Month: September 2021

RHNA

SCAG Housing information

Post author By ACE21
Post date September 20, 2021

Bar graph showing the total number of APR's received year over year since 2013

County RHNA General. Plan Housing Laws RHNA RHNA

Time to Rethink the Mandated State Laws for Affordable Housing

Post author By ACE21
Post date September 17, 2021

What is the City Council of Chino and their mayor doing? They are ignoring the Laws of California. What will happen? The City will be sued by the State.

The City Council and the mayor have adopted the mindset of ‘NIMBY’, Not In My Back Yard. A clear discriminatory attitude to residents of low social economic status. This is outright racism.The city of Chino has the moral obligation to follow the laws of California and to morally provide affordable housing for all residents.

It’s Time To Embrace Sensible Development

IE Business Daily November 26, 2019

As previously seen in the Chino Champion

By: Jay Prag

The October 26^th article in the Chino Champion “Chino Valley hit with state housing numbers” is a wake-up call; heck, it’s an outright sign from above that Chino housing development choices are not going to stay in hands of Chino’s elected officials unless they prove that they are making prudent decisions to address the housing supply crisis. While fighting statewide housing development mandates might seem like the best approach, such fights aren’t free; if cities fail to fulfill new housing construction quotas; they stand to incur significant legal fees, potentially lose millions in state revenue, and potentially lose outright control over planning decisions to the State. Just look at SB 50 that was temporarily tabled earlier this year by the State Legislature that would have rewritten zoning laws and forced local governments like Chino to allow taller apartment buildings and another multi-family complex near transit areas and job centers. Finding a reasonable middle ground will almost always be cheaper and better for everyone concerned.

To that end, it’s time for the Chino city council to relook at its General Plan Housing Element and seriously attempt to plan many areas of the City and City’s sphere which have good access to transportation and services but have generally planned densities that do not meet market needs nor allow for product types that provide various levels of affordability to Chino residents as state-mandated. Proposed projects such as Chino Francis Estates offer low-hanging fruit to the City of Chino Planning Commission and Council. This is a low-density single-story project located on 13 blighted acres adjacent to City streets and utilities. The developers reworked their plans several times to reduce density, provide one hundred percent single-story homes, enhance landscaping, improve existing offsite drainage conditions and address traffic concerns and other issues, proving their desire to make Chino Francis Estates a win-win development.

Any realistic assessment of the project would see this as an outright Christmas present for the city. In exchange for a truly minor extension of city services Chino would get thirty-nine beautiful, new homes on thirteen acres of new land; this would certainly improve Chino financially and esthetically. But this would also be “free credibility” that Chino’s elected officials could point to and say “We’re going above and beyond to reach our housing goals. We literally grew our city just to add new housing!”

It’s time for Chino to embrace sensible development proposals inside its city sphere that offer differing affordability levels and meet state-mandated housing needs. Projects such as Chino Francis Estates are a win-win and a political freebie that would redirect the attention of Sacramento and its fast-approaching takeover of cities it perceives as housing obstructionists.

RHNA

Politics and Housing in Chino: The Story Goes Deeper Than Many Know (Part I)

Post author By ACE21
Post date September 17, 2021

What a disarray of misinformation the entire City of Chino Council and the Mayor have given over the many years. Even now, the entire Council and Mayor are untruthful to the residents of Chino. The general plan for the City is a map for future growth in the City of Chino. The City of Chino has an obligation to follow the laws of the State of California. All the city council and the mayor took an oath to follow all city, county, and state laws and rules.

The housing crisis is real and not only in California but throughout the Nation according to the National League of Cities and League of California Cities. What the City Council of Chino needs to correct and follow the crisis of affordable housing? The city is morally obligated to help all residents.

Affordable Housing helps single parents with children (moms and dads), Students, Workers for the city, Veterans, young families, and the homeless to have an affordable place to live. All the residents in afforable housing likewise help the local economy because the residents will more likely visit and purchase what they need amd what they want at the local busniesses.

The City of Chino’s City Council and Mayor ignore the Laws of the State of California and the county rules to update their general plan. The general plan needs to be updates every five years. This code has been ignored by the City Council, the mayor and a few residents who do not what change.

