Citing California’s Housing Affordability Act, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this week rejected an appeal by more than 60 Joshua Tree residents the planning commission’s January 23 approval of the 64-unit Lovemore Ranch residential subdivision.
In an immediate reaction, a cross section of those residents have undertaken to initiate further legal and administrative challenges to the project and both county and the county board of supervisors’ land use authority in the 6,585-population community.
In 2020, Axel Cramer and Dane Hollar, who were then 27 years old and 24 years old, respectively, approached the county, proposing on behalf of their company, Green Collar Builders, what ultimately evolved into the Lovemore Ranch project. There original concept involved construction of 31 ½ acre+ lots, which was in keeping with the half-acre minimum lot size traditionally adhered to in Joshua Tree. To the extent that word about what Cramer and Hollar were proposing reached members of the Joshua Tree community, there were no major objections to the proposal, at least insofar as the density issue.
Cramer and Hollar, who are now 32 and 29 and yet the principals in Green Collar Builders and its more recently-formed corporate offshoot, Lovemore Investments, LLC , last year filed with the San Bernardino County Land Use Services Department an application to erect a 64-home project they dubbed Lovemore Ranch, adjacent to Alta Loma Road in Joshua Tree. In presenting the proposal to the county and to the general public, there were a few discrepancies with regard to some of the specific features of the subdivision.
According to Cramer and Hollar, Lovemore Ranch was to simultaneously accommodate what was calculated to be 256 residents on the more than 18-acre project site, which is currently virtually uninhabited, without having any ecological impact on the property. Through the art/science/magic of technical innovation, they insisted, there would be more electricity generated on the property than would be used by those residing there, more water would percolate into the water table than goes into the aquifer at present as a consequence of natural rainfall and no native species of plants or animals would be disturbed by the erection of 64 homes. Moreover, according to the duo, the entire project was to have less than a net-negative carbon impact, meaning, apparently, that after the 64 homes are built and filled with residents, there will be less use of fossil fuel on the 18.5 acres where the homes are to be built than is in use there now.
When he was pressed on that issue last summer, Cramer was unable to explain, precisely, how that would be, particularly since there is virtually no human activity on the property at present.
Simultaneously, within the San Bernardino County Land Use Services Department, county employees assigned to the project, including Supervising Planner Linda Mawby, were processing an application that featured environmental impacts virtually indistinguishable from a project of that size and intensity.
In 2013, San Bernardino County government officials made a commitment to open public access to their decision-making processes by opening the large conference rooms at the Jerry Lewis High Desert Government Center in Hesperia and the Bob Burke Government Center in Joshua Tree to the public on the days of board of supervisors and county planning commission meetings and incorporating videoconferencing in the meeting protocol so that residents in those necks of the wood could address the board or commission with regard to items on those panels’ respective agendas. This was intended to facilitate, in particular, local participation with regard to country government action involving several desert communities. San Bernardino County, at 20,105 square miles, is a land mass larger than Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut and New Jersey, combined. The one-way driving distance from Needles to San Bernardino is 213 miles. The one-way driving distance from Twentynine Palms to San Bernardino is 89 miles. The one-way driving distance from Victorville to San Bernardino is 40.5 miles. The one-way driving distance from Barstow to San Bernardino is 71 miles. The one-way driving distance from Trona to San Bernardino is 133 miles.
In the same timeframe when the discussion with regard to the Lovemore Ranch project was picking up in Joshua Tree in August 2024, San Bernardino County officially sounded a full-scale retreat from the policy initiated 11 years previously when it announced that it was going to discontinue the teleconferencing of the county board and county commission meetings between San Bernardino and Hesperia as well as San Bernardino and Joshua Tree. “Declining and oftentimes zero public utilization led the county administrative office to re-evaluate the operation of the sites and determine that scaling back operations would constitute the wisest use of public resources,” the county announced at the time. In discontinuing the videoconferencing, the county made reference to an effort to “right-size the use of its videoconferencing sites,” such that “The county will continue to operate the Joshua Tree and/or Hesperia remote participation sites when there is an item on the board agenda that is anticipated to draw significant public participation from those communities.”
