10 year Davis resident here, with generally quite Yimby tendencies. I would support something like this, as we do absolutely need more (and if possible) cheaper housing in town for students. The university is the whole reason the town exists and it's just not healthy to make it prohibitive for students to live here, while at the same time force university staff to live in cheaper surrounding towns and then commute in and out, in my opinion.<p>But I do have to be realistic, the Nimby feelings in this town are VERY strong. Everybody who buys a house here seems to feel the town should stay exactly the way it was on the day after they arrived, without any recognition of how blinkered that is. The legal fight against something like this would be intense, to say the least. It would require a developer with great lawyers, very deep pockets and the thickest of skins.
> "Because most developers are playing a repeated game with cities, housing applications have historically relied on a lot of goodwill to get through the planning process, and they haven't wanted to upset the apple cart for one big and uncertain return. So there is room for a brash outsider who doesn't care what people or planning staff in Davis think about them."<p>Thankfully, some developers are starting to become more aggressive. At some point you have to decide that appeasement is more trouble than it's worth, and there is untapped potential for developers who will target pro-housing exceptions rather than try to work with the normal planning bureaucracy. <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-project-is-using-state-laws-16375684.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-p...</a>
I'm kind of sick of skyscrapers personally, unless they're necessary, which they are sometimes. An argument for skyscrapers depends on their being a lack of available real estate that could otherwise be used to build many multi-rise or multi-family buildings, but often that space is taken up by parking lots. Take out the fucking surface parking lots, replace them with 5 story tall, pretty to look at and live in buildings, surround them with cafes and stuff and narrow the roads, then talk to me about skyscrapers. While you're at it, give people incentive to upgrade their single family lots to be more productive, and you might create a vibrant community, which you don't really get with skyscrapers as much.<p>You could build a skyscraper in the middle of my dumb suburban wasteland of the neighborhood I grew up in, but why the hell would I live there when the businesses are all off-the-shelf franchises with giant dusty shitty lots and nobody around to talk to.<p>Hell, build a skyscraper and surround it by the things I mentioned, that's cool too.
Kevin (the author) and I worked together around 10 years ago at Atlassian. It’s always great to see his blog posts here!<p>This one rings home because I moved from SF to Davis during the pandemic. I attended UC Davis around 15 years ago and moved back because it’s a great place to race a family.<p>I would like to see more infill development here. It’s a shame that so many smart and successful people that work here can’t afford to buy homes here.<p>I’ve toyed around with the idea of building multi-family housing here. Generally, there are easier places to make money in real estate but I would feel pretty good about making something like this happen.<p>Crazier things have happened, but if there are other HN readers that would like to chat more about this idea I’ll put my email address in my profile if it’s not there already. I’ve become friends with the realtor that helped me buy a house here (Tanner Mohr) - we’ve previously talked about getting a small group of people together for projects like this. So far we looked at one empty lot, but the seller already had plans for something like I had in mind.<p>Personally I don’t think I could stomach the risk of trying to build something huge here. That sort of speaks to the point Kevin is making about nimbyism. I certainly wouldn’t want my money tied up in a legal fight. But I could imagine more 4-5 story condos close to campus and downtown doing well here.
The pro move, at least with a similar law in Massachusetts, is for the developer to threaten a ridiculous skyscraper with 20% low income housing, and then negotiate with the town to instead, out of the grace of their heart, build a more reasonable all market rate building.
Off-topic but I love Davis. It has a smaller-town vibe but is close enough to Downtown Sac that one can go over there for a night out. The local politics are more to my lean than anywhere equidistantly east of Sacramento. It's extremely bike-friendly (most students bike around the town). It's also a little closer to the Bay which is nice for day trips.
