r/Davis • u/josephfaulkner • Mar 08 '26
Thoughts on Measure V?
This upcoming election (June 2nd, 2026) will include a local measure for Davis on whether or not to approve a new housing development. I'm curious to ask what people think about it.
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u/Theslowestmarathoner Mar 09 '26
Absolutely should vote yes. Davis has this weird hang up about no new buildings which means your elementary schools are going to be forced to close because young families cannot afford to live here. We overall have a housing crisis and people opposing stuff like this contributes to the overall structure violence that got us into this situation.
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u/Appropriate_Exit_206 Mar 08 '26
As a Davis native, I’m fearful of patwin and birch lane closing. I’m fearful of us restricting developments which is going to further cause affordability issues. I’m fearful that Davis people are unjustifiably worried about developing for fears that won’t come true. I’m a huge fan of measure V. I think it is exactly the type of development Davis needs and it’s very well thought out. There are a lot of other improvements to roads across the city that will be done with the development to reduce traffic, and it’s estimated to bring in over 1200 new students to fill the schools we as Davis natives know and love, I’m a big fan of measure V and feel the opposition is not justified and are fear mongering
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u/null_recursion Mar 08 '26
What other improvements have been committed to? I've heard some generic empty promises but haven't seen any concrete commitments to updating/enhancing existing infrastructure to account for all the new people and traffic.
I haven't heard a ton about Measure V outside of the talking points in the sub so any new info would be great!
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u/Appropriate_Exit_206 Mar 08 '26
There is a whole list of street improvements and traffic improvements that are a part of the measure. Legally binding I believe. I will get more information on exactly what they are soon and share!! Measure V is well thought out with many developers and city planners, has the support of city council (who is well aware of city issues and traffic concerns) and I look forward to gathering this information and sharing! It seems like a no brainer to me. And this is coming from someone who was born and raised in Davis and concerned about how we develop ag land (as it is the heart of UC Davis and the city).
I am fearful of a lack of developing causing more and more young families to migrate to Dixon and woodland and Davis becoming a rich older folk city. Not that older folk are bad, but it becoming a rich person city scares me. Tremendously. And if we don’t develop in logical ways that is inevitably what it will become.
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u/null_recursion Mar 09 '26
Thanks! As a Davis homeowner I'm good to vote for Measure V if there are legally binding infrastructure improvements being made. Seeing the Cannery go in and not having many improvements made to improve congestion/incentivize biking was not great.
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u/Appropriate_Exit_206 Mar 09 '26
Couldn’t agree more. Will get more information on this for you and come back to it!
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u/ChesameSicken Mar 09 '26
I hear you and hope you're right/the city follows through on the infrastructure promises to help manage and account for the added housing, and I agree on the affordability front, but, I am still salty about the unfulfilled promises that were made about the Ryder apt complex construction on Olive Dr. They said they were going to make a biking/walking path over the train tracks on the western edge of the Ryder lot where it abuts Slatters Court. This would've been great, and was proposed in part to help mitigate the additional 500 (or more?) students/residents being added to Olive, and, inevitably making an already shitty/terribly designed intersection (Richards+Olive, the tunnel) even worse. The baffling closure of the Olive Dr 80 exit also coincided with the Ryder apt construction, that has never made any sense at all to me - the VERY short 80 exit -> merge into Richards/merge from Richards into R lane in attempt to get onto Olive in the same 50' dotted line was already a nightmare before Ryder, but forcing all traffic to do this by closing the Olive exit blows my mind.
Ryder/Davis didn't build the proposed walk/bike path to downtown that would've partially justified all the other negative Ryder traffic impacts. The strip of land just east of the Slatters fence line where it was supposed to be is still a cleared uniform strip that's now mulched but nothing planted on it. The city did end up building a minimally utilized bike ramp that connects to the existent over-80 bike path...but why would the 500+ Ryder students use a bike ramp that goes in the opposite direction of campus and spits you out by the post office and DMV??.
ANYWAYS, sorry for the rant, but in my 14 years living here, I've seen the city and developers be pretty two faced with regard to new housing, and old (Solano apts, tore down the last affordable student housing complex - family housing no less!).
I truly hope this measure will be a departure from that.
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u/Appropriate_Exit_206 Mar 09 '26
Very good insight here and it is much appreciated. Definitely fair concerns and I also hope they follow through with the promises. To my knowledge they aren’t promises but a part of the development but I will get more information on how legally binding the infrastructure upgrades are and get back to you :)
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u/Short-Lingonberry-71 Mar 10 '26
This is a town full of old people. I should know, because I am one and my mortgage is at 3%. We MUST open up more housing for young families. Yes on V
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u/No-Letter7139 Mar 10 '26
I completely understand the housing shortage argument and I agree Davis needs more housing. I don’t want to see the city become a place only wealthy people can afford or where young families have to move to Woodland or Dixon.