By January 2025, the San Bernardino County Land Use Department had completed its processing of the application and a hearing date of January 23, 2025 before the San Bernardino County Planning Commission was scheduled.
By tradition, policy and law, the owners of property that fall within a distance of 300 feet of a project site must be contacted to allow them to weigh in with regard to a project proposal when it goes before a governmental decision-making panel for approval. San Bernardino County officials now acknowledge that the county and its land use services division made inadequate noticing of the Lovemore Ranch development proposal prior to the January 23, 2025 planning commission meeting. Publicly available documents and the video of the January 23 planning commission meeting demonstrate that county internal communications suffered a breakdown and that no effort was made to resume the videoconferencing from the Joshua Tree conference room at the Bob Burke Center on January 23 when the LoveMore Ranch project was being considered by the planning commission. During the January 23 planning commission meeting, when the planning commission members sought to hear from Joshua Tree residents they assumed were gathered at the Bob Burke Center conference room, they encountered a dead circuit and were provided with no input from Joshua Tree residents before they made their decision. In that decision, the planning commission gave the Lovemore Ranch go-ahead.
The vast majority of those in Joshua Tree, including those living or owning property at the periphery of Lovemore Ranch, others proximate to the site and even more Joshua Tree residents living at a further distance from the site, were caught unaware by the project consideration and approval. In relatively short order, many banded together, functioning under the aegis of both the Morongo Basin Conservation Association and Joshua Tree Village Neighbors, filing an appeal of the planning commission decision with the board of supervisors.
Members of both the Morongo Basin Conservation Association and Joshua Tree Village Neighbors networked with San Luis Obispo-based attorney Babak Naficy, who specializes in that province of the law relating to land use, the California Environmental Quality Act and environmental public policy issues in state and federal court. Based on his advice and that of other land use specialists, the appellants raised multiple issues with regard to the planning commission’s action.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act, an examination of the environmental impacts of a project must be made. Some discretion is left to the governmental decision-making body that oversees land use issues and possesses approval and/or denial authority regard to a development project as to what type of analysis of the environmental issues is to be carried out and what mitigations of the impacts are to be required.
In evaluating the project application, San Bernardino County Land Use Services consented to using a mitigated negative declaration, also referred to as an initial study, as the means of providing the project with its environmental certification.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act, a mitigated negative declaration is one of the least exacting types of development impact assessments. On the other end of the scale, an environmental impact report is the most involved and exhaustive type of environmental analysis and certification there is, followed by an environmental impact study, then an environmental impact assessment, then a mitigated negative declaration and a negative declaration. An environmental impact report consists of an in-depth study of the project site, the project proposal, the potential and actual impacts the project will have on the site and surrounding area in terms of all conceivable issues, including land use, water use, air quality, potential contamination, noise, traffic, and biological and cultural resources. An environmental impact report specifies in detail what measures can, will and must be carried out to offset those impacts. An environmental impact study is somewhat less exacting and an environmental impact assessment less stringent still. A mitigated negative declaration is a statement by the ultimate land use authority – in the is case the board of supervisors – that any identified impacts from the project will be mitigated or offset by the conditions of approval for the project. A negative declaration, the least exacting type of certification there is, merely states that the initial study done by the agency staff – in this case the county department of land use services – sufficiently identified any environmental issues and that there are no environmental problems of consequence involved in the proposed project. In the case of Lovemore Ranch, the planning commission and the board of supervisors required nothing beyond the initial study to approve the project, which many in Joshua Tree found to be so disregardful as to be insulting.
According to Nacify, “The initial study does not include an adequate discussion of potential hydrological impacts. The initial study does not include a stable or adequate description of the proposed wastewater treatment facility. The initial study fails to consider or analyze the environmental impacts of the project’s wastewater treatment facility.”
