Re-cycling Davis Housing History 4/2000
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana
Growth is the biggest issue in Davis. The irony is that the University and housing are the only sectors of the Davis community which are strong in the traditional U.S. economy. Most cities emphasize their commercial attractiveness in hopes of gaining jobs and economic substance so that they can pay their bills. Because of the university and state job base, Davis has the luxury of most income earners not being connected to the local economy, except as casual consumers with lots of other options only a car drive away.
The price of Davis housing is usually at least ten percent higher than most comparable units in other parts of the Sacramento region. The public school system, the greenbelts, parks and recreation programs, the low crime rate, the housing resale retrofit requirement, the dominant educated/middle class lifestyle, the environmental ethic and the quality of life rhetoric all add to the potential value of a Davis home.
Davis seems to go through cycles of limited growth, which slows as the permitted area is filled. Near the end of the period, voters are asked to support stopping further growth soon, and the voters have complied.
Pent up demand (1974, 1986 and late 2001) increases with scarcity. Davis has then exploded to a new level of infrastructure to accommodate real demand for new residential growth as the commercial and retail growth lags behind.
The history of Davis is “slowed growth,” which means that the land is still available next time. Everywhere else with unmet housing demand rapidly fills in. Davis takes its time so that it is probably the fastest growing slow growth city in the world. Some of the unmet demand has been driven by the University. Faculty arrive, or highly paid staff, and they want the convenience of living in Davis. Currently, 66 percent of the UCD students live in the city, occupying one-third of the city’s housing units, according to the city’s General Plan update.
The trend over the years is that students, faculty and staff percent residential are all declining. The net effect of Davis’ growth control is that more UCD students, faculty and staff are being forced to commute, bringing air pollution. Davis is becoming an inner city of retirees and an outer city of commuters to jobs in Sacramento and the Bay Area.
Take a look at the previous round of the cycle, and how it played out. Davis wooed itself into a sense of security which left it unable to control its destiny during the following period.
In 1982, the voters approved (two to one) an advisory measure that Davis’ general plan extend the population goal of 50,000 from 1990 to 2000. Voters believed the Caltrans sign that Davis was locked at 38,000 people.
Meanwhile, the real world of the market place was exploding with housing demand, and the Davis housing availability was shrinking rapidly. No middle class homes to move up to meant that affordable starter homes were not available either. By 1984, it was difficult to obtain a lot at all.
In 1984, the city council appointed a Davis 2000 Study Committee with over 30 members. At the third meeting, the city planning director said that the Davis planning area was already at 47,000 and to stay within 50,000 until 2000 would require limiting residential construction to three houses a year. It turned out a little different.
From 1984 to 1986, the council majority adamantly pretended that the growth controls were working. In 1986, voters passed (by only 58 percent) a symbolic measure that Davis grow as slowly as legally possible.
Davis was locked into an anti-planning, head-in-the-sand approach in 1984 to 1986, and then outside influences forced the city to rush through the design of a plan that has had many problems.
The Davis housing market is now in the same place it was in 1984: limited lots available, and fervent anti-growth grumbling throughout the body politic, and increased housing demand from UCD and external forces.
According to the most recent city report, there are 645 lots left. Davis is selling about 500 houses per year, and the local market is heating up. It looks like almost all of the approved housing in the General Plan will be built out by late 2001, with little additional expected through 2010. As though the people factory down the street called UCD is not going to continue to churn out charming productive graduates who want to stay. And, the University is clearly pointing out it is growing, soon, and the city needs to plan for it.
Two years ago, when I posed this re-cycle hypothesis (Enterprise, 3/29/98), the accompanying chart led to a forecast buildout by 2004. Now it looks like virtual buildout will occur before the end of 2001.
Relevant data: “Actual, 1997: 400, Projected: 1998: 375, 1999: 350, 2000: 300, 2001: 240, 2002: 200, 2003: 100, 2004: 50.” Add to that: “Actual: 1998: 450, 1999: 489, lots remaining: 645.
