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More people are coming to Davis to study, work, or live, but the supply of housing isn’t keeping pace, especially with UC Davis adding thousands of new students. Today we talk with Davis real estate broker Steve Boschken about current prices, rents, the spillover to Woodland, other trends, and potential options. Boschken has roots in town -- he grew up here, and also studied environmental design and urban planning at UC Davis.
“I don’t think that the way we patchwork new subdivisions in, when they do finally get in, is the best way to plan a community,” he says. “They’re planning it only on what’s here in front of them today, instead of what Davis is going to look like 100 years from now.
“For a long time, I have promoted that Davis ought to annex into city limits two miles out, which is their sphere of influence, and control it, and plan it out. I’m not saying develop the two-mile ring. I’m saying design it so that we know when something may get developed. It’d still be need-based, on when we need more housing, and by no means do we need to start just building all of that out. But we can’t keep going at the pace we’re going [on prices], even only going up 3 to 5 percent [a year].”