Yucca Valley joins San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust with goal of providing more affordable housing options
Affordable housing is one of the biggest issues facing California. While San Bernardino County has a lower cost of living than other counties in Southern California, the percentage of its residents that can afford to purchase a home is shrinking as inflation continues to outpace income. The Town of Yucca Valley has joined a regional housing program that aims to help municipalities access resources to create affordable housing projects that can help fill that gap.
The San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust (SBRHT) was established in April of 2023 to create a dedicated fund that would support affordable housing construction and programs in the county. The trust allows multiple cities to pool their resources and gain broader access to state and federal resources that can help push large-scale housing projects forward.
Deputy Town Manager Curtis Yakimow led a presentation on the SBRHT at Tuesday evening’s Yucca Valley Town Council Meeting, and he used the Dumosa Senior Village development to illustrate the complexities of funding large scale affordable housing projects.
Dumosa Senior Village is located right off Dumosa and 29 Palms Highway – it’s also across the street from the Yucca Valley Community Center and has been connected to the recently renovated senior center.
The 74 unit facility had a total project cost of around $18 million dollars back in 2012, and Yakimow says that while that is now relatively cheap compared to today’s costs, that project was financed through a stack of county, state and federal programs and grants. The process to secure the multiple sources of funding is becoming more difficult, Yakimow says, and the San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust can help by easing access to funds and developers that a single city may not have access to.
“It could be state funding, federal funding, regional funding. You have developer interests that may be more aggressive if they’re working with a trust in a number of cities as opposed to a single city or a single one-off entity,” Yakimow told the City Council during the presentation.
Yakimow says the housing trust would be administered through the San Bernardino County Council of Governments and the board is made up of one elected official from each participating municipality.
The Town of Yucca Valley would remain legally independent from the trust and wouldn’t be responsible for any debts or liabilities resulting from the housing trust, and Yakimow estimates the initial contribution from the town to the housing trust would be somewhere in the “30,000 to 50,000 dollar range.” As more cities from the county join the trust, the annual commitment would lessen. Currently there are 11 cities participating, with the potential of all 24 cities in the county joining.
Councilmembers were receptive to the idea of the Town joining the SBRHT. In comments after the presentation, Mayor Merl Abel expressed interest in representing the Town at the Trust’s anticipated biannual meetings.
“We’re all concerned about affordable housing and tool we could use or joining a large group that makes it a little bit more feasible to get some funding would be fantastic, and I definitely would be interested in serving as a representative if the council agrees,” the Mayor said.
The motion to join the Housing trust was passed with Mayor Merl Abel chosen as the Town’s representative.
You can learn more about the San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust at their website.