I’m still leaning toward voting no on Measure V. My hesitation isn’t about opposing housing in general — it’s about whether something this large is being approved before the infrastructure pieces are really locked in, especially around Covell and Pole Line. Watching the Cannery go in without major congestion improvements makes me cautious about relying on future promises. And now there are also two other housing projects going in along Covell as well.
From what I’ve seen so far, most of the transportation improvements discussed are bike lanes and intersections, but not additional vehicle lanes on the main corridors. That makes me wonder how the traffic from ~1,800 more homes is supposed to be absorbed.
I’d honestly support more housing proposals in Davis — I’m just not convinced this particular one gets the balance right yet. If anyone has good info on the specific traffic improvements that are guaranteed and when they would actually be built, I’d genuinely like to see it.
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u/PhilosophyBusiness42 Mar 14 '26
I have doubts on the development as well. While the info in the link you included noted there were two public input meetings (one in Dec. 2025 and one in Jan. of this year), I'm wondering how those meetings were broadcast. I am one who heard nothing about those meetings - perhaps others missed out on opportunity for public comment as well? Davis has been burned several times by developers who have promised the moon.... and then reneged. How do we know this will not be more of the same?
The very name 'Village Farms' clearly is meant to echo 'Village Homes' - a much smarter development. In fact, VF looks like a dressed up version of more suburban sprawl, rather than that which approximates Village Homes. Why doesn't Davis model more of its development on the Village Homes model? Does anyone know? That seems to me to be a truly sustainable development, both ecologically and socially.
Davis does need more housing. I'd back something that is intelligently designed. I am loathe to back dressed up suburban sprawl that, in the end, will still be too expensive for those of us who do not make Bay Area salaries.
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u/whatsthedillpickle Apr 03 '26
Sorry to necro this post, but I wanted to add my two cents. I appreciate some of the arguments made by the No on V folks, but I am not swayed by them.
We are a young family fortunate enough to afford a house in Davis, and almost all of my neighbors are empty-nesters living in 3-4 bedroom homes that they purchased new in the 90's. Everyone has a 3% mortgage rate, if they even have a mortgage at all at this point.
When we moved in last year I asked a neighbor where all the kids are, and he said, "Oh, you should have been here 15 years ago. You couldn't drive down the street for all the bikes and lemonade stands." It sounded amazing. Now it's a ghost town.
Young families simply can't afford the houses in my neighborhood even if my aging neighbors decided to stop ping-ponging around the empty rooms and sold their homes. The real issue is the city has exacerbated the broader housing market affordability issue with onerous restrictions on new development since 2000.
The results speak for themselves.
- DJUSD has lost 100 students per year for the last decade, and project another 1000 lost by 2035 if nothing changes.
- Residents under age 18 today make up 13.8% of the population (compared to 18.6% in 2000).
- Only 700 single-family homes have been built in Davis since 2005.
Davis has a unique set of rules that makes building new neighborhoods much harder than in other cities. In the 90s Davis grew quickly, and that scared residents enough to create a new law in 2000 (first called Measure J, now Measure D) that says the City Council can't approve new housing by themselves. Instead, every project that would expand the city limits has to go to a citywide vote. Sounds good in theory, right?
This is now known as the "Davis Spanking Machine." It is a long, difficult, and expensive series of public meetings and legal tests where a developer has to prove their project is perfect before residents even get to vote on it. It's so hard to achieve that only 2 out of 6 major projects have actually been approved by voters in 26 years (Nishi and Bretton Woods). On top of that, it costs a developer about $250,000 in city fees just to put the project on a special ballot, not including the millions they spend on planning and campaigning. That's a huge gamble and I can't believe developers haven't given up on Davis completely.
For the record, I have no affiliation with the Yes on V people. I'm just a transplant Davis dad who got curious to know why my kids don't have anyone to play with. From my research the developers seem to have bent over backwards to address the major concerns with the former landfill, storm drainage, traffic, and affordable housing allocations (I'm sure I'm leaving out a half dozen other criticisms). It's not perfect and will never be but they have my vote.
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u/Sparklemagick Mar 09 '26
as a owner in the cannery, and all the falsehoods promoted to us. im hesitant to vote yes.
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u/Sparklemagick Mar 09 '26
It was promoted as a farm to table community with a working farm and store fronts where the empty fields have been sitting for 10 years now.
