Riverside’s city council voted down $20 million in state funding at their meeting on Tuesday. The city was one of five places in California who received grants to support immediate housing projects for low income and homeless residents. But leaders shared at the meeting that the proposed plan was rushed and is not the best solution for Riverside’s homelessness crisis.
The Riverside Record’s Daniel Eduardo Hernandez was at the meeting and shared more with KVCR.
Share what this project was about and what was decided on Tuesday?
DANIEL EDUARDO HERNANDEZ: Yeah, so this was an affordable housing project that would have converted a motel on University Avenue near downtown Riverside into 114 studio apartments. The plan was to primarily rent these spaces out to pre-screened individuals with documented mental health issues or substance abuse challenges. These were people who were specifically looking to exit homelessness or who were at risk of homelessness. On Tuesday, residents packed into City Hall, and proponents shared that this project would help with drug rehabilitation, it would have brought an influx of new patrons to the area, and it would have lowered the area's overall crime rate. Ultimately, the majority of the council members voted on the side of business owners and concerned residents, who felt the project would negate years of slow revitalization and it would increase crime in the neighborhood
What were the reasons some council members voted no on the project?
HERNANDEZ: Ward 5 Councilmember Sean Mill disagreed with the overall strategy of giving housing to people first before having them participate in services. He wanted to see people agree to rehab or mental health problems as a precondition for being able to even rent an apartment at the university motel.
MILL: “A centerpiece of my campaign has always been that the housing-first model is a failure, and it continues to be a failure. I’ve always asked that we go toward a transitional-housing model that has an accountability base in there.”
HERNANDEZ: And then there is Ward 1 Councilmember Phillip Falcone. He didn't share much on Tuesday, but last year, when the council first talked about the project, he said that he felt this project was being rushed and that it also initially left business owners out of the conversation. I spoke with Beverly Bailey, who is a co-founder of the nearby and recently opened farmhouse collective. She said that this decision would have gone against the long term vision that convinced her to open in the neighborhood in the first place
BAILEY: “I’m very proud of them because I know that was hard and they’ve had to live with this … They stood [their] ground and they were for the vision of our community and the best of it.”
What about those who supported it? Were they disappointed?
HERNANDEZ: Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes…this project would have been in her ward…and she was a huge proponent for it, and she very much championed the project in general. She told me that she was very heartbroken by this decision.
CERVANTES: “We have people that want this, and they are now going to have to wait. We don't know how much longer, not how many more years, when we could have had a solution for them. In 14 months, we could have had this project online, and to say no to $21 million is honestly unbelievable.
Now that the city has denied the funding, what steps might state officials take with the money? Does this impact the city's chances to seek it in the future?
HERNANDEZ: Cervantes said that the city has a January 16 deadline to respond to the state about the grant. But as a final Hail Mary, she's going to work with the city to ask the state for an extension, and only if the state gives the extension, the council has until February 3 for one of the opposing council members to ask to bring the project back to reconsider in terms of the funds. A person with knowledge on the process said that the money would return to the state's regional allocation and it would just go to the next available project. They added that this wouldn't impact the city's chances to receive funding from this program, since they never formally accepted it. However, Cervantes said that people in Sacramento called her up after the decision and said that Riverside just shot itself in the foot.
Daniel Eduardo Hernandez is a reporter with The Riverside Record, a local nonprofit newsroom based in Riverside County. To follow more of Daniel’s reporting, visit riversiderecord.org.
