What's at stake?
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday redirected $20 million in state housing funds originally slated for an Old Fig Garden affordable housing project toward a new affordable housing development in Sanger.
The move effectively ends a six-year effort from the developer to try and get past local opposition from politicians and neighborhood residents.
A controversial affordable housing development in one of Fresno’s more affluent neighborhoods faced its final blow on Tuesday, ending a six-year battle to push through neighborhood opposition.
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday redirected $20 million in state housing funds originally slated for the Old Fig Garden housing project toward an affordable housing development in Sanger.
The new project, known as “Sanger Modular,” includes 88 homes — 56 one-bedroom apartments, 24 two-bedroom apartments, seven three-bedroom apartments and an on-site management apartment. Of those units, 22 will be set aside for veterans with mental health or substance use disorders that put them at risk of being homeless. It will be on the southwest corner of Cherry and DeWitt Avenue.
“The City of Sanger is pretty excited about getting this funding,” said Board Chair Buddy Mendes, whose district includes Sanger.
The project is being built using modular development techniques — a construction-method that promises faster and cheaper development than the traditional, “stick” method of construction.
The Board’s additional funding for the project helps increase the number of apartments in the project from 51 to 88.
At least part of the funding for Sanger Modular could come from a newly approved state bond. Proposition 1 — a controversial state measure approved by voters last year — created a $2 billion bond to help introduce more housing for veterans, as well as people suffering from homelessness and certain mental health disorders. Following the Board’s approval, the county will apply for those funds.
The project’s total cost is about $38 million, with an average cost of $431,000 per unit, said Dylan McCully — homelessness program manager for the county administrative office — at Tuesday’s meeting.
Fresno County is partnering with RH Community Builders and UpHoldings as developers on the project.
A shift in priorities
The county’s funding reallocation officially kills the Libre Commons housing project — a proposed housing development that would have been built in Fresno’s Fig Garden neighborhood on an empty lot at Shaw and Glenn Avenues. UpHoldings, the developer, applied for those funds with the county in 2022.
The funding comes from the state’s No Place Like Home program, a now-defunct grant that gave local governments millions to build more permanent supportive housing.
While the city approved a development permit for the Old Fig Garden housing project in June of 2022, it wasn’t enough to get it through the myriad hoops affordable housing projects routinely face.
City leaders initially pledged $3 million to the project, but revoked their promise to the developer in February of 2024, citing “funding limitations.” The city’s withdrawal of support led the county to pull its funding, effectively killing the project.
It’s normal for affordable housing projects to take years to acquire full funding, but that doesn’t shield them from governments shifting priorities at a moment’s notice.
The city pledged support to several affordable housing projects in 2024 after pulling funds from Libre Commons.
“We worked on that Libre Commons deal for five years. The city pulled the funding, and then the county pulled the funding…and now it’ll probably die,” said UpHoldings’ Principal Jessica Hoff Berzac to Fresnoland earlier this year.
The project missed its Jan. 1 deadline to secure additional funding, leading to the county to formally pull funding at the start of this year.
Berzac said that, although losing city and county support for the Libre Commons project was disappointing, being able to keep the state funds within Fresno County was still a win for the community at large.
“We’re excited about it,” Berzac told Fresnoland. “It’s a great, hopeful outcome to a really unfortunate and frustrating situation.”
The move is ultimately a loss for the City of Fresno, now that the future affordable homes will be built in Sanger instead.
While attempting to gain financial support for the Libre Commons project, the developer saw pushback from local residents. Throughout the neighborhood, some homes still have signs opposing the project.
The Fig Garden Homeowners Association created a petition to stop the project from being built. The petition has over 1,500 signatures. The association appealed the project’s development permit, but it was never heard by the planning commission.
Berzac stopped short of fully creditingNIBMYism for the project’s ultimate collapse, but acknowledged that it contributed.
“That amount of scrutiny from an affluent neighborhood doesn’t go unnoticed,” Berzac said. “I absolutely think their voices were heard.”
The county maintains that the main reason for pulling support was for “funding concerns and the withdrawal of key project sponsors.”
Though the county approved $20 million in support, Sanger Modular will still need to gain full funding before coming back to the Board for final approval. Berzac said she believes a more unified front in reaching the finish line here, as opposed to the fractured coalition of government bodies present for the Libre Commons project, will help them succeed.
“We feel really optimistic that this is the path to a happy ending,” Berzac added.
Fresno County to appeal ruling on sheriff, DA elections
Fresno County plans to appeal a recent court ruling on Measure A – a voter-approved ballot measure that attempted to lock in elections for the district attorney and sheriff during gubernatorial cycles, instead of during presidential election years.
A county spokesperson confirmed the decision Tuesday following a closed-session discussion by the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.
The ballot measure attempted to retain local control after state legislation passed that would move DA and Sheriff elections to presidential years, ostensibly to improve voter turnout.
Fresno County Superior Court Judge D. Tyler Tharpe sided with the State of California and threw out recent voter-approved changes to the election cycles of Fresno County’s two top cops.
