Judy Ennis
By David GreenwaldApril 18, 202518 comments
Two years ago, Judy Ennis helped launch the Davis Community Action Network (DCAN), a grassroots initiative formed with a bold goal: to bring the community together to face the interconnected crises of housing affordability and climate change.
Now, with over 225 participants, a strategic plan, and an expanding presence in local policy conversations, DCAN is emerging as a model for inclusive civic engagement in Davis.
In an in-depth conversation with the Vanguard, Ennis reflected on what inspired the group, what they’ve learned, and how they hope to reshape the local housing narrative—one conversation at a time.
Before diving into housing, Ennis worked for a decade in education policy. What she saw there stayed with her: ZIP codes, she noted, were a consistent predictor of student outcomes, yet her field seldom addressed the root causes of place-based inequality.
“I wanted to dedicate more of my professional life toward housing issues based on seeing its effects on the education space,” Ennis explained. “The security and stability of housing impacts children, families, and schools in profound ways.”
That realization eventually led her to serve four years on Davis’s Social Services Commission. But it also left her frustrated. The conversations she had at city meetings felt disconnected from the reality she saw on playgrounds and at farmers markets, where families quietly lamented the friends and neighbors they were losing due to rising housing costs.
“We started DCAN to create more opportunities for those private conversations to become part of the public conversation,” she said. “Because we are in a housing crisis—and a climate crisis—and we have to address both at the same time.”
One of DCAN’s most striking contributions has been its focus on broadening the housing conversation beyond the same familiar voices often heard at public meetings. Over two years, DCAN has organized 13 events, conducted outreach across generations and income levels, and intentionally included commuters who work in Davis but can no longer afford to live there.
“That doesn’t make them any less part of our community,” Ennis emphasized.
Parents were the hardest demographic to reach—a fact Ennis, herself a mother of two, knows intimately.
“Parents are stretched thin. They’re working long hours, raising kids, driving across town. Their bandwidth for civic engagement is minimal,” she said.
Yet their voices are crucial—not only because housing costs affect family stability, but because declining enrollment is forcing hard choices in Davis schools.
DCAN now plans to launch a dedicated “parent landing page” on its website to make engagement more accessible and relevant for busy families.
The link between housing and school health is something Ennis believes has been too long ignored.
“Neighborhoods and schools are inseparable. When you have an enrollment decline, you have a funding decline. And when you have a funding decline, the district is forced to make very difficult choices,” she explained. “This isn’t about voting yes or no on a single project. It’s about understanding how all of these pieces fit together.”
Ennis sees this as a core part of DCAN’s mission: translating policy into plain language, showing residents how the decisions they make as voters affect not only housing development but educational opportunity.
For Ennis, part of the reason DCAN formed was to confront the outdated dichotomy between environmental protection and housing development.
“For too long, these two issues have been treated as oppositional,” she said. “If we build, we hurt the climate. If we protect the climate, we push housing elsewhere. But that frame is broken. We have to do both.”
Rather than calling for the removal of environmental regulations, Ennis advocates for improving them—updating outdated processes, addressing inefficiencies, and centering their original purpose: protecting people.
“Protecting people can’t mean leaving them without access to shelter,” she argued. “Effective environmental policy and climate-smart housing must go hand-in-hand.”
One of the biggest surprises in DCAN’s outreach? How many residents across demographics expressed interest in new models of neighborhood design—especially cooperative housing and shared common spaces.
“People are hungry for connection,” Ennis said. “Parents want safe places where kids can play in earshot. Seniors want to age in place with support. The post-war suburban model doesn’t meet those needs anymore.”
Ennis believes the pandemic accelerated this shift. As people realized how isolating the existing neighborhood model could be, many became open to alternatives that prioritize shared space, sustainability, and community.
“We need every kind of housing,” she emphasized. “Yes, more apartments and missing-middle housing. But we also need retrofits to make our older single-family homes livable in 120-degree summers. And we need options for seniors to downsize without leaving their neighborhoods.”
Throughout the conversation, Ennis returned to a central idea: that solving the housing and climate crises isn’t just about policy—it’s about people.
“We’re focused on the people who are impacted by these issues,” she said. “If we’re going to be resilient in the face of economic downturns, climate disasters, and social division, we need stronger human networks. Mutual aid. Neighbor-to-neighbor care. That’s what we’re building.”
And part of that, she believes, is bringing joy back into community life. On April 24, DCAN will celebrate its two-year anniversary with an event focused on education, connection, and—yes—joy.
“You can have information and joy mixed together,” she laughed. “That’s part of community.”
As Davis continues to grapple with development, displacement, and division, Ennis hopes DCAN will keep expanding the conversation. She’s encouraged by the reception so far—especially from residents who’ve never attended a City Council meeting but want to learn how housing impacts their lives and neighbors.
“There’s a temptation to treat housing as a zero-sum game. But what we’ve seen is that people want to collaborate. They want their neighbors to be okay. They just need the space and the tools to be part of the solution.”
With DCAN, Ennis and her team are working to create that space—one story, one neighbor, one shared vision at a time.