They have adopted the slogan of “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY). This kind of thinking is Modern Day Redlining. The city is telling people with low economic status that they are not wanted. This is discriminatory and affects not only residents but also the economy of the City of Chino. All local retail needs support.

Change needs to happen . The City of Chino will be sued by the State of California if the city decides not to follow the State Laws.

What a crime to throw away money that can be used for the succes of resients and to follow the moral compass of “Life Liberty and the Pursuite of Happines” for all people, not just a few.

Politics and Housing in Chino: The Story Goes Deeper Than Many Know (Part I)

IE Business Daily September 14, 2021

There is virtually no neighborhood left unscathed by the housing market’s supply-and-demand twists, turns, and strife across California as historically low inventory plagues the marketplace — especially when it comes to planning and building new homes and entire neighborhoods.

This issue is oftentimes characterized as activist residents pitted against developers, where “NIMBYs” — the Not-In-My-Backyard types — and environmentalists duke it out against homebuilder-corporate America. One side wins; the other loses.

But that’s only surface deep. The real question is: How are local officials appropriately responding, or not, to housing demand from all socio-economic households and workers as a city projects its future residential needs? And how are elected officials — who claim to be looking out for the best interests of the community while trying to meet state-mandated goals — treating some proposed housing projects versus others, and why?

There are 52 cities and unincorporated townships in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. However, after digging through public records and interviewing key individuals who declined to be identified, IE Business Daily discovered that specific leaders within this one community show a years-long pattern of what sources on deep background say is willfully obstinate negligence and outright abuse, all in the name of representing the interests of the people.

RHNA: State Mandated and Locally Tracked

It starts with “Ree-na,” an acronym city planners and private developers use. Each city’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) is mandated by California law under the state’s general plan. It’s a roadmap into the future that’s routinely updated at the local level every eight years, administered by California’s Housing and Community Development Department (HCD), and monitored by the local San Bernardino Council of Governments (SBCOG).

RHNA shows where a city is hitting its mark or falling short in housing density, affordability, and diversity of structures across suburban neighborhoods. The local supply of apartments, condominiums, townhomes, and single-family detached homes are analyzed in comparison to the number of current and future-forecasted households within five median income brackets, including extremely low-income, very low-income, low-income, middle-income, and high-income.

While a municipality proves it is meeting RHNA goals by how much land it appropriately zones for these residential buildouts, it’s not uncommon for a city to miss its RHNA target. The process is a delicate balancing act for city planners and councilmembers.

There’s one strong incentive: the state may have grounds to sue if your city doesn’t hit its RHNA goals. Chino has opened the door to this potentially contentious process, although time will tell how it plays out since the city recently announced its own lawsuit against the state in late July.

Nonetheless, the political reason “why” a city reaches its RHNA numbers — or fails to keep up with the goalpost going forward — is intriguing, as well as “how” it originally projected it would arrive there, especially in the case of Chino. Sources currently or formerly close to the inner workings of the city say this issue lies at the heart of how certain leaders carefully influenced and prioritized some single-family and multi-family residential projects over others.

A Moving Target Over Time

According to its 2013 housing plan, Chino planned to reach its 2,894 RHNA units within those five income tiers by the autumn of 2021. About 59 percent of these units would need to be middle or high-income and 41 percent within the lower-three income tiers.

This same plan explicitly states Chino could meet the lowest three of its five RHNA household-income obligations through land set aside within The Preserve at Chino, a well-known sprawling master-developed community taking up nearly 5,500 acres several miles south of Chino’s city center and south of Chino Airport. What’s more: the document’s numbers reveal that taken altogether, two neighborhoods in The Preserve (boasting 10,788 projected units at the time) could very easily meet all the city’s income-tier RHNA responsibilities and still anchor a hefty housing-unit surplus.

What’s interesting is, state law mandates a city cannot concentrate new housing in just one area to fulfill RHNA requirements. Whatever shape or form neighborhoods take, Chino must reasonably spread out units throughout the city.