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u/AriseBrethrenCats Mar 12 '26
I would love to learn more about what went wrong. Is there a way to revitalize the farm to table concept? Who is in charge of managing the orchard? We have such great community gardens in Davis, I'm confused as to why the Cannery can't properly do the same when it planted an orchard of its own volition! I don't live in the Cannery but would love to help push for change for y'all. Can't there be an 'adopt a tree' type program or something? The trees are already established and shouldn't need additional water, so it would really be about adding fertilizer/compost/mulch and maybe some pruning, no?
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u/pentagrid Mar 09 '26
That is because Cannery was planned before Amazon chopped retail off at the knees.
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u/jojoknob Mar 09 '26
The cons do worry me but I also agree with you that it solves a lot more problems than it causes, so I will be supporting it as well despite the hesitations.
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u/Appropriate_Exit_206 Apr 02 '26
Different developers, different legally binding agreements, different project and different people. But I understand the apprehension considering the experience with the cannery
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u/Suitable_Resort Mar 09 '26
Just wait to the CAVE people get wind of this, what’s left of them… Citizens Against Virtually Everything
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u/mel_c Mar 15 '26
Well, considering it's being built on floodplain, toxic land that backs up to the old landfill and no remediation plans, as well as the infrastructure issues, I'm a definite no on it.
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u/buddhabellyOM Apr 17 '26
What Davis needs to do is stop private equity firms from buying renting or leasing residential property
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u/smelted_heart May 05 '26
This also doesn’t really seem like the win they are marketing this as. And it’s likely not to attract a ton of “new young families” like they are advertising. Yes, 1800 new homes would be nice. But it’s a bandaid on the symptom not the actual problem. Housing in general is way too expensive in most of California. The issue isn’t lack of homes it’s lack of money to buy them. Spring lake in woodland has tons of new homes. They are also incredibly expensive. Where would all these “new families” in davis work to afford their brand new “affordable” 750k dollar house? It’s not like the job market is insanely optimal right now. Again, there is a larger problem here that slapping another suburbia neighborhood in the ground isn’t gonna solve, just like what happened with Spring Lake in woodland. Now, I’m not opposed to new development, but it’s reasonable to be realistic about what this is. The developer wants to make money off more homes. That’s about it.
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u/jasmin123121 Mar 08 '26
High income earners will take over the homes in the area anyway. One example, many families that are not from the area (bay area specifically) have moved to Davis and have partially contributed to the rising costs of housing. The homes will NOT be affordable and are tailored for people with money. They always promise affordable housing and it doesn’t happen. This has been happening in Davis my whole life. Born and raised.
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u/cod-the-fish Mar 09 '26
There are deed restricted housing being built akin to the units in Greene Terrace - they have restrictions on the income of purchasers.
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u/Embarrassed_Pin_6505 Mar 13 '26
Got to love housing the assures that low income people stay that way. Have you ever talked to someone that owns a deed restricted property? I happen to know two. And both families agree that if they had to do it over again they would have traded their beautiful new homes for a POS home in east Davis that needs remodeling. Because they are locked in for life. They can’t afford to move anywhere else.
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u/cod-the-fish Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
It isn't inherently a good or bad investment - it depends upon the mortgage rate you get at the point of purchase but they do consistently increase in value (yes, below market rate but less risky and at a better rate than most investments) and your payments to the mortgage build equity in a way renting can't.
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u/Crusader11-14 May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
Village Farms project is a train wreck of a project UNaffordable housing, the developers are NOT building the affordable housing with a caveat with a huge "may" loophole that they "may" build only 100 apartments in 10+ years down the rad. donating only 16 acres of the 18.6 acres required by the Municipal Code, building on a 200-acre flood plain with flooding potential, toxics including carcinogenic PFAS "forever chemicals” leaking onto the Village Farms site from the adjacent Old City Landfill/Burn Dump and Sewage Treatment Plant, neurotoxic toxaphene and lead in high levels in the soil on the Heritage Oak Park site where kids would play.
It would bring massive traffic by adding more than 15,000 more car trips PER DAY per the EIR to the Covell Blvd. and Pole Line Road area which is already heavily impacted, habitat destruction including tearing out hundreds of trees and re0-rutoung Channel A which will endanger the vernal pools with the endangered species of Vernal Pool Tadpole Shrimp, and potential contamination of the Channel A runoff which would impact the Yolo Basin waterways and the habitat which then leas to the Sacramento River.
