The Davis City Council discussed an affordable housing work plan on Oct. 22 that addressed issues or plans for the low-income housing units in the City of Davis. The affordable housing program includes rental housing and offers options that range from shared equity and equity recapture through secondary loans and ongoing resale restrictions on ownership units.

Affordable housing is utilized by many groups in the Davis community as students, families and individuals find relief through the program.

“We’re a relatively small town with above-average home prices. That means it’s even harder here for folks to find affordable places to live,” said Michael Drane, community organizer of New Harmony Mutual Housing. “If we as a community don’t work to ensure that we have homes affordable for all, the economic health of the whole city will be negatively impacted.”

According to a press release from the Davis City Council, some housing units including rental houses also provide special needs housing for seniors, persons with physical disabilities, persons with mental disabilities and shelter beds for victims of domestic violence.

The Davis City Council agreed at the Oct. 22 meeting to address long-term issues related to the affordable housing units and projects.

“Once those projects are settled, we would focus our efforts on maintaining and rehabbing existing but older units, and work on two vacant land parcels that are meant for affordable housing,” said Kelly Stachowicz, City of Davis deputy city manager.

The Davis City Council will also come up with goals for green improvements and an increased accessibility of affordable housing, rental housing and ownership housing assistance programs, as well as ownership rehabilitation programs, including solar installation.

The press release states that these general directions will assist the city in managing limited resources within the affordable housing program, with the goals of preserving and developing affordable housing, efficiently using available resources and strategically utilizing staff time.

History of affordable housing in Davis

The city has had local affordable housing requirements since 1987. Since that time, approximately 1,000 rental units and 800 ownership units have been built under those requirements.

“Davis has always tried to provide a range of housing types to meet needs in the community,” Stachowicz said. “[As well as] an Affordable Housing Ordinance that spells out requirements for affordable housing.”

In the past few years, the City of Davis became owner of several affordable housing properties through refinances and foreclosures of 20 former Davis Area Cooperative Housing Association units. Their role as owner of these units in addition to the changes in resources requires strategic planning in order to address any issues and provide long-term success for these housing assets.

The Davis City Council is discussing these projects because they will be complex to fund and develop. Stachowicz mentioned that the state of California got rid of “Redevelopment Agencies,” which provided funding to build affordable housing in local communities. When Davis’ Redevelopment Agency went away, so did most of the city’s funding stream for affordable housing.

“Such a shift required for us to look strategically at what resources we have, what our needs are and what we can do realistically,” Stachowicz said. “Thus the work plan. Staff needed to know from the City Council what their priorities are.”

Because the redevelopment agencies left Davis in February 2012, the city has seen a dramatic decrease in affordable housing resources — reducing revenues for projects and staff by approximately $2 million per year. Many of the current projects are costly to maintain and underutilized, which is why they require timely action.

Pacifico affordable housing

Housing sites for students include the Pacifico Affordable Housing Project. The project was built in a dorm-style format and is financed in a way to accommodate low-income students. The project had vacancy challenges and went into foreclosure, which is why the City of Davis became the owner of the project.

“Pacifico has had some challenges due to its original configuration and deferred maintenance, but  it is getting more occupied now that it has been beautified and updated by new ownership and management,” said Danielle Foster, Housing and Human Services superintendent for the City of Davis. “There is still work to be done on two of the four buildings that are not currently open [due to] upcoming construction, [but] I think it’s a very affordable option for students.”

There are currently 37 residents living at Pacifico Cooperative at the moment, with the total capacity being 48. The residents are a mix of students, non-students, adult former foster youth and local people. 65 percent of the residents are students attending UC Davis.

“There is a local need in Davis for affordable housing for students and for those who work in Davis,” said Johnathen Duran, from Pacifico Student Cooperative Housing. “Affordable housing not only fulfills a basic human need, but also contributes to the overall health and vitality of the community.”

According to Duran, the rent prices at Pacifico begin at $455 for a small one bedroom compared to a fair market rate of $741 for a single studio. Along with offering lower rent prices, Pacifico also provides all utilities, free parking, Wi-Fi internet access for its residents.

