(Contains Al content, as in “Al”, short for Alan. Short for Alan C. Miller. Content. Well ok, I did use A.I. for the illustration, because I can’t draw that fast, or at all. But the Vanguard uses A.I. illustrations too, so neener neener)
There is something wonderfully Davis #cough,gag# about publishing an opinion piece accusing your neighbors (do you even live in Davis, oh author?) of being too old, too wealthy, too white and too male, while declining to tell those neighbors who you are that is accusing them. The Vanguard’s August 9 op-ed, “The Face of NIMBYism in Davis – Old, Rich, and Mostly Male, White, and Retired” [https://davisvanguard.org/2026/08/measure-v-opposition-demographics/] is credited simply to “Vanguard Administrator.” Who the heck writes an “Op Ed” under the cover of anonymity? And what media outlet permits it? The Davis Vanguard, that’s who!
That deserves a pause from us all. This is an opinion piece about a local housing election. It concerns zoning, development and the political behavior of people who live near a proposed subdivision. We are not dealing with organized crime. Nobody is reporting from inside a cartel. There is no threat to be had from deeply-held international political divides. Deep Throat has not returned to tell us where Davis hid the missing duplexes (pardon the old people reference, young people). Yet the author apparently requires anonymity.
Why?
If you are prepared to identify local residents, examine their ages, look up where they live, estimate the value and square footage of their homes, classify them by sex and race, and then use those characteristics to make a political argument about them, putting your own name on the article seems like a fairly modest request. Instead, the reader gets “Vanguard Administrator.” That is particularly striking because the article is extraordinarily interested in everybody else’s identity.
The central argument begins with a perfectly reasonable observation. Opposition to Measure V was stronger in neighborhoods close to the proposed Village Farms development. The Vanguard calls this a “neighborhood effect” and connects it to NIMBYism. Well, yes. People tend to pay more attention to things happening near their homes. A family living next to a proposed development is likely to care more about its traffic effects than somebody living three miles away. People near a proposed stadium worry more about parking. People near a nightclub care more about noise. People near a freeway expansion care more about the freeway expansion, especially if it takes their home or will be right over the sound wall. This mysterious phenomenon is sometimes known outside urban-planning departments as being a reasonable human person who lives somewhere.
There is nothing morally defective about having the characteristics of a human being concerned about their home and their life quality. Village Farms would have directly changed the environment surrounding particular neighborhoods. Residents there had every reason to examine those changes closely. They were entitled to conclude that the benefits outweighed the costs. They were equally entitled to conclude otherwise. Apparently that explanation lacks sufficient ideological horsepower. So the mysterious author goes demographic hunting.
We learn the average age of opponents. We learn their gender. We learn whether they are retired. Their addresses are matched with Zillow estimates so we can learn how expensive their houses are and how many square feet they contain. The article eventually announces its discovery:
“This information certainly reinforces the stereotype of NIMBYs in Davis.”
And there it is. The stereotype was apparently the destination all along, and the article an ends in a divisive means, the politics of envy, and resentment. A strategy all too effective in today’s toxic political climate.
The Zillow Theory of Political Legitimacy
There is an especially odd bit of class politics involved in declaring somebody “comparatively rich” because Zillow says the Davis house in which that person lives is worth a million dollars. Anyone familiar with California real estate should immediately see the problem. An older Davis resident may have bought a perfectly ordinary house decades ago. The subsequent explosion in California housing prices can turn that house into a seven-figure asset on paper without turning its occupant into Thurston Howell III (pardon the old people reference, young people). The article itself emphasizes that these people are old and retired. That makes using current home values as a proxy for wealth even more questionable.
Then there is the wonderfully circular quality of the analysis. Older people are more likely to own homes. Retired people have more time to participate in civic campaigns. People with disposable income are more likely to make political donations. People living closest to a major development are more likely to organize around it. Collect enough perfectly ordinary facts about civic participation and California housing, arrange them beneath a provocative headline, and suddenly we have exposed the sinister face of “NIMBYism”. Otherwise known as a rational being having an almost human nature. Except for a few weird people who would gladly have a seven-story apartment build on stilts on a raised platform over their detached house with a yard to assuage their guilt for being ‘privileged’ in their own mind.
The racial component of the anonymous op-ed is stranger yet. Davis has a historically “white appearing” population, particularly among its older residents. Discovering that a small collection of older Davis political activists contains many “white” people tells us very little about why Measure V failed (unless you started with your conclusion and worked backwards, oh dear anonymous author). More importantly, the article acknowledges that it does not know the demographics of the people who actually voted No. That should have been a rather important warning label. Especially if one believes in ‘Science!’.
Instead, characteristics of ballot argument signers, large donors and members of one organization gradually become the basis for describing “the demographics of the No on Measure V supporters.” Those are different populations. A campaign’s donors and public advocates are not a scientific sample of its voters. Nor does showing that people near a project organized against it establish that age, race, sex or wealth caused their opposition. The voters themselves were never asked by Sir Anne Non Nomis.
