How Fresno is keeping its Eviction Protection Program alive

Back in February, Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz made an impassioned plea.

His department needed half a million dollars to keep the city’s Eviction Protection Program afloat. Janz told councilmembers the $1.5 million allocated for the program wasn’t enough for the full fiscal year. 

“We are literally keeping people from becoming homeless,” Janz said at the Feb. 13 City Council meeting. 

Over the past month, Fresno city officials have worked to identify a way to move money around to keep the Eviction Protection Program afloat. 

Councilmember Tyler Maxwell told Fresnoland that $250,000 would come from unused general fund resources, also known as carryover. He said the other half of the program’s funding gap will come from the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) state grant.

“We do have a carryover surplus to the tune of a couple million dollars that we were planning putting towards the deficit for this upcoming budget,” Maxwell told Fresnoland. “We’re going to take a quarter million dollars out of that, and we’re going to take an additional quarter million dollars, at a subsequent council meeting, from our HHAP funding.”

Maxwell added that a lot of funding from HHAP is used for employee salaries, but there’s room to use the state funds for other needs. Eviction protection getting the additional half a million dollars brings its budget to $2 million for the year — the initial amount Maxwell requested for the program last year. 

The Eviction Protection Program was specifically designed to litigate illegal evictions in Fresno — providing tenants with legal counsel through a third party law firm. Back in February, Janz was asked why the Eviction Protection Program’s caseload levels hadn’t dropped since the program was first created early in the pandemic. 

“We are as much confused as you are,” Janz said at the Feb. 13 council meeting. “We thought that given the uptrend in the economy, and you know it’s the housing market — we’re not sure why the cases haven’t turned down.” 

Maxwell said he also doesn’t have an answer for why caseload levels haven’t dipped, and is planning to learn more when he meets with the third party law firm that the city contracts with for eviction protection. 

“We’re in very uncertain financial times,” Maxwell said. “I think a lot of folks were optimistic that the economy would start accelerating, and in the last 60 days, it’s been doing the opposite.”

Right now, Fresno City Hall is hunkering down when it comes to spending money. City staff project a deficit of at least $20 million, which could put a number of programs at risk if Mayor Jerry Dyer and City Manager Georgeanne White try to make cuts. 

In May, Dyer will unveil his proposed budget, which will be followed by councilmembers making funding requests during June budget hearings. By either the third or fourth week of June, Dyer will come back with a final budget proposal for City Council approval. 

Maxwell said it’s been disheartening that the Eviction Protection Program hasn’t been built into the mayor’s proposed budget over the years. The Fresno City Council has had to negotiate for the program’s funding with Dyer’s administration every year. 

While the Eviction Protection Program appears to be fully funded for the rest of the fiscal year, it’s unclear if the program will be kept around in the 2026 fiscal year, which begins in July. 

It’s also the last city program still in place that provides aid or protection for renters. Several other programs that directly helped renters weren’t kept around by Dyer and the City Council — although most were funded by temporary federal funds in the early years of the pandemic. 

Those former programs included the city’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program and Voucher Incentive Program. 

When Dyer ran for reelection last year and Fresnoland asked what his administration was doing for renters, he pointed to the Eviction Protection Program.