NEWS

From the County of San Bernardino

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 2, 2000

For more information, contact

County Public Information Officer David Wert

(909) 387-4082

dwert@cao.co.san-bernardino.ca.us

County eyes legal challenge to SCAG housing plan

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors today directed County attorneys to explore joining other Inland Empire jurisdictions in a possible legal challenge to remarkably unreasonable housing mandates for the Inland Empire being pursued by the Los Angeles-based Southern California Association of Governments.

In its draft Regional Housing Needs Assessment through the year 2005 adopted in November, SCAG set a target of 94,019 new housing units to be constructed in San Bernardino County – 46 percent of them in the unincorporated regions of the County.

Currently, about 800 housing new housing units are built each year in the unincorporated areas. If SCAG’s assessment stands, the County would have to increase that 10-fold to 8,000 units annually or face the loss of $20 million to $25 million in state grant funds and $50 million to $100 million in housing bond allocations over five years.

The requirements would force the County to allow residential development in valued open spaces. The County could also face costly legal challenges to its General Plan by developers and environmentalists over projects being considered the County.

This unprecedented growth would also promote urban sprawl and create a jobs-to-housing imbalance by concentrating development in outlying areas with lower levels of municipal services than found in urban areas and within cities.

“We have an obligation to challenge this reckless allocation because it’s an assault on the environment and threatens San Bernardino County’s quality of life on a number of fronts,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Jon D. Mikels.

-MORE-

SCAG Challenge

Page 2

San Bernardino County maintains SCAG reached its targets using faulty, outdated information, such as the 1990 U.S. Census, and failed to take into account unincorporated areas annexed by cities since 1997, including the expansive Dairy Preserve in Ontario and Chino.

SCAG also used a linear projection to predict housing needs in the County, meaning that it assumed the region continued to grow at the same rate during the 1990s as it did during the late ‘80s, which has not been the case.

The result of SCAG’s miscalculations has been unrealistically high goals set for the Inland Empire. Meanwhile, coastal communities with greater representation on the SCAG board would be required to provide far less than their fair share of affordable housing units.

Last month, the County endorsed a resolution presented to SCAG raising concerns about the housing needs assessment. SCAG’s Community Economic and Human Development Committee on Thursday, May 4, plans to recommend that the full SCAG board reject the County’s appeal.

The only relief SCAG has offered the County is the transfer of some of the unincorporated areas’ requirements to the County’s cities, with the cities’ consent. But the County believes it would be wrong to ask its cities to assume these unreasonable requirements.

The City of Moreno Valley in neighboring Riverside County has retained a law firm to evaluate its legal options should its appeal to SCAG fail, and the city has proposed that other Inland Empire jurisdictions join in the effort.

-30-