Say no(p)e to this Davis sprawl

By Fraser Shilling | Special to The Enterprise | October 15, 2009 08:34

When I see the XXL houses in South Davis, Wildhorse and Mace Ranch, I feel sorry for the people living there. They have bought into this unsustainable idea that living extra-large is somehow a good thing, when all evidence points to that kind of lifestyle choice resulting in an impoverished world and loss of their own happiness.

In a different way, I also feel for the students, parents of students and working people in Davis who are struggling to make all those frayed ends meet. I wonder how people will survive economic decline and find a reasonable place to live.

It’s at times like these that I would consider building affordable housing somewhere convenient to Davis’ amenities; housing that is sustainable in terms of size; and housing that doesn’t sit on top of our declining agricultural lands. Unfortunately, the newest proposed measure (P) for housing in Davis does none of these things.

As a reminder, voting for Measure P would allow the construction of one- to three- story houses and apartments next to those big Wildhorse houses on the edge of town. A couple hundred of these big boxes would fit onto postage-stamp parcels formerly known as horse pasture.

Now, I don’t ride horses anymore (though my kids do) and I don’t farm. But I take an awful lot of pleasure in seeing that place on the edge of town, providing a gentle transition from the crowded rooftops of Wildhorse to the open plains of tomato fields. I like seeing the horses, jack rabbits, ground squirrels, coyotes and hawks that call that open field home, or are just passing through.

I must admit to having been a bit on the fence on Measure P because of the bright and shiny promises that developer Parlin LLC was making – promises that were backed up by people who had worked on environmental issues before. But what made me take that bright and shiny hook out of my mouth and really crystallized my thinking was seeing that the Sierra Club chapter is supporting it.

They claim that a big chunk of the land is already developed (by a house and barn), that an unenforceable 90 percent greenhouse gas reduction will take place (not counting all those cars driving to Sacramento), that it is bike- and pedestrian-accessible to shopping (really, how many people on the edge of town ride their bikes to the middle?), and that it is ‘urban infill’ (wow, I’m not even sure what to say).

I won’t go into the all the lobbying that Parlin and some local politicos must have done to get this backing from the Sierra Club, but it made me glad I dropped that particular membership a while back.

The bottom line is that Measure P will allow a developer with no track record here in town to make big, green promises that attempt to make up for the fact that we are being asked to support another sprawling subdivision of unaffordable houses on the edge of town.

With the continuing build-out of existing permitted development, we have no legal or moral obligation to add more houses, especially on the agricultural edge. And with the monster West Village development, all we will end up with is current taxpayers subsidizing even more sprawl and losing more property value.

But as I started this story, the thing that really gets me is that these houses are not affordable and don’t meet Davis’ main needs. I have a pretty good job at UC Davis and with my spouse, our dual income puts us in the vaguely defined middle class. But I could not afford the $450,000 to $500,000 average house in this new development. I doubt that I could afford (or fit my family into) the smaller end of the range either.

This development and the measure that would allow it to happen are not the right fit for Davis any more than Covell Village was (remember Measure X?). Please come out to the polls in November and help vote it down. Hopefully, that will send the message that new housing has to be green and affordable to be sustainable.

- The author is an environmental scientist at UC Davis who studies wildlife movement, water quality and ways that we can live more sustainably on the Earth.