Overview:
The Crossroads Village is a renovation of the Smugglers Inn hotel property on 3737 N. Blackstone Ave. It served as emergency interim housing during the pandemic before being turned into permanent supportive housing.
Well over 100 Fresnans, including some of the region’s top leaders, converged in the heart of the city on a rainy Valentine’s Day to see the grand reopening of the Crossroads Village — a new permanent supportive housing project.
The project was developed by local affordable housing developers RH Community Builders and UpHoldings. Jessica Hoff Berzac, UpHoldings’ co-founder and principal, opened the ceremony by acknowledging the common interest among the many different groups attending the ceremony.
“I know you are all here today because you share our belief that housing is a human right,” said Berzac.
The outdoor event was well-attended, with multiple Fresno leaders there to speak or congratulate the developers on finally crossing the finish line. Among those at the event were state assemblymember Dr. Joaquin Arambula, Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig, City of Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza, and Jennifer Seeger — deputy director of financial assistance at the California Department of Housing And Community Development.
The Crossroads Village is a renovation of the Smugglers Inn hotel property on 3737 N. Blackstone Ave. It served as emergency interim housing during the pandemic before being turned into permanent supportive housing.
The project took nearly five years to complete, taking from a laundry list of local and state grants to reach the finish line, including $15.3 million from the very first round of Project Homekey funds — a pandemic-era program by the state to send millions of dollars to local jurisdictions to buy and retrofit old buildings (typically hotels and motels) and turn them into housing.
The project introduced 143 new units of affordable housing to the city. The units will be filled via referral from the Fresno-Madera Continuum Of Care’s Coordinated Entry System and for residents making 30% or less of the area’s median income.
The project’s total cost was about $52.7 million, according to a developer spokesperson.
The Crossroads Village will continue to see investments from the county, according to the county’s administrative officer Paul Nerland. Residents will see services like counseling and therapy services, medication support, and rehabilitation peer support.
Nerland said at the ceremony that the current annual investment from the department into the Crossroads Village is $5.3 million, with planned additional services expected to increase that investment to $7 million.
Perhaps to serve as a final hurdle in the project’s long, winding journey to the finish line, the outdoor ribbon-cutting saw heavy rainfall in the middle of the ceremony.
Audience members hurried across the property’s newly-placed turf to protect themselves under multiple protective canopies.
“That’s how this project was,” said Susan Holt, director of Fresno County’s public health department. Holt was not deterred by the rain and decided to speak unshaded by the available protective canopies.
“You know why? Because we have people in the rain every single day in Fresno County,” Holt said. “We’re celebrating today that our neighbors are coming out of the rain.”
She later added, “I’m also struck by the fact that it’s Valentine’s Day…”
“…today, people that we are going to house might be wondering, ‘Does anybody love me?’ Are they going to walk down the street, and is somebody going to judge them, or is someone going to love them?”
Deputy county administrative officer Amina Flores-Becker oversees multiple county projects, including plans to address and end local homelessness. She said she believes the work done by the county and its partners to help complete the Crossroads Village serves as a “quintessential example” of what it would take to help end homelessness.
“Everyone who was involved with this project at any point had to absurdly and unrealistically dream big,” she said.
“What a symbolic story for this space,” Flores-Becker later added. “From shelter to a beautiful home for 141 households. That is what it takes to end homelessness, the audacity to believe it is possible, and the humility to know we cannot do it alone.”
