About the Report:

Housing has been cited as a defining quality of life issue in the State of California. Rising inequality, low construction and development, and increased prices have created extensive housing issues in the state. The Inland Region is an exemplar of many of these housing issues. There has been a historical dearth of research and knowledge of how these issues affect the Inland Southern Californian Region of Riverside and San Bernardino County. In our 2021 yearly report, Regional Challenges and Opportunities for Housing Development in Inland Southern California, we examine some of the most pressing development issues throughout the Region, including, but not limited to, an analysis of the RHNA process, COVID-19 & housing instability, the Housing Element Law, and housing production trends since 1990. A variety of findings are presented in order to offer key insights into how public policy should be formulated around these key issues at the local, regional and state levels. 

Download the Report Here.

How to cite this report: 

Inland Center for Sustainable Development 2021 Report: Regional Challenges and Opportunities for Housing Development in Inland Southern California. https://icsd.ucr.edu/finalreport2021.

Report Overview by Section:

• Section 2: Inland Region Profile

  In Section 2: Inland Region Profile, we present analyses and findings based on the 2014-2018 American Community Survey (ACS)  microdata. This data is used to identify key demographic, socio-economic, and housing characteristics to create a greater understanding of the Region’s households and housing stock. In this section we ask:

  • What are the main socio-economic characteristics of the Inland Region’s homeowners and renters?

  • What are the main housing characteristics of the Inland Region?
• Section 3: Statewide Housing Policies & Requirements

  Section 3: Statewide Housing Policies & Requirements, presents an overview of statewide housing policies and a review of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). Our review of RHNA focuses on the Southern California Association of Governments’ (SCAG) Region which comprises Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. The analysis of RHNA contains an overview of each RHNA cycle from 1989 to 2029 with a discussion on its allocations and their implications for the Inland Region. For this section we ask:

  • What are the major statewide policies that affect our Region?
  • How have RHNA allocations been determined historically within the SCAG Region?
• Section 4: Housing Construction in the Inland Region

  In Section 4: Housing Construction in the Inland Region, we examine housing development trends for the Inland Region from 1990 to 2019. Housing construction in the Inland Region has not returned to pre-2000’s recession levels. In 2019, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties only produced 17% and 24% of the housing produced in 2005, respectively. Despite low housing development for the region as a whole, development success is somewhat geographically dependent, with some areas continuing housing development on a larger scale. Our primary research question for Section 4 is:

  • What are the temporal trends of the Inland Region’s housing development (single-family vs. multi-family)?
• Section 5: Broad Opportunities & Challenges for Inland Housing Development

  Section 5: Broad Opportunities & Challenges for Inland Housing Development, provides insights into the challenges and opportunities for the Inland Region’s housing. Mainly, this section presents a summary of our research project and report: Challenges and Opportunities for Housing Development in the Inland Empire: Perspectives from the Community in which we interviewed over 30 community stakeholders on their opinions on the region’s most salient housing issues. In this section we ask three questions:

  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Inland Region in housing development?
  • How do stakeholders view the common barriers and most pressing issues regarding housing development in the Region?
  • What strategies are used by stakeholders to overcome these barriers and what recommendations could be made to improve the situation?
• Section 6: COVID-19 & the Inland Region

  Section 6: COVID-19 & the Inland Region, primarily focuses on and summarizes our work on COVID-19 and housing. In 2020 and 2021 ICSD released six reports that focus on COVID-19 and its effects on housing insecurity. Two reports, Housing Insecurity & the COVID-19 Pandemic, and Living with the COVID-19 Pandemic for a Year: The Exacerbated Housing Insecurity Issue examined housing insecurity 10 months apart; special attention is given to the differences in housing security by racial categories and the difference in payment status for mortgage holder and renter households. We ask:

  • How has COVID-19 affected housing insecurity in the Inland Region performed?
• Section 7: Looking Forward & Recommendations

  Section 7: Looking Forward & Recommendations, acts as an overall conclusion to the report and presents our policy recommendations from our work over 2020 and the first half of 2021. This section also provides a conversation on sustainability and housing, in addition to new and additional, ongoing research conducted by ICSD.