The wastewater treatment facility, which would entail at least 64 active sewage connections, would be located within the subdivision, proximate to the subdivision’s homes and existing and future homes in the area around Lovemore Ranch, the appellants pointed out. “How much money will each household pay in a 64-house community for treatment operational costs?” the appellants asked the board of supervisors in an illustrated briefing with regard to the project. “If only five houses sell, will the five houses pay for all of the operational costs? How much will that cost per household? What is the design threshold number of active sewage connections required for operations to begin? After the first house sells, will the plant be online? Where will the waste go if not? What is the typical distance from homes for a waste treatment facility? Research suggest 1,500 feet. The map [of the subdivision] shows the facility to be 30 feet from an existing house. The smell and noise of operations will lead to lower quality of life for existing residents. How will flies be addressed? Pesticides are terrible for the delicate desert environment. Where will the discharge from the facility go?”
According to the appellants, “We believe there was an improper public notification and review process, including an incomplete and incorrect record given to the planning commission for review. because it was not open for public comment on January 23.”
A crucial issue is the intensity of the project. The majority of the Joshua Tree residents who are contesting the county’s approval of Lovemore Ranch maintain that they found the original 31-unit project that Cramer and Hollar proposed acceptable but that they consider the more than doubling of its density into an undertaking that obliterates the half-acre standard for lots in Joshua Tree to be an inappropriate suspension of community norms.
According to the Morongo Basin Conservation Association and Joshua Tree Village Neighbors, Cramer and Cruz represented to them that the county had rejected the project as proposed in 2020 as insufficiently intensive and “that the county would only accept a denser project, so it was revised.” The Morongo Basin Conservation Association and Joshua Tree Village Neighbors marshaled a county planning document, Table 82-9C of the residential land use zoning district development standards for San Bernardino County desert region, which states there is no minimum density for such projects.
“The county has no standing to demand a minimum density,” the applicants stated.
The appellants further latched on to the consideration that the manner in which the project was given approval would allow Green Collar Builders and/or Lovemore Investments to market or otherwise lease or rent the homes on a short-term basis, akin to motels, which would exacerbate problems unincorporated county areas in the desert and mountains have had with short-term rentals, where vacationers, paying sometimes exorbitant prices to stay a day, a weekend, week, two weeks or a month, overoccupy the property, in some cases with as many as two dozen people packed into living conditions designed for a family of four or five or no more than six or seven, often comporting themselves in ways which are extremely discourteous to their temporary neighbors.
”No county policy prevents this development from becoming a short-term rental resort,” the appellants maintained. “The county remains deficient in removing short-term rentals from the county’s housing element.”
In California, a Housing Element is a required part of a county or a city’s general plan that addresses how the community will address its housing needs, including affordable housing, for all income levels. It includes an analysis of housing needs, strategies to meet those needs, and programs to implement them. The California Department of Housing and Community Development has noted deficiencies in San Bernardino County’s progress toward redressing homelessness and its housing shortage, including allowing housing stock that would be suitable for housing individuals, couples and families to be used as short-term rentals which are occupied, quite often or predominantly, by people who live elsewhere or outside San Bernardino County sporadically, such that the housing used for so-called short-term rentals are vacant much of the time, depriving the homeless or those who are looking to rent long-term or purchase a home of residential opportunities of a place to reside.
According to Nacify, “The initial study violates the California Environmental Quality Act because it does not include a stable and consistent description of the project. No trustworthy and comprehensive project description has been provided.”
The appellants pointed out that the project would involve mining roughly 30,000 cubic yards of earth from around the project site for use as topsoil, resulting in the disturbing, disruption or destruction of the natural flora, including Joshua trees, which California state regulations call for protecting.
The appellants seized upon the density issue pertaining to the project, noting that 64 units on 18.49 acres is close to double the Joshua Tree community standard of one unit per half-acre and that Cramer and Hollar have given indication that they are looking at putting an accessory dwelling unit, sometimes referred to as a granny flat, on each of the 64 parcels, such that the project would entail 128 units, actually achieving a density of 6.9226 units per acre.
