Opinion | Village Farms Debate Exposes Davis’s Deep-Seated Housing Crisis

By David Greenwald June 1, 2026

For the better part of six months the Davis community has debated the Village Farms proposal from nearly every conceivable angle.

During that time, opponents of Village Farms have raised a long list of objections.

The problem with this process is that we are asking the average voter – many of whom have paid scant attention to the issues of housing in Davis and the housing crisis overall.

As such many of the same claims continue to be repeated long after the evidence has been presented. Again and again, the public debate has featured alarming rhetoric untethered from the findings of environmental review, planning analysis, housing data, and the testimony of experts. 

The result has been more heat than light and a campaign that increasingly relies on fear rather than facts. 

What stands out to me after six months of reporting is that much of this debate proceeds as though it were still the year 2000. Many opponents continue to assume that Davis can reject major housing projects indefinitely without consequence, that the state will remain a passive observer, and that local voters will retain complete control over growth decisions regardless of housing production. 

We have argued that whatever people see as the relative strengths and weaknesses of this project, those assumptions no longer hold. 

The opposition’s approach has not really been to advance a single coherent argument against Village Farms.

Instead, it has been a kind of spaghetti strategy: throw every conceivable concern at the project simultaneously and hope that enough uncertainty accumulates to defeat it.

From traffic and flooding to contamination, farmland, affordability, infrastructure, schools, habitat, home prices, and developer trust, opponents have presented nearly every conceivable objection to the project.

Any one of these issues, opponents suggest, should be enough to vote no. 

The problem is that the evidence often points in a different direction.

Take housing need.

Davis has added roughly 2,800 housing units since 2009 – but only 805 of those are family housing units. 

Most of those units have come recently and have been concentrated in student-oriented apartment developments such as Nishi, Lincoln40, Ryder on Olive Drive, and Sterling Apartments.

Meanwhile, Davis has built remarkably little family housing.

The result has been predictable. Families increasingly struggle to remain in Davis. Teachers, city employees, health care workers, and young professionals often find themselves priced out of the community. Adult children raised in Davis frequently cannot afford to return.

At the same time, the Davis Joint Unified School District faces a steady decline in enrollment.

District officials have repeatedly warned that declining enrollment threatens the financial stability of local schools and may ultimately force school closures. 

District officials have repeatedly warned that declining enrollment threatens the long-term viability of local schools and may ultimately force school closures. While several factors contribute to enrollment trends, the evidence increasingly points to one dominant cause: Davis has not built enough family housing. 

If Davis were to produce housing at levels consistent with its RHNA obligations, much of the enrollment crisis would likely be alleviated. 

Village Farms and Willowgrove are among the few proposed developments specifically designed to bring substantial numbers of family-oriented homes to Davis. Taken together, they represent the kind of housing production the city has largely failed to provide for the past two decades. 

Opponents frequently argue that many of the homes in Village Farms will be too expensive for the average family. That observation misses a more important question: what happens if the project is rejected?

Davis did not become one of California’s least affordable housing markets because it built too much housing. It became expensive because it built too little. Every year the city fails to add sufficient housing, demand continues to outstrip supply and prices continue to rise.

The relevant comparison is not between Village Farms and some hypothetical world in which thousands of affordable homes magically appear. The relevant comparison is between Village Farms and the status quo. Measured against the status quo, adding housing makes affordability better than it otherwise would be. Rejecting housing makes affordability worse.

Equally important, many opponents appear to assume that if Village Farms fails, a better project will simply emerge in its place. That assumption deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.

There is no line of developers waiting to propose large-scale family housing in Davis. There is no evidence that rejecting Village Farms will produce a smaller, cheaper, more environmentally perfect project with more affordable housing and fewer impacts. In fact, the city’s recent history suggests the opposite. Failed projects often result in years of delay, continued housing shortages, and no housing at all.

Voters are not choosing between Village Farms and a hypothetical ideal project. They are choosing between Village Farms and uncertainty. They are choosing between adding nearly 1,800 homes and hundreds of affordable units or continuing a pattern of underproduction that has already contributed to rising housing costs, declining school enrollment, and growing state pressure on the city to meet its housing obligations.

That is the reality that often gets lost in the debate. Saying no does not preserve the status quo. It produces consequences of its own.

But that criticism confuses the broader housing problem.

No one seriously believes that building 1,800 homes instantly creates affordability. Housing markets do not work that way. The question is whether adding supply improves conditions compared with adding no supply at all.

California housing experts, economists, state officials, and increasingly even editorial boards across the political spectrum have reached the same conclusion: communities facing severe housing shortages must build more housing.

The real choice facing Davis is not between an imperfect project and a perfect one. It is between building enough housing to begin addressing long-standing problems or continuing the policies that helped create them. 

Since 2000, Davis has largely chosen scarcity.

The results are visible everywhere.

Home prices have climbed beyond the reach of many middle-income households. Rent burdens remain severe. Employers struggle to recruit workers. Young families leave. Students crowd into limited rental stock.