Munger should move his dorm from UCSB to UCD<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29130378" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29130378</a>
Not related but in Italy, not too far from my city there is Cesenatico. A small turistic sea city of 26K inhabitants with a skyscraper (from late sixties). <a href="https://www.google.it/maps/@44.2011112,12.4049907,3a,90y,144.61h,101.72t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4_1X04vt6rAezL9A4ISd9w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.it/maps/@44.2011112,12.4049907,3a,90y,144...</a>
It's a solitarie brute tall building but segnale the city center from very far like a Lighthouse
You might want to think twice about the future of the Davis housing market. Remote learning is changing how students get degrees and UC schools are no exception. Online and "hybrid" classes are here to stay at every level. Who wouldn't want a morning class when all you have to do is roll over and open your laptop? This is going to seriously impact demand for housing in Davis. I'd wait and see how enrollments and housing patterns settle out before planning any project.
I can just imagine developers lining up for a decade long legal fight with bonus character assassination in the press for the chance to build impractically expensive housing (that still has to abide by a whole bunch of other restrictions) and then give 20% away below cost.
I take issue with a hard 20% cap on low income units. I'm not against low-income units in general but in practice this is the same exact policy that lead to less affordable housing in SF as a whole. Because these caps were set as hard limits (without equivalent caps on commercial developments) people built office buildings instead of housing which made the problem worse overall...<p>compare this to a city like Boston where these caps are negotiated and set on a per development basis. As a result, while each new residential building may have proportionally less low-income units, boston as a whole has more affordable units available for rent since more housing was built in the first place due to the flexibility of these caps.<p>I was born and raised in CA, but for the progressive a state we claim to be, some of these policies are down right counterproductive (despite having great intentions) and should be revisited.<p>* my source here is I used to rent an apartment from the head of affordable housing commission in boston. If there is published materials that contradict this please correct me!
And Redondo Beach!? I feel like they buried the lead here. Davis is nice and all but Redondo Beach is nearly twice the price per square foot since it's close to LA and ... on the beach!
In Denmark a billionaire wanted to build a 320m skyscraper - the tallest in western europe - in the small town Brande (population 7000). <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/apr/01/like-the-eye-of-sauron-western-europes-tallest-building-planned-for-tiny-danish-town-brande-bestseller" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/apr/01/like-the-eye-...</a><p>It was however shelved recently.
For anyone who doesn't know the term (I didn't), NIMBY[0] stands for "not in my backyard" and refers to people who are anti-development/change close to them.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY?wprov=sfti1" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY?wprov=sfti1</a>
Genuinely curious if you could make more money as a developer purposefully pissing off zoning authorities in California rather than trying to keep them happy. The state has such a long history of purposefully trying to stop development that it doesn’t seem to me like playing nice is a successful strategy.
Sure, there's no density-based law, but you could just make the fire egress rules onerous and there'd be an army of disingenuous people arguing that you don't care about safety. Here's a quick one: every building under 3 stories must have two independent egress mechanisms, for every story taller they must have one additional egress path per story.<p>Done.<p>There are no loopholes for you because you are not a friend. The system intentionally is all based on human to human trust because that allows complete discretion, and therefore abuse. You can't rules lawyer it. They will simply wait you out because they pick the wait period and they're paid to wait and you pay to wait.
Fair housing... I just don't think it's very useful or even fair. I don't like it that I paid solid money and worked for years to pay off my debts whereas the neighbor lives in a similar appartment for free. Why not allow cities to drop that requirement if they go over the norm by 50%?
We need more housing at all levels. I don't think mandatory low income housing is a scalable solution and instead just raises the prices on the other units exacerbating the problem. Let supply meet demand.
Though no one has tried this yet, there is a loop-hole in the Davis law that says very tall buildings are legal anywhere. The author wants a brash, no holds bared kind of real estate investor to push the boundaries and try this for real.
Giant towers full of low-income housing is actually something we've tried before. Over and over. <a href="https://newsone.com/1555245/most-infamous-public-housing-projects/" rel="nofollow">https://newsone.com/1555245/most-infamous-public-housing-pro...</a>