With Chino Hills Objecting

SBC County Is Shoehorning West End Cities Into Utilizing Fontana Homeless Navigation Center

San Bernardino County, which according to a survey conducted early this year has at least 3,837 people who have no roof over their heads within its 20,105-square mile confines, appears to be making significant strides in redressing the social scourge of homelessness.
At various points over the last decade or so, at least four of the county’s 24 municipalities and the county government itself has taken the lead in the effort to reclaim the lives and dignity of the region’s destitute.
Not surprisingly, those entities consistently most involved in that effort have included San Bernardino, Fontana and Victorville, three of the five places in the county where the problem of those living on the streets or under what are very dire circumstances is most pronounced.
Recently, Fontana has found itself in the lead once more. Somewhat ironically, however, it has drawn criticism from officials in other San Bernardino County jurisdictions for the intensity with which it has met the homelessness challenge head-on, even as the cities those officials critical of Fontana have shrunk from dealing with the homelessness challenge.
In San Bernardino there are five comprehensive homeless shelters. One is Mary’s Haven, a 12-to-24-month transitional living program for displaced women with young children. Another is Mary’s Village, which features 85 beds for homeless men, and which is run by the same Catholic social services missionaries who operate Veronica’s Home of Mercy I and Veronica’s Home of Mercy II, each providing 40 beds and other support and social service for homeless women. Another is the former All Star Lodge, which was converted by the County of San Bernardino in conjunction with the State of California’s Homekey Program into 76 single and two-bedroom units that provide interim to permanent housing for individuals and families.
Using Homekey funds and matching city money, the City of Redlands partnered with Step Up on Second, a Santa Monica-based nonprofit to take possession of the former Good Nite Inn and converted its 98 hotel rooms into mini-living quarters, complete with kitchenettes and bathrooms to house and support, variously, individual homeless or homeless couples.
In December 2023, the City of Victorville opened the Victorville Wellness Center, a 26,000-square-foot 170-bed facility on 4.5-acres which features 110 separate variably-sized units, including single, double and five family shelters. Fifty-three of the units are are dedicated to recuperative care. Elements of the shelter include a dog kennel, an industrial kitchen, a cafeteria, recreation sports courts, community event spaces and a community garden.
In Fontana, the city opened a 120-bed homeless shelter that had been converted from the the Sure Stay Hotel, located at 17133 Valley Boulevard using $6.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 funds it received from the federal government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and another $5 million allocated to it by the County of San Bernardino and another $4 million in funding from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That facility provides what is termed “interim housing” for those who are down-and-out and 24-hour managed care for residents at the facility, including social rehabilitation, substance abuse services and job training.
In June, Fontana broke ground on what was originally intended to be a $12 million “navigation center” for the homeless, which is expected to house up to 200 residents upon completion, scheduled for March 2026. The facility is being built within a former warehouse located at 11109 Jasmine Street.
Navigation centers provide services to the unhoused while quickly getting them off the street and into safe and secure shelter spaces.
More recently, the Fontana City Council committed to purchasing the Fontana Motor Lodge on Foothill Boulevard which sits on 2.3 acres for $7.5 million and tentatively committed to using another $3.9 million to convert it into the city’s third homeless shelter. Based upon what was done with the conversion of the 60-unit Sure Stay hotel, the 58-unit Fontana Motor Lodge will likely entail 116 beds upon completion. Each of the 58 units will be augmented with a kitchenette, according to Deputy City Manager Phillip Burum.
The units will become permanent rather than temporary housing for those accepted to live there, including individuals, couples and families.
Subsequent to Fontana making a commitment toward constructing the navigation center, it entered into a dialogue with San Bernardino County about financing for the project as well as arrangements for its operation upon completion.
At some point, San Bernardino County officials agreed to invest $20 million into the 200-bed facility, expanding its range of services, repurposing it from simple temporary housing of the homeless to devoting about half of its beds to what is termed “recuperative medical care” and cover a percentage of its ongoing operational costs after it opens. This agreement came with the proviso that Fontana, while continuing to use the navigation center to take in the dispossessed living within its city limits, would also accept homeless from other communities on the west end of the county. This was to entail the name of the facility being changed from the “Fontana Navigation Center” to the “West End Navigation Center.” The arrangement also meant that the opening of the facility was to be postponed from Spring 2026 until December 2026.