“Pacifico is a great housing bargain — definitely low cost time and money-saving family-style living for those interested in having the privacy of their own room and the benefit of shared communal areas,” Duran said.

Pacifico is now affiliated with Yolo County Housing (YCH), an independent California Public Housing Authority. YCH is dedicated to providing individualized, community-oriented services to the residents of Yolo County and to those communities and organizations who serve them.

New Harmony Mutual Housing

Another affordable housing project is the New Harmony Mutual Housing developments, consisting of 69 apartment homes with rent set at affordable levels with an income cap under which new residents must qualify.

“The recent vote by the Davis City Council could be especially harmful,” Drane said. “The Council approved a proposal to allow tiny apartments above garages or next to homes to count towards that requirement, but not to monitor whether or not these units were actually rented to folks with modest budgets. There is no guarantee that these units would even be rented, let alone rented at affordable rates. As a result, this proposal essentially strips Davis’ once model-affordable housing policy of any substance.”

Cold weather shelters for the homeless are opening in Davis for the upcoming winter months. Among these are the Cold Weather Shelter, a program within Davis Community Meals, and the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter (IRWS).

These shelters are open on a nightly basis and provide food and housing for those in need in our Davis community. All programs are mostly run by volunteer community members and students.

“Each volunteer has a good heart, giving their food and time to stay and monitor the guests,” said Mary Anne Kirsch, co-chair for the IRWS. “These are volunteers from all walks of life and have a variety of different responsibilities.”

According to Bill Pride, the executive director for Davis Community Meals, volunteers make up 95 percent of the shelter workforce, and students make up 85 to 90 percent of those volunteers.

“It just helps me to know that I’m doing something worthwhile,” said Roshy Agahi, Los Angeles Food Bank volunteer and a fourth-year food science major. “I’ve worked with the homeless on many occasions, and I hope that every little bit counts.”

The IRWS is open every night for fifteen weeks of the year, between Dec. 1 and Mar. 15. The shelter’s location will change weekly according to a set schedule, and so will the capacity of patrons it can accommodate, which is usually between 25 and 40.

“Our mission is to give emergency shelter to people in the cold months who don’t have a roof over their heads,” Kirsch said. “There is no criteria for our guests, except that they can conduct themselves respectfully so that they can make it a nice, quiet place for everyone.”

According to Kirsch, the term “interfaith” represents the idea of the shelter that they will accept anybody of any or no religious beliefs, and that the shelter rotates between congregations of varied Christian denominations, synagogues and Quaker establishments, among others.

The Davis Cold Weather Shelter collaborates with the IRWS in their goals to keep the homeless off of the streets. Both programs are non-profit and food is donated by the community or religious organizations on different nights of every week.

The IRWS and the Cold Weather Shelter are nearly entirely volunteer-run and have volunteers who either prepare meals in the morning and evening, or stay overnight with the guests to make sure that everything is in order and operates smoothly.

The IRWS has had approximately 1,100 volunteers throughout the last year, and the Cold Weather Shelter, whose volunteers are trained more thoroughly and repeat assistance consistently, range between 25 and 30 per year.

The Davis Cold Weather Shelter is a branch program off of Davis Community Meals, which started as a soup kitchen in February 1991.

According to Pride, the establishment is an old home of 1,100 square feet owned by the City of Davis with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen. The shelter, located at 512 Fifth Street, will be open between mid-November and Mar. 31, for the eighth year.

“It gets people out of the cold, wet and rain,” said Inessa Snyder, resource center coordinator of Davis Community Meals. “Which is great, especially for those who don’t otherwise come in for help.”

The shelter can house eight males and two females, with separate gender-based quarters for individual comfort. This ratio mirrors the homeless population.

“What makes us different from the other shelters is that we consciously take in patrons that suffer from alcohol and drug use,” Pride said.

Cold Weather Shelter volunteers receive training to deal with problems, aggressive behavior, recognizing symptoms and noting how behavior changes in mental health clients.