The majority of The Preserve’s infrastructure for current and future residential homebuilding — sidewalks, roads, the electrical network, and water-sewer systems — was completed in 2013 by one main master developer that took the lead on developing the entire project. That was 10 years after the area was originally annexed by Chino in 2003.

Meanwhile, it was mentioned in the same 2013 housing plan that outside the two master plans, there were only enough “vacant” and “underutilized” properties and land to build 522 residential units citywide to satisfy the remaining RHNA mandate. Councilmembers and leaders knew their community was growing by leaps and bounds but felt they could satisfy their RHNA mandate almost entirely within the master plans.

This planning decision led to major economic and social issues within the city’s center. The council increasingly focused its growth far away from Chino’s center, which has produced blight, struggling businesses, homelessness, and crime. At the same time, freshly painted buildings line the areas situated around the city’s master plans, where retail space and businesses are thriving. Essentially, a lack of investment in the city’s center has equated to run-down neighborhoods, as well as elementary schools attracting low scores on websites and social media.

Dramatic Growth Felt More Than Seen

A 2013 City of Chino Climate Action Plan forecasted a 17 percent population increase from 2008 to 2020 (approximately 75,600 to 88,700 residents). But this number was easily eclipsed two years ago by U.S. Census Bureau estimates in 2019, pegging Chino’s population at nearly 94,400 — a 25 percent jump and the largest number of residents in the city’s history.

Chino may have reached its forecasted RHNA goal within a brief moment in time. But an influx of new residents each year dramatically outperformed Chino’s projections, highlighting the desperate need for all types of new construction and innovative developments anywhere possible in the city’s residential zones and bordering pockets of San Bernardino County.

It’s almost as if a desperate need for more housing in all areas of Chino was evident well before 2013, whether certain city leaders could see it at the time or not — or whether they even wanted to entertain that possibility. Sources interviewed on deep background have pointed to questions arising in the planning department and elsewhere in city offices at that time: Why are some viable residential projects getting a green light to move forward and not others?

Interestingly, the city’s grand plans at The Preserve — which was blessed by the city council long ago and even strongly championed by a select few council members — would only fulfill Chino’s “current and future” housing needs for a short period. As of 2021, it’s likely there are even more residents living in Chino than the 94,400 figure estimated in 2019.

In fact, San Bernardino County’s population, along with the Inland Empire, is expected to continue rising over the next several years. The Center for Economic Forecasting and Development at UC Riverside is projecting the entire region will most likely continue being one of a few geographic engines of economic and population growth driving the entire state’s economy going into the near future.

A key pillar of this forecast is the region’s cheaper housing compared to coastal cities, especially for commuters — only if it’s allowed to be built.

Playing Catch-Up: That Was Then — This is Now

With 2020 in hindsight, it’s worth remembering that housing development and city planning don’t take place over a couple of meetings, or years for that matter. Long-range deliberation that aligns with state and city goals, along with taking the community’s comments into concern, is usually the natural course.

Today, however, Chino is falling well behind in all kinds of housing development that would meet the needs of those bottom three RHNA income tiers compared to surrounding similar-size communities. The location of housing being provided is not benefitting the more established parts of Chino.

Some sources close to the situation have said that the shiniest object on the city’s residential zoning map with the best chance of successfully being developed — The Preserve at Chino — was a no-brainer for local leaders to push forward at the time. That could be true.

But are there other housing projects that have been expressly turned down in public and private city council meetings? And if so, what was the reasoning?

As Chino has been discussing its RHNA projections for 2021 – 2029 that are closely monitored by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), City Attorney Fred Galante announced July 20 to councilmembers that Chino and other cities across Southern California are welcome to join an Orange County Council of Governments (OCCG) lawsuit challenging HCD and the state’s housing mandates (Galante is also general counsel for OCCG). He said Chino must allocate for an “astronomical” 6,959 new residential units over the next eight years, with 3,388 being “affordable” housing.

A closed-session city council meeting is being held this month (September) with Galante to discuss options as further details are forthcoming.

Stay tuned — this first special report is only the beginning. IE Business Daily will continue its investigation into the City of Chino, its housing development dynamics, the mayor’s leadership, city council decisions, and other disconcerting events in local politics in the coming days and weeks…