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District advances workforce-housing concept at Harper Junior High to house staff
Summary
Davis Joint Unified presented a concept to build workforce housing on a roughly 12-acre portion of the Harper Junior High site to serve district employees. The district aims to serve about 20% of permanent staff and is pursuing a feasibility study with UCLA CityLab and Brookwood Partners; financing and budget remain open questions.
District leaders presented a workforce-housing concept focused on the south side of the Harper Junior High campus that would provide housing targeted to district employees.
Superintendent Matt Best said staff surveyed employees and that interest in district-provided housing is especially high among early-career employees. The district described preliminary goals to serve roughly 20% of permanent employees; staff said the district has “a little over a thousand permanent employees” and would aim to serve about 200 of those employees. The district said it does not want to convert existing housing; it is seeking net new units and has identified a roughly 12-acre site at Harper for a multi-phase project.
Conceptual phases described by staff would place townhomes or single-family-style units at the southern edge (phase 1, producing about 48 units as a conceptual example), garden-apartment-style housing in the middle (phase 2, estimated 80–100 units) and higher-density multifamily housing near Mace Boulevard (phase 3, described as up to about 40 units per acre). District staff said each phase is being studied and that they estimate approximately $30–$35 million associated with project phases (as described at the meeting). The district is conducting a feasibility study with UCLA CityLab and Brookwood Partners and is performing environmental work on campus.
Staff said the district intends to control and finance the project rather than rely on tax-credit developers because those models sometimes do not house district staff in practice. The district said units would not be deed-restricted low-income tax-credit units; instead the district plans to create an employee-priority system allowed under state workforce-housing statutes and carve-outs that apply to school employees, and, if units cannot be filled by district staff, open them first to other public employees within the city and county. The district emphasized that legal and financing mechanisms remain under development and that more details will be part of future discussions with the city.