Against that backdrop, opponents continue to insist that Davis can somehow solve its housing challenges without building significant new housing – and given that the city has largely exhausted its infill supply – a lot of that housing is going to have to be on the periphery.

Traffic is another area where rhetoric has often outpaced evidence.

Opponents frequently cite figures such as 15,000 daily vehicle trips as though they represent an unprecedented transportation catastrophe.

But transportation planners evaluate impacts based on actual roadway performance, not raw trip numbers.

The Environmental Impact Report examined traffic conditions extensively and identified mitigation measures intended to maintain acceptable operations at study intersections. 

More importantly, much of the congestion experienced on Covell Boulevard today is not generated by new housing developments but by regional commuting patterns and through traffic.

If anything our land use policies have made traffic worse – not better.

Adding housing near jobs and services can reduce regional vehicle miles traveled even when it generates local trips.

That point gets lost in campaign rhetoric.

Flooding concerns have likewise become a central talking point.

The existence of floodplain acreage on the site is not disputed. Neither is the need for significant flood protection infrastructure.

The flooding issue is often presented as though Village Farms faces a catastrophic flood risk, when in reality the concern involves relatively shallow surface flooding that can be addressed through standard mitigation measures routinely used in California development. 

The project’s environmental review process examined those issues in considerable detail. Federal, state, and local agencies all participate in reviewing flood management requirements.

The same is true regarding environmental contamination.

Opponents have repeatedly raised concerns about historic landfill operations and potential contaminants.

Any contamination issue deserves careful investigation.

But there is a significant difference between identifying a concern and proving a danger.

Rather than demonstrating a hidden danger, the required testing, remediation, and oversight reflect the safeguards that exist to ensure potential contamination issues are addressed before development occurs. 

What has often been missing from the public debate is proportionality.

Nearly every major development project encounters environmental challenges. The relevant question is whether those challenges can be mitigated to accepted standards.

The evidence developed through the review process suggests they can.

Perhaps the most surprising criticism involves affordable housing.

Village Farms includes one of the largest affordable housing commitments ever proposed in Davis – beyond the city’s requrements. The project contains hundreds of deed-restricted affordable units, land dedicated for additional affordable housing, and millions of dollars designated for affordable housing development.

Opponents respond that those commitments are insufficient.

California’s housing crisis is severe enough that almost any affordable housing proposal will appear insufficient relative to the scale of need.

But this debate often overlooks a basic reality: if Village Farms is not built, the affordable housing included in Village Farms is not replaced by something better—it becomes zero. The hundreds of deed-restricted affordable units, the affordable housing land dedication, and the millions of dollars committed to affordable housing simply disappear.

Rejecting one of the largest affordable housing proposals in Davis history does not produce more affordable housing—it reduces the number of affordable units from hundreds to zero. 

The choice is not between Village Farms and a hypothetical project with more affordable housing. The choice is between the affordable housing that Village Farms provides and the very real possibility of no affordable housing on the site at all. 

Underlying many of these debates is a deeper question about the future of Davis itself.

For years, Davis has attempted to reconcile competing goals. Residents want affordability, but they also want slow growth. They want thriving schools, but they resist family housing. They want environmental sustainability, but many oppose compact development at the urban edge. They want economic diversity, but housing scarcity increasingly limits who can live here.

Like many communities, Davis faces competing priorities, but eventually those priorities must be reconciled through actual choices rather than avoided through inaction. 

The consequences of underbuilding are no longer abstract: they can be seen in rising housing costs, shrinking school enrollment, and growing pressure from the state. 

Voters will come to the conclusion that Village Farms is not  flawless. 

But, I conclude that much of the opposition rests on an implicit assumption that Davis can continue avoiding difficult housing decisions without paying a price.

The evidence suggests otherwise.

Reasonable people can disagree about Village Farms. They can disagree about project size, design, infrastructure, and implementation.

What becomes harder to defend is the notion that doing nothing remains a viable alternative.  Make no mistake – if Village Farms goes down on Tuesday, nothing will happen on that site for a long time.

For decades, Davis has benefited from choices made by previous generations who built neighborhoods, schools, parks, and housing that allowed the community to grow and thrive.

The question before voters is whether they are willing to extend that opportunity to the next generation.

Ultimately, the Village Farms debate is not simply about one project but about the future direction of Davis and whether the city is prepared to confront the consequences of continued housing scarcity. 

Ironically, the path many opponents advocate may be the one most likely to undermine local control. 

California has made clear that cities cannot indefinitely avoid their housing obligations while preserving complete autonomy over land-use decisions. 

If Davis continues to reject major housing opportunities and falls further behind on production, the likely result will not be preservation of the status quo but increased state oversight, stronger legal mandates, and fewer local options. 

The choice facing Davis is not between growth and local control, but rather may become one between planning for growth ourselves or having more of those decisions made for us by Sacramento.