Public hearing on Fresno’s rejected housing plans. Critics call city efforts ‘lackluster’

The Fresno City Council on Thursday will publicly discuss the city’s housing plans for the first time since the state rejected Fresno’s housing element last month.

In a Feb. 1 letter to Fresno leaders, the California Department of Housing and Community Development said the city’s plans were insufficient and lacked details for addressing some of the most urgent housing needs in the state’s fifth-largest city.

City Hall spokesperson Sontaya Rose declined to comment Wednesday.

Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability is a local advocacy group for rural and low-income communities and one of several groups that submitted comments to HCD and participated during the housing element drafting process.

Ivanka Saunders, a regional policy manager for the counsel, said city leaders acknowledged the challenges but failed to plan for them.

“Unfortunately, you will see the housing element will list ‘Oh, yeah, we got a lot of poverty. Oh, yeah, we have disadvantaged communities,'” Saunders said. “That’s great that you’re stating what everybody already knows when you just drive around Fresno, but what are you going to do about it?”

Among Fresno’s unaddressed housing needs, HCD said the city needs to provide more specific details for improvement plans, particularly in south Fresno.

“What we’ve come to learn from HCD is that the city really didn’t follow through with what they needed to do for community members, and even more so for community members in the south side of the city,” said Emmanuel Agraz-Torres a policy advocate with California Leadership Counsel.

Failing to meet HCD standards could make it harder for Fresno to obtain some state grants and loans that local governments depend on to develop and complete new housing projects.

Another major consequence of having a noncompliant housing element is that the city of Fresno is now open to litigation from developers, activist groups and even HCD. Although the state department told Fresnoland that litigation is usually a last resort, HCD has recently pursued litigation over noncompliant housing elements against the cities of Coronado, Fullerton and San Bernardino.

“The City must continue to engage the community, including organizations that represent lower-income and special needs households, by making information regularly available while considering and incorporating comments where appropriate,” the letter reads.

Leslie Martinez, community engagement specialist for Leadership Counsel, said the city failed in that aspect of the housing element creation.

“Their engagement process was lackluster and ultimately ignored much of the feedback residents gave,” Martinez said in an email to Fresnoland. 

“When they’re reaching out to folks, are they making sure that they are engaging them in a way that folks can express themselves and in less of a way that’s more so about bureaucracy; trying to meet people where they’re at instead of expecting people to come to their meetings,” Agraz-Torres said.

HCD officials said Fresno could engage the community more through surveys, either online or attached to utility bills. The city could demonstrate good faith efforts by reaching out to different neighborhoods and communities and providing accessible options to meet people where they are.

Cities and counties create housing elements as a part of their general plan, with the intention of creating a roadmap to address the housing needs of their community as it relates to land use, transportation, conservation, noise, open space, safety, environmental justice, and housing, according to the HCD’s website.

HCD’s Feb. 1 letter gave the city a deadline of April 30 to adopt changes to the housing element that meets the state department’s requirements. Fresno City Council is currently scheduled to meet two more times before the deadline — April 14 and 18.

Until the adoption of a new compliant housing element, the city of Fresno is working under its 5th cycle housing element, which the HCD has already deemed out of compliance.

Members of the public can address the Fresno City Council during a public hearing scheduled for 9:25 a.m. Thursday in the council City Hall chambers, 2600 Fresno St.