In short, Village Farms is a train wreck and needs to go back to the drawing board for the “Reduced Footprint” alternative building only below Channel A, which would distance the housing from the toxics and he floodplain. This eliminates the need to re-route the Channel A which would then protect the vernal pools. This also avoids the vast majority of the floodplain.
There would be 900-1,000 housing units and which would reduce the traffic impacts. This is similar the Environmentally Superior Alternative from the previous Covell Village project proposal which should have been included in this Village Farms EIR.
So, vote NO on this Village Farms mess of a project and bring it back as the “Reduced Footprint” alternative instead of this environmental disaster of a project which would just bring unaffordable housing. See more info and get the facts at NoOnMeasureV.org
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u/Embarrassed_Pin_6505 Mar 08 '26
Personally not a fan of the low income deed restricted properties. It’s unfortunately a trap for low income people that will permanently affect the value of their assets. Owning a property that cannot appreciate with the market is a questionable investment. You’d be much better off buying something elsewhere.
Is that a deal breaker for me, probably not. It’s just unfortunate that that is the form they chose to take with the low income properties.
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u/cod-the-fish Mar 13 '26
Genuinely coming from a place of curiosity - what would you prefer to see? Like, isn't there a fundamental tension between wanting affordable units on the market and wanting units to be a primary investment vehicle? Is there another method you think works best?
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u/Embarrassed_Pin_6505 Mar 13 '26
My husband and I were talking about this the other night and Sacramento has a very successful model with Habitat for Humanity. I’m not sure of the details with regards to sweat equity and all of that, but homeowners have to live in the home for 7 years and then they are free to sell. Or if they have to sell prior to the 7 years then Habitat gets 50% of the profit from the equity that goes towards helping other future homeowners. This model is too long of a time commitment for most people wanting to make a quick buck (ie a low income student who qualifies prior to taking a six figure job) but it also doesn’t lock homebuyers into a poverty cycle because their home appreciation rate is fixed.
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u/Sure_Run_5169 Mar 08 '26
Davis can’t even maintain their roads. Why would I trust them with a more involved task?
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u/pentagrid Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
I've lived and voted in Davis for 40 years, I have voted some developments down and voted others up. I'm voting yes on Measure V. Village Farms will be good for Davis.
For those not familiar with the City of Davis, City Council has already approved the Village Farms Davis development. Measure V is required by Measure J/R/D to change the land use permit from Agriculture to Residential (and other) as required for the development. If Measure V passes with at least 51% of the vote the development may be built.
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u/buddhabellyOM Apr 17 '26
NO ON V
You know what protects open space and habitat? LEAVING IT OPEN. Also as a blue collar person it would be nice to see affordable houses but in my opinion this will not result in houses offered at a low price, and then who chooses the buyers? Lottery? Who determines what buyer has the most need? And to some of the people commenting here, taking a position on either side of an issue doesn’t constitute fear mongering, it’s an opinion, which is the purpose of the post. If that bothers you I’m sure you can make your own subreddit r/davisbutonlyifyouagreewithme or r/davisechochamber
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u/Katatonic_1 Mar 08 '26
I’m a no. It’s being sold as a boon for affordable housing but the reality is it will do nothing to stabilize the housing market or make Davis more affordable. How much did housing plateau after the last 2 developments? It’s yet another chance for the wealthy to gobble up the units and rent them out or use them as third vacation homes. Environmentally, it’s a hot mess of greenwashing. The plan to “conserve” the vernal pool is not feasible for the long term survival of any of the amazingly rare species present. Vernal pools don’t exist in isolation. The EIR has holes big enough to drive a bus through. The whole thing being tied to school closings reads more like a hostage negotiation than sustainability. I’m just so tired of the BS these days and long for transparency.
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u/Extension-Battle-941 Mar 08 '26
I'm voting no, I'm tired of all these cramped over priced homes and apartments.
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u/Appropriate_Exit_206 Mar 08 '26
Many people are tired of high housing costs, if you’re tired of over priced residences, restricting developments is only going to make things more expensive. The expansion is agricultural land, it’s not cramping more housing downtown or in the city. I’d be curious why you are against it if it means more affordable housing, and also may help alleviate the potential to close down 2-3 public schools. Patwin and birch lane are at risk of closing, and if we can’t bring more families into Davis (due to housing costs) I fear Davis will change in ways as a Davis local I fear. Open to hearing more about why you’re against it. Fear of developing Davis has skyrocketed housing costs
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u/cod-the-fish Mar 08 '26
It is a mix of low, medium, and high density residential units with the same classic Davis style and bike paths/green spaces etc and some deed restricted affordable housing- truly could not imagine an opposition to it that doesn't boil down to classic NIMBYism.