If UC Irvine can produce affordable on-campus student housing, so can UCD

Mesa Towers, UC Irvine: three 6-story buildings, opened Fall 2016, houses 800+ students

By Eileen Samitz

As a follow up to the recent excellent article by Roberta Millstein on the need for UCD to build far more on- campus student housing, I wanted to add to this subject and a few more points which were raised at the Oct. 22 City Council meeting regarding the UC finance overview presentation.

To begin with, I completely agree with Roberta’s key message that our community needs to keep pressing UCD to build far more on-campus housing than the City-UCD MOU is trying to get away with, 2) much higher density housing on campus needs to be built than UCD is building, and 3) the projects need to be built sooner than later and not dragged out until 2033 as the MOU allows for at least 3,000 of the 6,000 beds to be provided by UCD.

With UCD having 5,300 acres with a 900-acre campus. UCD is the largest UC in the system. However, UCD is unwilling to provide at least 50% on-campus housing like the other UCs have committed to. Why not?

Further, UCD had its second biggest fundraising ever this past year, raising $234 million dollars. Yet, why isn’t any of it going towards helping to building far more, and higher density housing on-campus as it is fully capable of?

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By Maria Usacheva

In view of concerns raised about a proposed homeless shelter in Davis I’d like to share this piece that I wrote a while ago but never shared with anyone. I think it’s time. The issue of homelessness is much more complex than what I could ever depict in this extremely oversimplified essay. I also believe that all feelings and attitudes toward the homeless are valid, as they are culturally- and experience-based. So, the only reason I’m sharing this essay is to offer another perspective.

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Council Members,

Unfortunately, the city council district mapping process is backwards. The boundaries are merely being drawn by a mapper based on the mapper’s own unguided sense of what constitutes a “neighborhood.”  The criteria for defining a neighborhood and determining how to draw the boundaries for those neighborhoods should have been defined by the city council in advance of drawing any maps.

By selecting the rules first, we simplify the decision process, streamline any future updates (next year?), and minimize political mischief.

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By Jon Li

When Davis was forced to “district elections” in July, it changed all the rules of the political game for the 1% who pay attention to everything, and the 5% who are involved in an ongoing basis.

Brett Lee and Lucas Frerichs were gearing up for their third terms.  They have had to pull back and be in the middle of the decision about the district boundaries.

The only argument I can see for 7 districts is that it guarantees Lucas a seat in a district independent of Brett.  (In some of the 5 seat maps, Lucas and Brett would be in the same district and have to run against each other.)

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UCD needs far more on-campus housing

Rare opportunity to testify at today's Tuesday City Council Oct. 22, at 6pm meeting to testify for the need for far more UCD on-campus student housing at Community Chambers at 23 Russell Blvd

By Eileen Samitz

For the vast majority of the community who were not informed in time to attend the community “Town Hall” 2X2X2 City Council-County Supervisor-UCD meeting this past Thursday, here is a rare opportunity to testify directly to UCD.

Unfortunately, the “Town Hall” meeting to address the UCD housing was held, not in town, but at a remote and inconvenient location on the UCD campus at 6:30 until only 8pm. As a result few community members were able to attend. The meeting was ended early by Vice Chancellor Ratliff and no questions were allowed, although an attendee requested a questions section.

So today, Tuesday Oct. 22nd is a rare opportunity to address UCD on this issue at the City Council meeting. Usually, you are allowed 3 minutes (sometimes less) to testify on an item when it comes up on the agenda.

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By Colin Walsh

On Thursday 10/17 UCD, the City of Davis, and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors held a public meeting to discuss housing. Both the Enterprise and the Vanguard blog have written about it, but here is a list of 10 significant or interesting points that have been left out of those articles.

1) This was not a “Town Hall” style meeting despite being characterized as such (see May, Lee and Saylor’s oped ). This meeting was held in a traditional public meeting format, with limited public comments in the beginning, then speeches made by the panelists from UCD, City of Davis and Yolo County Supervisors. The last speakers final slide said "Questions?" in bold letters, but was quickly taken off the screen. At the end of the meeting Vice Chancellor Ratcliff noted the meeting was ending early. At that point I very politely asked if the panel would be willing to take questions. VC Ratcliff stated that no questions would be taken. By comparison the October 14 Congressman Garamendi Town Hall had over 1½ hours of Q & A.

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