Why this matters
Rural areas offer space to build much-needed housing, but they also pose fire risks.
A 450-unit housing development in a rural area near Harmony Grove and Escondido will move forward, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors decided Wednesday with a unanimous vote.
In addition to approving the project, supervisors also added an amendment directing county staff to explore options to add a secondary exit route, the lack of which has been driving opposition to the development. The vote allows the developers to move forward with the project, which was initially approved in 2018, but then faced legal challenges that resolved in 2022, leading to some changes to the project plan.
Any secondary route would fall on the county to fund, Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe said when adding the amendment.
In their reasoning for the vote, board members argued that the 453-unit, 111-acre development, of which 10% are affordable units, would add much needed housing to the county. They said that previous environment and safety concerns had been properly taken care of.
“We can’t fire proof an area, but I think we can mitigate it the best we can,” Supervisor Jim Desmond said as he made the motion to approve the project.
The vote came after a four-hour hearing with close to 100 public speakers, the overwhelming majority of whom opposed the project. Neighbors from Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove got on a bus at 6:45 a.m. and camped out in the halls of the county building until the 1 p.m. hearing. They sported red shirts that read “Don’t Burn Us,” a symbol of their concerns over fire safety.
Stephanie Rumsey told inewsource that she just moved to Elfin Forest a year ago from Los Angeles. She said that she did not typically come to public meetings to protest, but the issue was so important that she had to be at the meeting and speak.
“It’s that serious,” she said to an inewsource reporter as she sat down before the meeting started.
On the other side were representatives from the city, union representatives and developers, who said that the project brought much needed affordable housing and was safe.
Some speakers said it could help increase the racial and economic diversity in the region. Union workers said that the housing was the only place affordable in the area, and would allow working class families to live in the place they work instead of commuting.
Debates over fire safety
The neighbors, joined by environmental experts, argued that placing a master-planned community in a high fire-risk area at the end of a dead end road was a danger to surrounding residents.
Speakers also referenced the fires in Los Angeles, saying it was proof of how easily things could seem safe and still go wrong.
Lisa Ross, chair of the Sierra Club San Diego Chapter, noted that the agencies responding to the recent Los Angeles fires experienced a “colossal breakdown in agency functioning. She said the county’s dismissal of the need for a secondary exit was “naive.”
Even before this housing proposal, residents said they were already fearful of the next fire. Another housing development, Harmony Grove Village, added about 780 homes to the area. Although the residents remember losing homes to the Cocos fire, the letter from the planning commission cited the fact that no lives were lost in the Cocos fire as proof that the evacuation was successful.
In 2018, California passed Assembly Bill 2911 requiring local governments to identify subdivisions located in high fire hazard severity zones without secondary exits. Harmony Grove Village South, proposed prior to the when the bill went into effect, has one exit.
They recalled the several fires they had been through, including the 2014 Cocos fire, which spread west of Escondido in the Harmony Grove area and caused gridlock traffic as residents struggled to evacuate the area.
Several speakers on Wednesday, some of whom lived in the neighboring development Harmony Grove Village, said they were not against housing, but were severely concerned about the fire risks.
“We believe new homes have their place, but they must be built responsibly with full recognition of the geography and the topography and all the risks,” said Susan Williams, a board member of the San Dieguito Community Planning Group.
Supervisors leaned on the fire experts, who said that despite the placement of the project, other mitigation efforts made it safe.
Rancho Sante Fe Fire Chief Dave McQuead agreed with county staff’s recommendation and said even though there is not a secondary exit route, there are other safety updates that offset the lack of one. Increased parking to keep vehicles off the street, increased water pressure in the systems and adding a third lane to a road to exit make the project safe, he said.
Ruben Grijalva, a former Cal Fire director, said that he thought the project had the right fire safety measures.
“Wildfires in California are inevitable, and … with the right planning, construction and community design, we can safely live in fire-prone areas.”
When asked by Chair Terra Lawson Remer if they would live in the development, both men answered “yes.”
