In a little over three years, Chino Valley’s politicians and municipal officials have transitioned from a leadership role within the vanguard seeking to preserve local land use authority from being eclipsed by state government functionaries to embracing Sacramento’s dominance with regard to managing development.
This month, a divided Chino City Council leaned into the concept of providing incentives to proceed with constructing secondary dwelling units on their property if that will assist in the city meeting a state-imposed mandate toward constructing new homes, in particular ones intended to house individuals with low to moderate earning power.
In California over the past ten to eleven years, policies pushed by both immediate past Governor Jerry Brown and his administration as well as that of current Governor Gavin Newsom, abetted by the super-majority Democratic legislature, have been exceptionally accommodating of the development industry as part of intensified efforts at solving what has been declared to be a housing crisis.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development has pushed for local jurisdictions to adhere to the developmental mandates derived through an assessment of a survey of housing needs carried out throughout the state. Collated into a document given the title Regional Housing Needs Allocation, those figures provide the basis of the mandates that state officials impose on all jurisdictions, including cities and unincorporated county areas in California, demands that those entities include in their general plans and zoning codes an accommodation of the number of dwelling units specified in the assessment, meaning each city must allow the construction of at least the number of homes the state says is its share of the burden to meet housing demand statewide.
In this way, in what is widely seen, both positively and negatively, as a daring social experiment, the State of California has, through Government Code §65580, required each municipality in the state to assist in alleviating the homelessness crisis by complying with what the California Department of Housing and Community Development deems to be each city’s housing responsibility.
Under this so-called Regional Housing Needs Allocation process, a determination is made of what number of dwelling units according to affordability type each community is to accommodate over an eight-year period. The expectation is that those cities will comply by granting developers clearance to build the specified number of houses within that span.
Based upon the numbers formulated for the state by the Southern California Association of Governments – a joint powers authority consisting of Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino County, Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties – as part of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation effort, San Bernardino County must accommodate the construction of 138,110 new homes between the end of 2021 and the end of 2028, including 35,667 intended for very-low-income homebuyers; 21,903 for low-income homebuyers; 24,140 for moderate-income homebuyers and 56,400 for above moderate-income homebuyers.
In the case of Chino Hills, the state’s expectation was that the city welcome 3,720 more dwelling units from October 2021 to October 2029. Chino, meanwhile, was being called upon to construct 6,978 total units in the same timeframe.
Though the vast majority of municipal officials in California accept the state’s asserted authority in this area, up and down the state there has been protest of, and in some cases resistance to, these mandates. Land use policies – from zoning to development standards to architectural guidelines to height restrictions and limitations on density – have evolved gradually over a period of more than a century at the local political levels in response to immediate and regional concerns and conditions. These policies have come to reflect the character of the varied communities and the values, attitudes and expectations of residents/citizens who inhabit those areas. To force not only the individual local governments of the state but the citizens that live in those communities to dispense with standards and polices that have been carefully and methodically developed over decades and generations in favor of meeting what are relatively short-term goals to address the housing crisis and the burgeoning numbers of homeless constitutes a myopic fix to a problem that exists in a much larger context, some social scientists, governmental analysts, politicians and California residents have observed. The imposition of that fix, entailing the construction of residential projects of a vastly higher density than what has been the previous norm, is very likely to result in undesirable consequences that will remain in place and mar the communities in question for decades or even centuries to come, those opposed to the mandates assert.
There has been an upswing in the number of people living in California, from 1,490,000 in 1900 to 10,677,000 by 1950 to 15,870,000 by 1960 to 19,971,069 in 1970 to 23,800,800 in 1980 to 29,950,111 in 1990 to 33,987,977 in 2000 to 37,253,956 in 2010 to 39,538,000 in 2020. Amidst conflicting reports of bot an infux and outflow of residents, it is projected by one reliable source that the current population of the Golden State is 40,793,891.
