Advocates File Complaint Against Riverside Over Rejection of State Funding for Quality Inn Project

RIVERSIDE– Today, the ACLU of Southern California submitted a formal complaint to the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) alleging that the City of Riverside violated anti-discrimination laws in a February council vote to reject a $20.1 million state HomeKey+ grant dedicated to long-term affordable and permanent housing.

“We all deserve a safe place to call home,” said Maribel Nunez of the Inland Equity Community Land Trust. “By rejecting this funding for new affordable housing, the City Council has voted against our entire community -- and it perpetuated stereotypes against our unhoused neighbors and people with disabilities.”

CRD is the state agency charged with enforcing California’s civil rights laws. The complaint alleges that Riverside City Council members’ comments leading up to the vote demonstrate unlawful bias against the prospective residents of the proposed project.

The Homekey+ grant rejected by the city was designed to provide supportive services for veterans and individuals with mental health or substance use challenges, who are unhoused or at risk of becoming unhoused. The grant would have aided Riverside Housing Development Corporation (RHDC), a nonprofit organization in Riverside, in its efforts to redevelop the Quality Inn into 114 permanent supportive housing units with affordability covenants of 55 years.

“The city’s rejection of the proposal fits within a long and troubling history of spatial segregation of low-income people with disabilities,” said Eve Garrow of the ACLU of Southern California. “All of our Riverside neighbors are entitled under the law to integration and equal treatment.”

The project has been championed by Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes (Ward 2), in whose district the project sits, as well as members of the community who have been advocating for more affordable housing. In February, the council voted 4-3 to deny the project, with the four ‘no’ votes coming from Philip Falcone (Ward 1), Steven Robillard (Ward 3), Chuck Conder (Ward 4), and Sean Mill (Ward 5).

The complaint to CRD includes quotes from the council members who opposed the project that the complaint alleges are based upon unfounded stereotypes and provide evidence of unlawful discrimination. The complaint also argues that the council’s action disproportionately and negatively impacts individuals with disabilities who would benefit from permanent supportive housing. In accordance with the city’s mandate to integrate low-income residents with disabilities, the proposed project would have been located in a high-resource area near transit, businesses, shops, and residential neighborhoods.

“During and after the vote in January, councilmembers opposed to this project repeatedly framed the proposed supportive housing project as inherently criminal, dangerous, and incompatible with the community – not based on objective evidence but based on generalizations about the people who would reside in the development,” said Ugochi Anaebere-Nicholson of The Public Interest Law Project. “Statements like these that equate homelessness and behavioral health disability with criminality and violence reflect the type of stigmatizing stereotypes that cannot lawfully form the basis for this decision.”

This complaint is in addition to an ongoing investigation by the state’s Housing and Community Development department (HCD). HCD wrote to the City Council in February indicating that its Housing Accountability Unit was investigating the council’s decision for potential violations of the state’s housing laws, including the city’s obligations under its Housing Element and its legal obligation to affirmatively further fair housing.

Housing advocates say that access to housing is vital for health and wellbeing, and that multiple health conditions dramatically increase without access to housing. Last year in Riverside County, 140 people died without access to housing.

Read the filing.