The warehouse conversion will serve as a homeless outreach/wellness center offering transitional and emergency housing, will cater to multiple cities in the area and be manned by San Bernardino County Homeless Services division employees.
Under the deal cut with the county, the yearly operating costs for the facility, projected to be around $3 million, were to be shared by the county and the cities, on a pro-rated basis, depending on the number of homeless each diverts to the facility.
Of note, some of the West End cities at present face a less acute homeless crisis than they did in the past. Ontario, for example, became a haven for a substantial number of homeless more than a decade-and-a-half ago. Just prior to the national, state and local economic downturn in 2007, a group of about 20 ragtag squatters occupied vacant property just west of Ontario Airport without authorization. When the recession hit in earnest later that year and continued into 2008, even more people flocked to the spot. Bowing to reality, Ontario city officials set aside a 2.5 acre site near Ontario International Airport west of Grove Avenue where homeless people could camp without being fined or arrested. began providing water hookups, sanitation facilities and other basic services to those living there. That official acceptance generated publicity, which in turn resulted in larger numbers of homeless setting up living quarters there.
In 2008, the city drew the line, disallowing outsiders living in mobile homes from occupying the area and then instituting a policy of having those accepted there show proof that they had lived or otherwise originated in Ontario to receive the limited services the city was providing. Though referred to as “tent city,” over time the encampment, which in many cases involved individuals and families living in and out of their vehicles, grew to over 400, and spilled onto vacant property exceeding the original 2.5 acres. This resulted in Ontario becoming the city in San Bernardino County – behind the City of San Bernardino – with the second-largest homeless count.
In 2012, with the existence of tent city having persisted for more than four years, Ontario city officials resolved to eradicate it, first by discontinuing the provision of the basic facilities it had been providing and then engaging in ever-increasing enforcement activity, which convinced most of those there to leave.
Simultaneously and subsequently, other cities on the west side of the county were experiencing difficulties brought on by the occasional, recurrent and permanent presence of the homelessness, even though there were no homeless shelters, per se, in those communities. On the western side of Upland along undeveloped or unoccupied strips of property both south and North of Foothill Boulevard, in patches chaparral and underbrush or in washes below the predominant ground level in the area, homeless encampments that were for the most part hidden from view, ones with populations that totaled over 100, had cropped up. The denizens of those invisible encampments grew visible as they congregated near Foothill Boulevard businesses where they approached those businesses’ patrons for monetary donations or handouts. In Chino, well-intentioned do-gooders offered meals to the homeless in that city’s historic downtown area. The operators of nearby businesses grew resentful of the indigent who then inundated the district, sometimes remaining there or camping nearby the evenings before those meals were served.
Generally, the West End cities – Chino Hills, Chino, Montclair, Upland, Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga – demonstrated themselves averse to hosting or serving as a venue for homeless shelter or offering any type of services to the homeless that might serve as a magnet for the impoverished.
San Bernardino County officials, in working toward convincing Fontana to expand the Fontana Navigation Center into the West End Navigation Center, made presumptions about bringing Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Upland, Montclair, Chino and Chino Hills in on the dealt that were, depending on the city, true, half-true or not true at all.
A basic assumption was that none of those municipalities was in a hurry to welcome within its confines a homeless shelter. Following from that was that each of the cities would support the concept of allowing Fontana to host such a facility where those cities’ homeless could be relocated, either permanently or temporarily. In this way, the county calculated, the officials in those cities would be willing to make a layout of what county officials deemed would be each one’s fair share of the cost of running the navigation center. It was anticipated this would be the case, especially since the county itself would be defraying a considerable portion of the operational costs.
Indeed, Rialto, Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, Ontario, Montclair and Chino were ready to buy into the deal, to a greater or lesser extent. Chino Hills, however, is balking at becoming a full-fledged member of the West End Navigation Center Consortium.
At the basis of Chino Hills officials’ reluctance is the consideration that at present, at least, its homeless crisis is nothing close to what the other nearby cities are exhibiting. Of San Bernardino County 24 incorporated municipalities, it ranks 24th in homelessness, with just three total homeless counted during the most recent point-in-time count of the unhoused in San Bernardino County carried out on January 23, 2025.