Identity Politics, Now Available in Planning Departments
There is an unpleasant political method at work here. Rather than seriously engaging the objections to a development, classify the people making them. Old. White. Male. Wealthy. Retired. A very Vanguard Administrator thing to do. Once those labels have been attached, the policy argument begins to acquire a moral hierarchy (if you buy that type of banana nut muffin). Certain people become perceived as less sympathetic participants in democracy because of who they are and what they own.
That is crude class politics dressed up as demographic analysis. It also creates a convenient escape hatch from discussing the actual project. Concerns about traffic, infrastructure, neighborhood impacts, agricultural land or the particulars of Village Farms can be transformed into a story about “privileged people protecting themselves”. Yeah, right.
And notice how selectively this lens tends to operate. If demographic characteristics are relevant evidence about the moral legitimacy of one side of a development fight, consistency requires examining the other side exactly the same way. Who owns the land? Who stands to profit? What are their ages, races and genders? How much are their homes worth? How large are those homes? What are their personal net worths? Presumably we could plug those address into Zillow and settle Davis land-use policy once and for all. (Note: Please don’t!)
The absurdity of the arguments becomes clearer when the same demographic brush can readily paint people on the pro-development side, including prominent defenders of the Vanguard’s argument and people financially associated with development. Being an old, white human with substantial means apparently carries considerably different analytical significance depending upon which box those analyzed check on Measure V. That suggests the demographic categories aren’t doing much scientific analysis. They’re doing rhetorical work.
What’s Wrong With Davis?
There is another theme lurking around this argument that has become tiresome in local growth debates: Davis itself is somehow defective. The residents are selfish. They fear change. They have theirs and want to deny everyone else. The city is supposedly stagnating while enlightened neighboring communities embrace growth and progress. It is an extraordinary way to talk about a community in which people have voluntarily chosen to live, sometimes for decades. And also a pretty stupid argument if one has ever seen Orange County and what happens when an area paves over all its agriculture.
Davis certainly has problems. Housing costs are high. Development is difficult. Infrastructure needs money. The city has made plenty of questionable planning decisions. That does not make its residents a pathology requiring diagnosis. People like Davis. That is one reason housing here is expensive. Part of liking a place is liking its people, but I guess for some that means all the people except those they consider in the ‘privileged’ demographic — or in other words: most of Davis.
People are protective of places they like. Sometimes they are too protective. Sometimes their fears prove unfounded. Sometimes developers make good proposals and neighbors oppose them for lousy reasons. And sometimes neighbors have legitimate objections. All of these concerns come also from people not deemed ‘privileged’ by our Anonymous Author.
Democracy requires sorting those things out through argument. It becomes considerably less healthy when political disagreements are converted into demographic indictments and the implied need for cancellation of one side. The side Theynonymous has deemed the ‘wrong’ side.
And Again About That Anonymous Author
Which brings us back to our mysterious “Vanguard Administrator”. The ‘author!’ apparently believes age matters. Race matters. Gender matters. Wealth matters. Retirement status matters. Home value matters. Square footage matters.
Fine.
Who are you? How old are you? What is your demographic background? Do you own a home? What is it worth? How large is it? How close do you live to proposed development? Do you have any financial, professional or organizational relationships relevant to Davis housing politics? Or the development itself? Those questions follow naturally from the author’s own analytical framework.
The Vanguard has oft defended the need to allow some to be anonymous while insisting that all commenters use their real name, except when it says so, or to protect people when it involves sensitive topics that may put them at risk. But sorry Charlie, I mean DG, doing a demographic ‘study’ on voter housing policy demographics isn’t the kind of thing that is going to get one’s tires slashed in Davis. So what is the excuse here?
We could, instead, abandon this demographic nonsense altogether and debate housing proposals on their merits. That seems preferable to the rational among us. There is nothing shameful about being old (but you tried, oh Anonymous Author). There is nothing scandalous about having bought a house that appreciated in value. Being retired does not invalidate a political opinion. Neither race nor sex tells us whether somebody’s traffic analysis is correct. And living near a proposed development gives a person a perfectly rational reason to care intensely about what gets built there.
The great irony of the Vanguard article is that it sets out to expose prejudice in Davis development politics and winds up constructing an argument almost entirely built on stereotypes. Brought to you by: Anonymous.
Again, on what media planet do people write Op-Eds and not sign them, and what blog would ever except that? The Davis Effing Vanguard: That’s Who! That’s Who! If someone wants to make these accusations in a local opinion column, they should at least have the nerve to sign it.
First the Vanguard unceremoniously drops comments after two decades of bountiful community discussion, and now the Vanguard don’t even have authors willing to say who they are on articles about a subject as flat as voter housing policy demographics.
But why bother identifying yourself — when everyone else in the article has already been identified, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
Pffffffft!
Davisite 
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