The Sacramento area is the fastest growing region in California. The external pressure from overflow from the Bay Area is enormous on all of the towns along Highway 80.
Measure J’s proponents implied that UCD should take all of its internally generated growth of 5,000 students, 350 faculty and at least 1,000 staff. Second, they demanded that Davis only increase population by infill. Third, that the voters will democratically vote to stop future city annexations.
Well, every student the campus or Dixon houses means more Davis traffic and demand for police and social services, without any mitigation fee revenue. Even that assumes the city can re-establish solid administrative relations with the campus. So the City of Davis has potential impacts and consequences without benefits, or even plans to deal with them.
Infill, the panacea. The pent up demand for housing after 2001 will become like the inside of a pressure cooker. While the city demand will be in the thousands, the City Infill Study only identified hundreds of potential spots, and that is really stretching the potential.
That infill would change the character of the downtown to be more like Berkeley near campus: the highest density in the Bay Area, parking problems, and the threat of grime and higher crime.
In 1974, the city council should have talked about up rather than out. They didn’t because the city doesn’t own a hook and ladder truck. Actually, modern fire suppression strategies for high rise buildings offer alternatives to that approach.
The problem is that Davis planning is based on a fundamental untruth: the talk is about a compact urban dynamic which is bicycle and pedestrian friendly, when the reality is automobile dependent, sub-urban, which is its real charm.
Davis could have the density of Nob Hill in San Francisco, but it would be a different place.
When London had the footprint of Davis in square miles, London had a population of almost a million people. Imagine Davis with even 10 times as many people, let alone 20. It wouldn’t work at all. Which is why people love Davis; the way many of the biologists apply their arts in their gardens.
Most people will not give up some of their yard for an income rental. And, the Hillel and D Street controversies are showing how resistant Core Area residents are to any infill at all.
So how does Davis handle the growth pressure ? Some optimists believe that a proposal waiting in the wings will work its way through the scrutiny of the critical Planning Commission and City Council. Such a proposal would have to have so much merit that a council majority recommends it to the voters for ratification.
So now imagine a regular city council race with a project for annexation on the ballot. An incumbent running for re-election would probably vote against the project or risk defeat at the polls. Even a developer financed special election poses enormous political risks.
A second scenario is that city councils between now and 2010 hold fast and do not approve any projects. They continue to appoint no growth proponents to the Planning Commission. The threat of voter rejection is so strong that no new residential projects are approved. Davis becomes gentrified like Palo Alto. UCD students are mostly commuters. UCD builds parking lots. Davis becomes famous for its high car pollution levels. The city economy continues to stagnate, per capita revenue drops as retired local residents make up an ever increasing percentage of the population.
Or a third scenario: by the 2002 city council election, there will be so few houses on the market that the pressure on the city council forces approval of one project of several hundred homes, which becomes the test case. The debate and controversy during the campaign becomes so rancorous that the new council is clearly divided on a wide range of issues.
The current Plan revision process was prolonged for years by the majority club of the Growth Management/Neighborhood Preservation committee. Now they make up most of the council majority, Ken Wagstaff and Sue Greenwald. This is their time.
Whether or not the revised General Plan works will be determined by how fundamental the conflicts become once Davis reaches buildout, which is going to be a lot sooner than the city council expects.
If you plug the safety valve of a heating boiler, it will explode. That is what happened to Davis in 1986. It looks like it is going to happen again, no matter how much the university absorbs its own growth.
The only way to work through those conflicts would be a new General Plan to 100,000 people in the greater Davis planning area. It would require broad-based participation by a cross section of the city, and would empower emerging neighborhood associations.
One point of studying history is to avoid making repetitious mistakes. The General Plan revision locks in place the myths of the 1970s. It is a monument to the past. Davis needs a new plan which is a shared vision of the future.