The appellants did not demand that the project be denied, but that the conditions of approval be altered such that the subdivision be restricted to lots of at least one-half acre. This would, the appellants maintained, allow each structure to have its own septic system and remove the need for the project to entail a sewage treatment facility. Moreover, they called for a requirement that all existing Joshua trees on the property stay in place or be relocated by a professional. The appellants requested that a new hearing for the project be scheduled before the planning commission, during which a commitment that the development will not be used as a resort involving short-term rentals would be extracted from Cramer and Hollar.
Additionally, the appellants sought the completion of a comprehensive traffic study.
The land use services division, together with County Counsel Tom Bunton, senior county administrators and the board of supervisors mounted a defense of the planning commission’s action, ultimately sustaining the decision to allow the project to proceed. While conceding what they considered to be minor points in the appellants’ argument and assertions, county officials gravitated to the conclusion that the project, in the broadest respect, met the criteria for acceptable development projects laid out in the county general plan. The county’s coup de grâce of the appeal was an assertion formulated by County Counsel Tom Bunton, who heads the county government’s stable of in-house attorneys, that California’s Housing Affordability Act forced the county’s hand, such that it had to approve the project.
The California Affordable Housing Act, passed by the legislature and signed into law in 2022, mandates local governments allocate a specific percentage of new housing developments as “affordable” for low- and moderate-income families. At least 20 percent of units in new developments must meet affordability criteria based on area median income levels.
In this way, according to Bunton, the county can legally maintain that it is required to meet the state’s demand that it permit the construction of affordable housing and that by allowing Cramer and Hollar to more than double the number of homes they intend to build, the price on at least 20 percent of those units can be reduced to what is affordable to those with what are defined as low- or moderate incomes. Since the general plan allows homes in the desert to be constructed to a density of four units per acre, the project is in compliance with that criterion, according to Bunton.
Given that there are no other elements of the project that violate the county’s various codes, Bunton opined, the project is kosher. The only remaining grounds by which it could be reasonably denied, he said, was if there was an element to it that was demonstrably inimical to public health or the current or future Joshua Tree populations’ well being.
“You’d have to find by a preponderance of the evidence, a little over 50 percent, that there are specific adverse health and safety impacts that cannot be mitigated,” Bunton said.
Given that the project is in compliance with the general plan and since what Cramer and Hollar want to build will assist the county in achieving the goals of the Affordable Housing Act, Bunton said the board had no choice other than approving the project.
Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Dawn Rowe, who had at one point acknowledged that the county could have done a better job at notifying Joshua Tree’s residents of the planning commission hearing for the project, took Bunton’s warning that the county would be subject to a legal or procedural challenge by either the state or Cramer and Holler if it did not approve the project as a good enough reason, despite whatever Joshua Tree’s residents had to say about it, to uphold the planning commission’s approval of the project.
She and the remainder of the board of supervisors voted unanimously to deny the appeal.
Nelson Day, of Joshua Tree Village Neighbors, said “We think it is bogus that the county used the Affordable Housing Act to reject our appeal. We gave them plenty of material and documentation showing multiple violation of the California Environmental Quality Act. I originally submitted documentation that laid all of that out to the county every step of the way.”
“The project proponents have made factually wrong submissions with regard to the traffic impacts,” Day asserted. “They stated that there would be 70 vehicle trips resulting from the project in any given hour. Yet, if you look at their own numbers relating to the project and its number of residents and put them into the state Department of Transportation’s formula, which is a very simple calculation using essentially fourth grade math, you will see the traffic numbers exceed 120 trips per hour. You can surmise why they reported 70 per hour, because at 100 trips per hour, they would need to perform a much more involved evaluation of how the traffic flow must be managed.”
Day said Cramer and Hollar in their application and the county in its initial study had defied logic and physical reality by maintaining that the properties surrounding Lovemore Ranch would sustain less stormwater runoff during and in the aftermath of a major deluge after the project is completed than is now the case while the project property exists as what is essentially undisturbed desert chaparral.