Chino, had less than a critical problem with homelessness, as it stood at 18th on the list of the number of those unsheltered among the county’s 22 cities and two enfranchised towns, with 31 who were known to be living on its streets in January.
Montclair in January came in as the next least impacted by homelessness in terms of sheer numbers, with 38 unhoused, though that relatively favorable 16th place ranking is in some measure a result of its diminutive size, as at 5.52-square miles it is the county’s smallest city geographically.
All of the remaining cities in the West End have homelessness levels that represent at least a mild, and in some cases a significant, social burden.
Rialto, with 54 homeless within its city limits, ranks 13th on the list of the number of homeless in the county and Upland, where there were 67 homeless tallied ranks twelfth. Rancho Cucamonga, where there were 120 total homeless counted, was the seventh among the county’s cities in being afflicted with residents who have no house to inhabit. In Ontario there were 297 total homeless counted in January, making it fourth among the county’s cities when it comes to the number of dispossessed. Fontana has the dubious distinction of having the most homeless people among the West End cities, with 364, making it the third most unfortunate county city in this regard, with San Bernardino and Victorville being the only cities with more unenviable numbers in that regard countywide.
The City of Chino Hills has expressed hesitation about committing to participating in the West End Navigation Center cooperative based on the minuscule number of homeless residents the city is dogged by and because the facility is 37 miles distant. .
Under the terms of Chino Hills’ participation in the deal worked out by the county, the city would contribute $200,000 per year toward the operation of the West End Navigation Center, which would entitle it to send no fewer than, and perhaps more, homeless individuals residing within its border to Fontana to be cared for and provided with assistance and training to allow them to eventually find employment or some other means of getting housing.
Chino Hills’ decision-makers, i.e., its city council members, are acutely aware that the city earlier this year had only three known homeless people within its 44.68-square mile expanse. They understood, too, that the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, with which the city contracts to provide law enforcement services and act as the Chino Hills Police Department, is at liberty to treat homeless in the city very aggressively, and that this has, in the past dissuaded, and will, in the future dissuade, the homeless from remaining in the city.
Chino Hills officials noted that the City of Chino was being allowed to participate in the West End Navigation Center program for the same amount of money – $200,000 per year – as Chino Hills is being called upon to pay. Thus, their city was being asked to pay $40,000 per homeless enrollee at the navigation center when Chino was being counted upon to potentially pay less than one-tenth that, at $6,451.61. When similar numerical breakdowns with come of the other West End cities were considered, Chino Hills officials said, it seemed like they were getting ripped off. While Fontana had agreed to contribute one third of the cost of the West End Navigation Center’s operations – $1 million per year – the 271 homeless in its jurisdiction that might tap into its services made that deal sound more favorable than the one given Chino Hills, the Chino Hills City Council suggested. Likewise, Ontario, which was to contribute $250,000 per year, potentially would seen far greater benefit from its participation than Chino Hills, given that it has 271 homeless who might receive services their for long or short durations.
While the county is committed to underwrite the operations at the navigation center to the tune of $450,000 annually, it would have the option of sending any of the 3,834 homeless who are not in Chino Hills and the three known homeless in Chino Hill to the navigation for treatment or other services as its officials deem fit.
For Chino Hills council members and its taxpayers, the distance to the navigation center is an issue, since the participating cities must provide transportation for the homeless individuals they want to be treated or temporarily housed at the Fontana facility and then arrange to transport them back when those individuals being assisted have completed their engagement at the center.
On November 11, the Chino Hills City Council instructed City Manager Benjamin Montgomery to enter into re-negotiations with the county for different fairer terms than were offered in the initial Chino Hills-West End navigation Center contractual arrangement. On the table are Chino Hill’s annual contribution toward the center’s operational costs as well as the ten-year duration of commitment the participants are to be locked into.
It is known that Ontario is contemplating the development of a comprehensive homeless outreach facility and shelter. While plans for that facility are not yet on the drawing board and the project is most likely at least three years if not four years from completion, Chino Hills officials would be interested in engaging with Ontario for homeless assistance services, given Chino Hill’s proximity to that facility would be roughly half of what it is to the West End Navigation Center.