how it might be right for any expansion of Davis.

Right now, the most advanced applicants for new peripheral development– Village Farms and Shriner’s Property—consist mostly of detached houses with a significant amount in Low Density: Village Farms is 37 percent and Shriner’s 21 percent. Yes, they both contain Medium Density, albeit still in detached houses, and small amounts of high density, capital A Affordable Housing restricted to low incomes. 

Both mention financial strategies for providing some units in the $600,000-$700,000 price range—promising, although that wouldn’t reach very far down into the “Missing Middle” and it’s unclear if the price reductions would be permanent. 

Attaching houses inherently lowers their value, and so it’s understandable that developers would favor building detached, but the associated consumption of land still seems out of touch with today’s understanding of climate change. Perhaps there are more options to consider.

As it happens, Davis has been a good Petri dish for different approaches to housing, many seemingly conceived with more attention to lifestyle than maximizing the unit counts. Back in the 1970’s Davis put itself on the international stage by Mike and Judy Corbett’s development of Village Homes, which focused on conserving and sharing land as well as providing energy-efficient houses. 

We are also host to the first newly-built co-housing project in the United States—Muir Commons—as well as the similarly conceived Glacier Circle Community, which made the national news as an innovative way for older folks to avoid institutionalized settings and live out their lives together in mutual support. And we have several housing co-operatives (“co-ops”), the largest being Dos Pinos on Sycamore Drive.

I wondered if any of their attributes could be replicated or might even inspire solutions we could use today, and to understand them better I calculated their densities using satellite views to count units against scaled areas. Granted, not everyone would embrace the structures and bylaws of co-ops and co-housing, but I didn’t find anything about their arrangement of buildings, circulation paths and shared open space that couldn’t also work as condominiums or townhouses, if not individual fee simple parcels. 

But as they grew out of a search for new directions, I think it’s likely that considerable effort was spent on physical planning and design, including from future residents, so perhaps they unearthed some best practices. 

It turns out the granddaddy of Davis’ innovation in housing, Village Homes, really isn’t all that dense. Even without counting the open space on its Western edge, I calculated around 5 units per gross (includes internal streets) acre, falling well within the Low-Density category. The buildings are detached, if close together on the sides, and the distance between rows of houses is generous enough to allow a public right-of-way between what are reasonably sized but unfenced back yards. 

Still, Village Homes is denser than many of the older neighborhoods in Davis, which average closer to 4 units per acre, but it features an equally rich landscape and set of amenities that have kept its home values at similarly high levels.

Both Muir Commons and Glacier Circle consist of attached houses and shared open space, and because of their co-housing philosophy include a common building where residents gather for meals and social events. 

I ran a density count on each without the common buildings and came up with about eight units per gross acre—well into Medium Density– for both. Dos Pinos is made up of buildings that contain 5 attached units and yields over 12 units per gross acre, pretty much as high as possible before units have to be stacked. The non-profit and co-operative ownership of these three are delivering the additional benefit of reducing the cost to live there, but that doesn’t dictate the layout, which is not dissimilar to neighboring condominiums. 

It’s difficult to compare built models like the above to projects still in the planning stages, but I think Village Farms (less clear with Shriner’s Property at this time) has enough in common with The Cannery–overwhelmingly detached houses, many identically-sized parcels, and a similar street pattern—to stand in for that purpose.  

The Cannery averages a bit denser than Village Farms, as most of the detached houses are in the Medium Density range, but I think it shows the drawbacks to simply shrinking all the elements of a standard detached house subdivision other than the street system. 

Individual parcels have been shaved to the point that they barely contain the footprint of the houses, and I think walling off the narrow yards with six-foot fences only accentuates the sense of crowding. The roadway standards don’t help—wide, straight streets simply raise the temptation to speed through rather than pause and interact with neighbors. 

But to me the most glaring negative is the lack of shade compared to the rest of Davis. There’s so little room for planting that could cool the environment and screen windows for privacy, even more necessary when houses are that close together.  

All very different from the older examples where, even within the detached houses of Village Homes, lot lines are not firmly demarked by fences, streets and pathways are narrower and curve, and trees are located to shade both the front and back sides of buildings (true, accessibility laws would make some aspects impossible today). Yes, the smaller houses are also a factor in making the examples feel less crowded, but in pursuing affordability that’s not a bad step to take either. 

If those alternatives are so great, why didn’t they get repeated? Did “the market” reject them? It’s clear that each pursued some non-economic goals, but I don’t think anyone can argue they are financially unsuccessful or unmarketable today.

I assume it took the additional motivations to overcome the inertia of building more of what’s been done before, and they likely made no more money for their developers (maybe a little less if you include the soft cost of convincing banks and the Public Works Department) than conventional projects. 

Today I would argue that the desirability of Davis that puts a floor under the price of housing also reduces the risk to developers and financial institutions if they strike out in different directions. Our adjacent cities are building plenty of detached houses at lower prices than the market allows here in Davis, but I think we’re also in a position to consider some alternatives without pushing our developers out on long limbs.

Bottom line, the Cannery has demonstrated that it’s indeed possible to build detached houses on individual lots at Medium Density and what that looks and feels like. But at some point, packing so close together erodes the sense of privacy one expects in a detached house without, in Davis at any rate, making a suitable impact on price. 

And lacking sufficient shade trees and hedges, it’s going to be hotter and drier than the older parts of our city. In contrast, the same density and a bit higher can be achieved in a layout like Muir Commons or Dos Pinos without losing ground-level living but in a much greener environment. The trade-offs are common walls vs. freestanding houses, shared outdoor space vs. fenced private yards, and having to walk a few steps from front doors to parking spaces. 

Increasing density is important to conserve land, which will help combat climate change, but by itself will not solve the affordability crisis. Attaching houses in a denser setting could help lower prices, however, even more so if co-operative and co-housing ownership structures were also made available. 

But that would require some larger parcels than are shown in the current proposals to expand Davis, and I hope future iterations of Village Farms and Shriner’s will make room for more low-rise, attached housing like the examples described above. 

We’re not likely to stop building detached houses in Davis altogether, but a broader range of incomes could afford to live here if that wasn’t the only alternative to multi-story apartments. 

In any case, it may be time to do away with “Low Density Residential” and institute a density minimum of 6 units per acre on any new land added to Davis.