“I’m excited to start volunteering there and I think every town needs something like this program to help these people get back on their feet,” said Robyn Lindsay, a volunteer at the Davis Cold Weather Shelter and a fourth-year genetics major.

According to Pride, many of the homeless are mentally disabled with families that are unable to support the difficult dynamics that their situations bring into their lives. For this reason, they have found themselves struggling without permanent living situations, or cycling between governmental confinement facilities and the streets.

“Volunteers are prepared well for careers in medicine, health, nutrition, social work, sociology and psychology, to name a few,” Pride said. “These are just some folks that have been left behind by the world because of the social functions and social changes. Everything has become more diffuse, but you can do a lot to help.”

For more information on these programs, please visit: interfaith-shelter.org and daviscommunitymeals.org.

In recent weeks, students have noticed that their weekend nights are being cut short because police are shutting down fraternity parties. Students are left questioning if these parties are getting shut down because they are not under control or because they are associated with Greek Life.

Bree Sinclair, a fourth-year political science and English double major said she thinks that perhaps most fraternity parties are destined to be “rolled.”

“Usually what happens for bigger house parties is that they [the hosts] talk to the neighbors so that they will call them before the police. So maybe if the fraternities had better communication with their neighbors they wouldn’t call the police,” Sinclair said. “But in general UC Davis seems to be antagonistic towards Greek life. So if a fraternity is having a party the cops are going to know immediately and it’s going to be on their agenda to shut it down.”

An anonymous member of a fraternity at UC Davis said that his fraternity takes the proper precautions to ensure their parties are safe and managed.

“We usually give out our numbers to neighbors so they can call us if the noise levels start getting too high to maintain good relations within the community. Our parties are usually well controlled since we always have at least five sober brothers walking around the property to ensure safety to our guests.”

When asked if he thought having a guest list was a good idea, he agreed and added a few other safety precautions his fraternity takes.

“Exits are always visible so in case an emergency were to occur, people can leave the area efficiently. If we see that the party is getting too rowdy we start asking people to kindly leave,” he said.

When asked if he felt the police had a predisposition to shut down fraternity parties he strongly said that he believes they do not.

“Their job is to ensure safety and reply to noise complaints given from people around the area so we respect that. If cops show up, we kindly approach them and treat them with the respect they deserve,” he said.

Kimberly Weglin, a fourth-year managerial economics major, said she believes that even if the people are not overly intoxicated at a party, dangerous situations can still arise.

“In the majority of fraternity parties you can barely move around, everyone’s bumping into each other and spilling drinks which really makes some people mad. It’s really easy to get separated from the people you came with as well,” Weglin said.

Even if there are some sober people at a party, if the mass quantity of people is too high, owners of the house can still lose control of the party. While the fraternity brother believes the Davis Police Department (DPD) has no predisposition to monitor fraternities during the weekends, the question as to whether this is true remains. DPD Lt. Glenn Glasgow, agreed with the fraternity member.

“Anyone can have a large gathering which proves a threat to the general safety of the community. It is not always fraternity parties that we get calls about,” Glasgow said.

Glasgow had many ideas as to how fraternities can remain the party throwers. Many of the practices noted by Glasgow are observed by some fraternities.

“Have a guest list of those that you want to invite. If people are not on that guest list the suggestion would be to turn them away. Make sure the people there are known to the host or hostess. If there is going to be alcohol, plan ahead with designated drivers and have phone numbers readily available,” Glasgow said.

When Glasgow was asked if minors would be cited if a fraternity called the police in an attempt to regain control of their party, he could not give a definite yes or no response, but focused on the issue of safety.

“Our first concern is the safety of the people at the party and the surrounding neighbors. If it looks like it’s going to be a difficult party to manage the focus will be on safety,” Glasgow said. “Not so much if they come across a minor drinking. In the end, if they are able to successfully clean up a party I’m not going to say everyone will get a free pass. We would rather have someone call us rather than let it get out of control for fear of some type of consequence.”