SAN DIEGO: The San Diego Chargers, Oakland Raiders and St. Louis Rams filed on Monday for relocation to the Los Angeles area, boosting the prospect of the NFL returning to the nation’s second-largest market after a 21-year absence.

The Chargers want to partner with the AFC West rival Raiders on a stadium in Carson.

The Chargers ownership have had the right to leave San Diego since 2008, but the long, contentious efforts to replace aging Qualcomm Stadium only sparked a proposed L.A. shift after Rams owner Stan Kroenke announced plans to build a stadium in Inglewood.

The NFL confirmed it received the applications to move for the 2016 season. They will be reviewed ahead of a meeting next week when all team owners are expected to vote on whether to allow any of the teams to move. A team wanting to move needs 24 of 32 votes.

Los Angeles has been without the NFL since after the 1994 season, when the Raiders moved back to Oakland and the Rams moved to St. Louis. The Rams had been in the L.A. area since 1946.

The Chargers and St. Louis’ City Hall have been at odds since 2000, when team owner Alex Spanos said the team needed a new stadium. That was just three years after the stadium was expanded.

In a video posted on the team’s web site, Dean Spanos blamed “the inability of the city at the political level to get any kind of public funding or any kind of vote to help subsidize a stadium.”

The Chargers walked away from negotiations with the city and county in mid-June.

The team did not negotiate finances, but it has said in the past that it expects a public contribution of at least 60 percent.

Under the city and county’s proposal, public funding would be capped at 32 percent, with the team being responsible for overruns.

The Rams currently have a year-to-year lease with the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.

Kroenke has ignored efforts by a St. Louis task force that is proposing a $1.1 billion stadium along the Mississippi River, not far from the Rams’ current stadium built in 1995.