`There remains a difference of opinion among the population as to whether intensifying residential development is a sensible response to the general situation. Some have argued that more homes are needed to accommodate the influx of people. Others, citing what they consider to be a diminution in the quality of life as the population increases, argue that an effort to limit or end population growth in California is the more reasonable approach to the issue.
California’s government is clearly in the former camp. Nevertheless, within the last six years, provoked in no small part by the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s insistence that the Imperial County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, Orange County, Los Angeles County and Ventura County area of Southern California including the 191 cities or towns within those jurisdictions allow without question the construction of 1,341,827 housing units over the current eight-year planning cycle, a group of Southern California civic leaders, in some cases involving majorities of certain city councils, initiated meaningful and concerted steps toward contesting the State of California’s usurpation of what has traditionally been local land use authority.
Among the jurisdictions at the forefront of that movement was the City of Chino Hills.
Most cities in Southern California, reasoning it would do no good to try to fight the state, merely knuckled under to the Department of Housing & Community Development’s regional 1,341,827 housing unit construction mandate. Forty-five cities in the region, however, engaged in an appeal in 2021, in which they were collectively represented by Southern California Association of Governments staff.
In San Bernardino County, the city councils of Fontana, Chino Hills, Chino and Barstow were brave enough to challenge the state. Barstow asked the state to cut its 1,516 house-building mandate by 58 percent to 635; Chino Hills requested 1,797 units in lieu of 3,720, a 52 percent reduction; Chino wanted a 49 percent cut from 6,978 to 3,564; and Fontana insisted that the 17,477 units it was being asked to accommodate was 30 percent too optimistic, requesting that its mandate be reduced to 10,563.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development did not budge in its demands, conveying that the government does not negotiate with scofflaws, renegades, terrorists or any entity or anybody that does not respect the rule of law. Lest anyone forget, California Government Code §65580 is the law, those city officials were warned.
In January 2022, a still-determined Chino Hills City Council, bolstered by an outpouring of resident sentiment, ventured even further down the path of resisting having to surrender land use authority within that city’s confines by adopting a local housing initiative referred to as “Neighborhood Voices” that asserted local land use and zoning laws trumped any conflicting state laws.
Over the next six months, however, developmental interests looking to construct housing subdivisions in Chino Hills, chaffing at the limitations on density, i.e., the number of units per acre to be permitted on property they had purchased or had tied up within the city, made it known that they were considering legal action against the city in which they were prepared to allege the city was denying them the right to develop that land to an intensity they were entitled to under the newfangled state law.
Though city officials since 2020 had been contemplating whether or not to comply with what was then the state’s tentative mandate that it clear the decks for the construction of 3,720 units within the city by 2029 or whether to fight to change that number to 1,797, it had previously made contingency plans to meet the 3,720-unit mandate and had formulated a revised housing element for the sixth period planning cycle for 2021 to 2029 to the state with the 3,720 unit figure embedded in it, at least conceptually. The city council adopted the housing element document on February 8, 2022 as a formality and sent it to the California Department of Housing and Community Development. On April 11, 2022, the California Department of Housing and Community Development responded by letter, letting the city know that while the housing element addressed most of the state’s housing requirement, it was deficient in certain respects, asserting the city had fallen short in terms of “affirmatively furthering fair housing” and providing specific detail on segregation/integration, concentrated areas of affluence, eliminating concentrated areas of poverty and demonstrating how the city was meeting with the spirit and letter of Regional Housing Needs Allocation The California Department of Housing and Community Development said revisions were needed to respond to the requested fair housing analyses. Faced with the threats of private sector entities suiting and the state dictating to the city how many homes to build as well as the character and placement of those homes, city staff members worked to address the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s expressed concerns. After some back and forth, on July 20 the California Department of Housing informed the city that the housing element document was in an acceptable form that would allow it to ratify the housing element document as being sufficient. Weary of the tension with Sacramento and having not yet fully initiated the fight with the the state they had been considering entering into, Chino Hills officials in August 2022 essentially dropped the city’s opposition to the Regional Housing Needs Allocation mandate, signaling it was going along, and avoiding the prospect of administrative, legal or financial retribution by the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the rest of the state government in the immediate or near term.
