HOUSING: ‘Other UCs are doing this’

projects do not provide enough low-income units to satisfy the city’s required allocation.

How and where to meet that shortfall is a key component of the Housing Element, which laid out sites in the city that could be rezoned to meet the requirement.

Among the issues raised by HCD in declining to certify the original Housing Element was the need for more detail on the suitability and viability of those sites for redevelopment. HCD also wanted more evidence that identified locations could accommodate the need for lowincome housing and information on how Measure J/R/D might impose constraints on future housing developments, among other things.

The city of Davis was not the only jurisdiction in California that learned its Housing Element had not been certified by the state, and city officials last year expressed confidence that the months of work between city staff and consultants and HCD would resolve outstanding issues and lead to certification.

During their public hearing earlier this month, planning commissioners had the opportunity to recommend changes to the new version and voted unanimously to add language encouraging UC Davis to build higher density student housing on campus, specifically, buildings greater than five stories high.

Samitz, who said, “it’s so important to encourage UC Davis to build much higher density housing because other UC’s are doing this … UC Davis does not seem to be able to get past four stories and the occasional fivestory situation even though they have all this land.” whose lives are snuffed out too soon. And I think about the empty seats in the tables at home where these aunties and uncles were someone’s mother or father, grandparents or siblings are no longer able to laugh and enjoy the festivities of the Lunar New Year. While they are no longer with us, I do want to pray with our bodies, our hearts, our bells, our words, our actions and these candles.”

She noted that a private developer recently built a seven-story project across Russell Boulevard from campus and other UC campuses are building much higher student housing complexes.

Steven Fujimoto, an ASUCD Senator, spoke primarily as a Japanese American student. He said growing up in a Japanese household, he was often told a phrase which roughly translates to “nothing can be done about it” whenever he complained or whenever someone said something mean, whether at school or anti-Asian sentiments in the news.

“I’m afraid that as a community, we don’t really have the tools to verbalize and recognize our grief. But tonight, to my fellow Asian American community members, the emotions we feel from these tragedies or any violence against our community isn’t something we say (nothing can be done about it). I don’t want this night to go by without acknowledging the pain that the events of this past weekend have caused us.”

Fujimoto said the Asian community needs to look out for one another because at the end of the day, “we normal everyday citizens are the ones who keep each other safe.”

Jennifer Borenstein, Yolo County Local Group Lead for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, decries the devastating week it’s been for our state. “Tragically, these shootings only scratch the surface of the gun violence plaguing communities around the country every single day. My message is that we need to continue to work together to reduce gun violence and save lives. What gives me hope is that change is possible, we know there are solutions that work.”

To get involved, Borenstein urges locals to text READY to 644-33. “We’re going to continue doing work locally with our community and school boards.”

They were encouraged to do so by a former planning commissioner,

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“Other UC’s are doing this, it’s very successful, it’s much more cost effective, it helps the students, it’s the only way to control the cost of student housing longterm,” Samitz said. “We simply need to encourage UC Davis to do this and to have language of that in the housing element.”