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The other day at the ceremonial re-opening of the Owendale Mutual Housing Community in Davis, City Council member Will Arnold talked about wanting to help people make a go at life in his vibrant college town and how that can become a possibility through the city’s partnership with Mutual Housing California.
Then came the big surprise, when Arnold pointed to the front row of the 100 people or so gathered beneath the tents for the Owendale celebration and introduced his wife. Nichole Arnold, the council member said, is a former resident member of the same Owendale community that everybody was on hand to celebrate.
“She was among the original residents here in 2003, over there in (apartment number) 113, at the end of this building right behind us,” Arnold said. “So she was here, and she took her prom pictures here. She took her graduation photos here.”
Owendale, Arnold said, and the whole idea of affordable housing, he added, “is personally important,” he went on, “to me and my family.”
It took a few years before Will met the former Nichole Mosley and they became the current Mr. and Mrs. Arnold. In the time since their meeting and eventual marriage, the two of them have lived the wonderful life, working and building not only a family with three young children and their careers and businesses, but an entire community, too.
He sold real estate and worked in political campaigns and got himself elected to the City Council and appointed chair of the Yolo County Housing Authority. She bought and still manages a store. It’s a popular one in town, the Mother & Baby Source. She got involved with the Davis Chamber of Commerce. Now she’s an officer on its executive board.
None of it would have happened, at least not their partnership as a power couple, had it not been for Owendale. Had it not been for Mutual Housing. Had it not been for the city’s commitment to affordable housing.
“I loved living there,” Nichole said. “I made some great friends. It was a great community. Just being there, all of us who lived there then, we were the first ones to live there. We had that in common, but we were all different. There was a lady a couple doors down who had a baby, and I wanted to help her out with him. Behind her, some kids we went to high school with. I think there’s a lady who still lives there who was really good friend with my mom. I really just felt a great sense of community living there.”
Originally from Sacramento, Nichole and her mother and sister moved to Texas and lived there for four years before they moved back to the capitol region in 2003 when her mother was stricken with breast cancer and could no longer work.
“My mom’s health was becoming an issue,” Nichole said, “and we wanted to move back to be closer to family.”
Nichole’s mother had managed affordable housing properties before she became ill. Supporting her family on disability payments, she filled out an application to live in the new Mutual Housing community on Albany Avenue that was taking shape into what is now Owendale.
Their acceptance into the new community changed the trajectory of Nichole’s life. She arrived as a teenager, and in the year and a half the family lived in Owendale, Nichole was able to graduate from Davis High School in 2004 and get her first taste of the town.
“We wouldn’t have come to Davis if we didn’t have that opportunity,” she said. “We’d probably be in [a less affluent area] somewhere, and doing I don’t know what. But being able to be at Owendale definitely introduced me to the Davis community. It was a community I wanted to be in.”
Nichole remembers a family Christmas at Owendale where they were able to use the community building to accommodate everybody. She remembers good times with friends and family.
Mostly, she remembers going to school and coming home to spend time with her mom and taking her mom to her chemotherapy appointments and the failure of the treatments to thwart the advancement of her mother’s cancer.
“Unfortunately, she continued to get worse as time went on, and she didn’t live very much longer after that,” Nichole said. “It was a tough thing,”
Despite the grief of her mother’s illness and passing, Nichole was able to gain her introduction to Davis and a deep appreciation of the quality of life it offered. She decided she wanted to stay.
Several years later, through a mutual friend, she made another introduction — to Will Arnold.
“He was working at The Graduate (as a bookkeeper), and my friend was a bartender, and she introduced us, and we kind of hit it off,” Nichole said.
Will served as a political consultant on the side, working for local city council candidates, and it was then that Nichole joined in with him.
Their partnership flourished.
“I’m very lucky that she was able to move to Owendale because she might not have lived in Davis when I met her many years later,” Will said. “She might not have had the opportunity to live in town if it wasn’t for Mutual Housing and Owendale.”
Mutual Housing and Owendale “got my life started in Davis,” Nichole said.
“It was a community that I liked,” Nichole said. “Being able to live here and get started in this community was a great thing.
“I’m still here,” she added. “And I’m trying to still do things for this community.”
Nichole thanked Mutual Housing, and she thanked Mutual Housing for giving her something that is the only thing that so many people need to get their lives moving ahead: “a chance.”