Like Chino Hills, Chino abandoned protesting or resisting the state’s mandate that it be prepared to accept another 6,978 housing units within its city limits by October 2029.
In September 2024, Governor Newsom signed three bills into law – Assembly Bill 2533, Senate Bill 1211 and Senate Bill 1077 – which took effect on January 1, 2025 and altered California Senate Bill 1534, passed in 1982 and which enshrined into law Government Code section 65852.2, a statute which established statewide options for local governments to promote and regulate secondary residential suites. also known as “accessory dwelling units (ADUs)” or granny flats in California. Essentially, what Assembly Bill 2533, Senate Bill 1211 and Senate Bill 1077 did was to allow a second housing unit to be built on any property with an existing single family home or parcel zoned for a single family home, doubling the potential density of such properties. A possible use for such units, which are generally but not necessarily smaller than the existing unit on the property was to house the aging parent of the property owner, thus giving rise to the label “granny flat.” The occupancy of accessory dwelling units, however, was not limited to family members of the owners or occupiers of the primary residence on the property. In this way, Assembly Bill 2533, Senate Bill 1211 and Senate Bill 1077 eroded further the land use authority of local government.
At a Chino City Council study session on September 9, municipal officials cataloged the city’s options on meeting the need for more housing, including the construction of new units that will be affordable to very low income buyers, low income buyers, moderate income buyers and above average income buyers.
Gone was any pretense of resisting the state government’s effort to straitjacket cities into accepting more intensive and denser development within residential zones. Accepting that there are growing numbers of existing homeowners who are contemplating constructing accessory dwelling units on their property and that an unbridled frenzy to construct a secondary housing unit in the back or side yard of homes throughout the city could break out at any time, city officials contemplated a proposal to encourage city residents to adopt the city’s higher development standards for accessory dwelling units than those that now exist under state standards. The incentives to do this, under the plan, are to consist of financial assistance with such construction efforts to be provided by the city. A further requirement, under the program, would be that the units be leased or rented at an affordable to tenants with very low, low or moderate income.
The incentives would come in the form of zero-interest or no-interest loans.
The plan was put together by Development Services Director Warren Morelion and Deputy Development Services Director Chris Corbin.
According to Corbin, the city is already supporting the construction of granny flats by waiving some development fees has and facilitating such projects that confine themselves to less than 1,000 square feet under roof and fewer than three bedrooms. The city has three sets of pre-approved design/construction plans that can be utilized by property owners or developers at no cost. at no cost to builders.
Councilman Marc Lucio was enthusiastic about the financing program. Mayor Eunice Ulloa was less so, stating that the widespread addition of accessory dwelling units in various areas of the city, particularly neighborhoods that already are densely packed with houses, where parking space is already severely limited and the sewer system is at near capacity, would overwhelm the city’s existing infrastructure and entail “parking nightmares. I don’t know if I want to incentivize these issues,” she said.
Lucio suggested the city can work with the accessory dwelling unit applicants to mitigate such issues. “We can put some limits on what they’re able to build, if they want our money,” he said.
Ulloa pointed out that the city is not at liberty, under the new state law, to charge existing homeowners fees to upgrade the sewer line when a secondary unit is constructed on their property.
Morelion acknowledged that was a problem city officials “haven’t dealt with it yet” as the city, in particular at its extreme southern end, is dealing with an effluent flow for which the city’s engineering division had not planned for.
There has already been an influx of granny flats into the city and it is unclear the degree to which they have intensified the use of the city’s sewage and water treatment systems, according to Chino Public Works Director Hye Jin Lee. Lee said her staff is updating the sewer master plan to address those impacts.
The council did not approve the incentive plan for accessory dwelling units but will reconsider it at a later date in the context of its overall strategic housing plan.