Davis is about to make one of the biggest decisions in its modern history, and voters are deeply divided over what it means for the city’s future.
On Election Day, residents will decide whether to approve Measure V, which would greenlight Village Farms Davis—an 1,800-unit residential development sprawling across 498 acres on the city’s agricultural northern edge. For a community that’s spent decades carefully controlling growth outside its urban boundaries, this is watershed moment. The question isn’t really about housing numbers; it’s about what Davis wants to become.
The stakes feel personal to everyone involved because they are. The Davis Joint Unified School District has hemorrhaged 300 students since 2019 and projects losing roughly 1,000 more over the next decade. That’s not just a statistic—it’s classrooms getting quieter, budgets shrinking, and the sense that something vital to the community is slipping away. Former mayor and state senator Lois Wolk told the city council in January that the development was“long overdue,”pointing out that while UC Davis continues to expand dramatically, the city itself has essentially frozen. Proponents argue Village Farms could inject 1,100 new students into the district over time, reversing a decline that threatens the schools’viability.
But here’s where the battle gets intense. Opponents, led by former planning commissioner Eileen Samitz, argue the numbers don’t add up. A fiscal study suggested average home prices could land between $740,000 and $1.2 million—roughly $6,000 to $9,000 monthly in mortgage, taxes, and insurance. That’s not affordable for young families, and it won’t solve the enrollment crisis if nobody can actually move there. Project manager Sandy Whitcombe pushes back, saying attached homes will start around $400,000 and small single-family homes around $500,000, with over 1,000 lots required to be under 5,000 square feet. Independent analyst Ryan Lundquist notes that the average Davis home currently sells for about $950,000, so entry-level products would likely be competitive—though predicting future prices is inherently uncertain.
The affordable housing piece tells its own contentious story. Village Farms designates 20% of units (360 homes) as affordable, plus a donation of 16 acres of land and $6 million to support affordable housing development by non-profits. But Samitz zeroed in on one troubling word:“may.”A clause allows the city to build 100 affordable apartments in the final phase, but the language is permissive, not mandatory. If the developer walks away, those units may never happen. Whitcombe counters that the land and capital donation is unprecedented in Davis and would make the project irresistible to non-profit developers hungry for financing packages. The disagreement isn’t really about facts—it’s about trust, and whether a developer’s goodwill or contractual obligation will carry the day.
Then there’s the elephant on the edge of town: the site itself sits next to an unlined 50-year-old municipal landfill, a sewage treatment plant, and groundwater contaminated with PFAS (forever chemicals) detected as close as 6 to 9 feet below the surface. Samitz warns that construction will trigger dangerous interaction with shallow groundwater, forcing a reroute of Channel A (North Davis’s main drainage system) into what she describes as a convoluted circle that could feed contaminants into the Sacramento River. Whitcombe cites the Environmental Impact Report showing historical organic contamination has dissipated, and that PFAS sits roughly 30 feet down—untouched and unused because the development will use municipal water. The state regulatory authority, she says, concluded the groundwater poses no risk to future residents. It’s classic environmental debate: one side sees an obvious hazard, the other sees a problem already mitigated by science and regulation.
The traffic argument is equally stark. The development would generate an estimated 15,000 new daily car trips. Samitz questions whether transit and biking assumptions in the EIR are realistic—Davis doesn’t even have a school bus system, and families with kids need cars. She also worries the city could absorb massive infrastructure costs under the current development agreement, with the developer potentially reimbursed for up to 97% of grade-separated transit crossing costs. Whitcombe insists the project funds tens of millions in intersection upgrades entirely through developer money, with no taxpayer burden and EIR findings showing peak-hour flow will remain acceptable after improvements. Again, dueling interpretations of impact and liability.
What this fight really reveals is a fundamental tension in Davis: Can the city remain the intimate, walkable, university-anchored place it’s been—or does it need to grow to survive? Around the Sacramento region, cities like Roseville, Elk Grove, and Folsom are booming. Davis isn’t making that growth list. Lundquist notes that if families can’t afford to live in Davis, the city risks becoming a haven for engineers, architects, professors, and doctors—talented people, sure, but a narrower slice of community. For Village Farms backers, 20 years of housing starvation isn’t sustainable; it’s a path to slow decay. For opponents like Samitz, the answer isn’t to stop growth but to reject what she views as a flawed, fast-tracked plan in favor of alternative projects like Willow Grove, Palomino Place, and Bretton Woods.
The tension is real because both sides have a point. Davis does need housing. Schools do need students. But whether this particular massive project on contaminated ground next to a landfill is the right solution—that’s genuinely hard to call. When voters head to the polls, they’ll be choosing between competing visions of risk, trust, and what Davis is willing to become.
About the Author
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