“Their hydrology study, which the planning commission accepted, claimed that the post-development property would have only 88 percent of stormwater flow than the pre-development quantity of water that comes off the property. That is an outright lie. Once it is paved for streets and parking and housing is put in, the ground will be more impervious and less able to absorb water. The amount of water running off the property will will be greater. This could result in serious flooding of neighboring properties.”
Day continued, “This is an obviously blatant violation of the California Environmental Quality Act, just like their traffic calculations. There is a substantial amount of traffic on Alta Loma Road already. Traffic will be added due to this project.”
The county did not obtain adequate input from the residents to be impacted by the development before the project was approved, Day said.
“We were not given notice of the planning commission meeting,” he said. “We did a survey of the 65 landowners closest to the project. Of the 12 responses we received, only one person said he had received a letter from the county. I walked from house to house. What I learned was that the one person informed of the meeting was a renter. The requirement is that the landowners, not those who are renting or leasing, must be informed. The county did not research the ownership rolls. The day of the meeting, the building where the public is supposed to attend the board meetings was closed. The Bob Burke Meeting Room wasn’t open. We put this in the appeal letter. The county didn’t get back to us until March 15.”
Day said he was troubled by the indifference on the part of the board of supervisors to the issues the Joshua Tree community had raised.
“We were not adequately informed about the planning commission meeting or we would have showed up,” he said. “There is no question about that, because when we filed the appeal, 65 people from Joshua Tree were at the board of supervisors meeting and gave testimony. They were not vague statements of opposition. We went into very specific reasons, all of which were valid, as to why the project as it is proposed is not compatible with the community. We were not asking them to deny the project. I said, ‘This man [Cramer] has a right to develop his land. We just want it to be developed with rules in place to protect our environment and our community.’ As a community, we went through a tremendous effort to make our case clear. I, on my own, spent over 100 hours preparing so I could make my presentation to the board, which was limited to just three minutes. My message to them was not that they should deny the project, but that they should reopen the process so the planning commission could hear from the community before making its decision. They basically ignored us and gave us a bogus reason for their approval, bringing up the Affordable Housing Act and saying their hands were tied. They were telling us the developer can put a hotel and a sewer treatment plan on the property next to people’s backyards without giving them adequate notice and that they have no choice but to approve it. This whole thing reeks of corruption.”
Day said he was disappointed in Supervisor Dawn Rowe, in whose District 3 Joshua Tree is located. “I don’t think Dawn Rowe or any of the members of the board of supervisors listened to us. They didn’t respond by asking [county staff] the proper questions.”
Day continued, “I am made very sad by this. I don’t think the board of supervisors or Dawn Rowe in particular read any of the things we spent hundreds of hours preparing. They had their minds made up before the meeting began. Dawn Rowe has not done a very good job for us. Her way forward on whatever agenda she has was to deny our appeal and get it over with. I don’t think anyone in our community would vote for her again. Everyone was outraged. We are now discussing incorporating Joshua Tree. We are really sick of people 90 miles away making these decisions about what is going to be built in our neighborhoods. If we became a city, we could keep our money in our community instead of having San Bernardino totally disregard our opinions and not care about what we want and vote in opposition to our interests and disregard us like that.”
Day said the long long-term goal of creating a new city is not of the same priority as taking legal action to challenge both the planning commission decision regarding Lovemore Ranch and the board of supervisors’ vote sustaining it.
“I think we have a good case on the notification issue alone,” he said. “The county can’t just send out notices to some renters and none of the actual property owners. We have multiple grounds for California Environmental Quality Act violations in the same lawsuit. You can’t piecemeal design a residential subdivision under the California Environmental Quality Act. If we were to win on that issue alone, we could make this project something we might be able to live with. If they make the parcels a half-acre, then there would be only half as many units, and there could be septic tanks rather than a sewer treatment plant next to houses. As it stands now, what is proposed is more dense than the local mobile home park. The case on traffic issues is air tight. Our goal is to take them to court and put the project on pause and then send it back to the planning commission where we can get the hearing on all of the issues we didn’t get before.”