The organizations discussed increasing affordable housing and building mental health programs for students and community members
By RORY CONLON — city@theaggie.org
The city of Davis, UC Davis and Yolo County gave updates on campus housing and the Crisis Now program during their Feb. 25 meeting.
Two representatives from each of the three organizations meet annually to discuss issues in the Davis community and progress toward shared goals at the university, city and county level. These meetings build and maintain connections between the university and the surrounding city, according to UC Davis Chancellor Gary May.
“Conversations like the ones we’ll have this evening are a vital part of the effort to ensure our town and gown relationship remains a model for other communities,” May said. “Whether it’s our efforts to combat discrimination [through] the ‘Hate Free Together’ initiative, our partnership in building a more sustainable community or strengthening our transportation partnership, every challenge we face is more manageable when we face it together.”
In September 2018, UC Davis, Yolo County and the city of Davis agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that informed the school’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP). Four main goals were identified, according to the LRDP Memorandum of Understanding webpage.
“The terms of the MOU include a commitment to build more housing for students as well as a guarantee to house 100 percent of any new student enrollment growth on campus,” the webpage reads. “The MOU also includes the development of joint transportation plans and traffic improvement projects, the elimination of master leases in the City of Davis and the formation of a stronger town-gown partnership through a variety of collaborative activities.”
In 2018, the blended vacancy rate for the city of Davis fell below 1%, leading to a severe shortage of affordable housing for students. However, Lucas Griffith, the UC Davis executive director of campus planning and sustainability, said that the school has exceeded goals for providing more housing to students in 2025.
“In 2025, we built a significant amount of housing or beds on campus,” Griffith said. “The vacancy rate has increased to four percent.”
Griffith said the university has also met its goals for accommodating enrollment growth.
“Since the passage of the LRDP, we have grown enrollment by 2,600 and we have built over 6,000 new beds,” Griffith said. “So, we have provided more beds than our total enrollment growth.”
Aggie Square, a new innovation campus in Sacramento, opens in May of 2025 and is set to house nursing students and medical students. Additionally, a new housing development called the Segundo Infill Housing Project is scheduled to go into construction in spring 2025 and will add 500 beds.
Michael Sheehan, the UC Davis associate vice chancellor for Housing, Dining, Campus Recreation and Divisional Operations, said the rent escalation rate, which measures how much the rent is raised from year to year, has also dropped.
“The other key metric is that escalation rate of 1.6%,” Sheehan said. “It’s levelled off from the previous rate, which was considerably higher — I think it was 8% last year. [It’s] another sign that we’re finally having the impact that we desire on the market.”
When Yolo County Supervisor Lucas Freirichs asked how the university is making housing more affordable for students, Sheehan noted that properties at The Green at West Village and Orchard Park are coming in below market rate.
“We’re actually below market rate in a majority of those spaces at Orchard Park by as much as 11%,” Sheehan said. “Those are public-private partnerships with the non-profit, [Orchard Park]. There are caps for annual escalation, so our gap will continue to grow over time.”
Sheehan pointed to funding and design choices that made lower prices possible.
“[These two properties] were both funded with tax-exempt bond funding because we partnered with a non-profit,” Sheehan said. “We designed them very efficiently with an offsite, panelized system.”
Representatives at the meeting then transitioned into discussing the Crisis Now program. Yolo County Administrative Officer Dirk Brazil introduced the program.
“In the past, most of our emergency response for mental health and substance abuse emergencies have been siloed, whether it’s police, fire, what have you,” Brazil said. “This in front of you now is a combined effort to get out of those silos and move in a more coordinated fashion.”
Brazil said two components of Crisis Now, the 24/7 Access/Crisis High-Tech Call Center and the 24/7 Crisis Response and Co-Responders, have been put into place. The third component, a Receiving/Sobering Center, has still not been completed.
Of the $3 million needed to build the center, $850,000 will come out of federal funds earmarked by Congressman Mike Thompson. City Manager Mike Webb said the rest of the money will be supplied by the cities of Davis, Woodland and West Sacramento.
“Davis’ contribution for that, in terms of one-time dollars, is about $900,000 total,” Webb said. “I won’t speak to the status of Woodland or West Sacramento, but they’re going through a similar exercise.”
The meeting was opened up to public comment on the issue of Crisis Now.
Kimberly Mitchell, a Davis resident, submitted a policy brief with recommendations for how to improve the program. Her first recommendation was to expand the hours and availability of co-responders.
“We have mental health clinicians that respond with the city of Davis police department and other public safety agencies,” Mitchell said. “They work normal business hours, nine to five. Still, who’s responding to mental health emergency calls at night or on the weekends is the police department. We need to expand [the availability of clinicians], and we need to have clinicians responding to mental health throughout the county, including at UC Davis.”
Mitchell also made two other recommendations.
“The second [recommendation] is that crisis intervention training needs to be extended to all first responders, not just police — so that includes dispatch, fire and [emergency medical services],” Mitchell said. “The third recommendation is that we need to work towards having a crisis stabilization unit in Yolo County. A crisis stabilization unit is a level above a mental health receiving center — a crisis stabilization unit is a [psychoeducational center] and it’s able to take all levels of psych patients.”
Mayor Bapu Vaitla supported Mitchell’s recommendations. He asked Jenny Tan, the city of Davis Director of Community Engagement, to forward Mitchell’s policy brief to the city’s county and University of California partners.
Vice Mayor Donna Neville supported the construction of the Receiving/Sobering Center as an alternative to those in a mental health crisis going to the ER.
“You want to be in a place that’s safe, where there’s trauma-informed care, where you will get care from people who are specially equipped to help you,” Neville said. “That is why the Receiving Center is so important for medical reasons and psychological reasons. It’s also fiscally a better approach than taking people to the ER, which has its own suite of expenses.”
Neville, who serves on the Yolo County division of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said that 75% of all mental illnesses emerge by the age of 25.
“There’s a critical period in life [of the three years] until you reach 25 when mental illnesses emerge,” Neville said. “It’s so important to have good preventative care, response care and clinical care during those periods.”
Neville invited UC Davis to collaborate with the city in efforts to address mental health. Clare Shinnerl, the vice chancellor of UC Davis Finance, Operations and Administration, said the university has met with the interim fire chief to learn more about city programs.
“One of the next steps we’ve decided is to try to create a gap analysis, like, ‘What are we doing?’ versus ‘What are you doing?’” Shinnerl said. “We [also] run a Health 34 program 24/7 for our students.”
Councilmember Gloria Partida thanked the university for its support.
“I’m glad to hear that the university is helping us with housing students and in a number of other ways, including mental health,” Partida said. “I think we as a community feel a responsibility to the young people that are part of our city for four years, five years, however long they’re here. If we can work together, it is something that will benefit all of us and our future.”
Written By: Rory Conlon — city@theaggie.org
