What's at stake?
Many of the city’s homeless shelter beds came from state pandemic-funding. Those funds came with the expectation that one day the shelters would be converted into permanent affordable housing.
However, it takes time to acquire that funding. And with federal and state housing funds drying up, Fresno’s homeless shelters could run out of cash and close long before completing the affordable housing conversion. That’s already the case for two shelters: Journey Home and Golden State Triage.
Jason Throop has been homeless for over a year now. The Fresno native said he waited for about four months to get a spot at the Journey Home homeless shelter on Parkway Drive before finally landing a spot on Thursday.
The problem? The shelter he moved into has just announced it will close at the end of the year.
The Fresno Housing Authority on Wednesday announced that, due to a lack of ongoing funding, the Journey Home and Golden State Triage Center — shelters near Parkway Drive that provide 130 beds — will stop taking in new residents on July 31. Both sites will close permanently by Dec. 31.
Now, Throop, 53, finds himself in a race against the clock to locate housing before his end-of-year deadline. He told Fresnoland that he was in the process of getting a license for crane operation to try and get a job.
“I just got here…I need help,” said Throop, who broke down in tears after telling Fresnoland he’ll have nowhere to turn to, and will likely end up back on the streets once the shelter closes in December.
Current shelter residents were first told on Monday by staff from Turning Point of Central California — the shelter operator for both sites— and were also alerted that anybody who leaves the shelters for any reason after this month will not be allowed back in.
Officials say this is just the start of a systemic phase out of a vital Fresno resource for the unhoused, as they work to redirect funding towards permanent housing instead.
Michael Duarte, chief real estate officer for the Fresno Housing Authority, told Fresnoland in a statement over email that “Given our close, five-year partnership with the City in this work, we were informed earlier this year that due to lack of funding, the City of Fresno would not be able to continue to fund shelter operations beyond 2025.”
The announcement that both shelters are closing comes at a time when the region is seeing a rise in homelessness for over a decade straight.
Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias, whose district houses the most of the city’s homeless shelters, said the news was “unfortunate, but expected.”
“The beginning of the end for the operation of the city’s shelters has commenced,” Arias told Fresnoland.
Were Fresno’s shelters ever expected to be permanent?
The city relied on temporary pandemic funds to increase the number of homeless shelter beds to about 1,000 at one point – money that was never guaranteed to last.
Grant funding that governments like Fresno used to purchase old, vacant hotels and convert them into these shelters came with a lofty expectation by state housing officials that cities and counties would eventually convert these beds into permanent affordable housing.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, California lawmakers pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into local cities and communities, including Fresno, to quickly convert and refurbish old and vacant motel buildings into temporary homeless shelters.
That funding came from the state’s Project Homekey program, which has awarded billions of dollars in grant money since 2020.
If shelter bed increases were the program’s only measure of success, then Homekey has succeeded in the City of Fresno. The city had 832 shelter beds as of March, according to city spokesperson Sontaya Rose.
How do cities convert hotels to homes?
Arias said the cost to acquire motels can range anywhere between $3 to 7 million, the cost to refurbish them are an additional $5 to 7 million, and the cost to turn them into housing developments — a process that often involves tearing down much of the established building — can range between $30 to 50 million.
Maintenance numbers for these shelters can quickly pile up, too. Typical service contracts, according to Arias, run about $1.5 million per year, or about $100,000 per shelter bed.
Duarte told Fresnoland that it would cost about $30 million to convert the Golden State Triage Center into affordable housing.
“It’s super expensive to build permanent affordable housing,” Arias said, “but conversions have been the most economically affordable way to quickly generate affordable units in the city.”
The city has already begun converting their shelters into housing. On June 16, Fresno leaders attended a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Manzanilla Commons — a new affordable housing project near Parkway Drive in west central Fresno, formerly a homeless shelter. The Commons is the city’s third successful hotel-to-home conversion, according to Arias.
But the two competing priorities – keeping shelters open and adding more permanent affordable housing – both force the city to rely on precarious federal and state budgets.
“All indications from the federal and state government are that funding is going back to pre-pandemic levels,” Arias said, adding that much of the money for these housing solutions were not as high as they were before COVID-19.
Shifting federal and state budgets jeopardize funding
Housing leaders and local governments across the nation have begun to sound the alarm over President Donald Trump’s federal budget.
The president’s budget could radically alter many federal housing programs and services with deep staffing cuts in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and gutting funding for the Housing Choice Voucher, or Section 8, program.
In May, the Fresno Housing Authority held a news conference urging local residents to call on their elected representatives to strongly push back on the proposal — which they say could displace about 15,000 residents.
The state is also going through housing funding cuts of its own.
In June, the California Big City Mayors held a news conference lobbying for the state leaders to keep funding the Homelessness Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant program.
The state’s approved budget eliminated HHAP in the next fiscal year, and only committed to fund $500 million in the following year — a 50% reduction from what was initially expected.
In Fresno, the city uses this money to keep homeless shelters open.
“Unfortunately, each year we battle to secure the money needed to address the homelessness issue. And here we are again,” said Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer in a statement following the conference.
Dyer added in the statement that the loss of HHAP funding would mean losing 247 homeless shelter beds, or about a third of the shelter capacity funded by the city.
“This is unacceptable,” Dyer said.
When will we know what happens next?
Throughout the month of June, the Fresno City Council entered into a slew of operating contracts to keep many of the city’s shelters running. Some came just days before current contracts were set to expire.
Arias said that the funding for some of the recent agreements only came through about two weeks before contract expiration.
“It’s that close of a call,” Arias said.
Phil Skei, the assistant director to the city’s planning and development department, said during a June city council meeting that there is currently no funding to extend these contracts beyond the current expiration date, though plans are already underway to acquire funding to turn them into housing developments.
A Fresnoland analysis of homeless shelter contracts identified an additional city shelter – Valley Inn, operated by Elevate Community Services — with a service agreement expiring in 2025. Elevate Community Services did not immediately respond to request for comment on whether their shelter is also expected to close at the end of this year.
Arias said he believes the city should be more proactive in letting residents know what’s at stake.
“Pull the band aid off and just be clear about what we know is going to happen,” Arias told Fresnoland. “These shelter beds will close. Do we know exactly when? No. We know when the contracts end, and we know that right now there’s no money beyond the contract terms to fund this, especially if HHAP dollars go away.”
He added that both the Journey Home and Golden State Triage Centers have pending applications for funding that, if approved, will be enough to start turning both sites into affordable housing. Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer told Fresnoland in a statement over email that the city has also financially contributed toward the conversion effort.
“The City of Fresno is pleased to have committed $3.858 million dollars toward this conversion effort, beginning with the Golden State project,” Dyer said in the statement. “Over the next couple of years as state funding to operate these temporary shelters phases out, much work remains, and we anticipate seeing other motels undergo this same transformation.”
Until those applications get approved however, Arias said the situation remains the same — shelters are closing, and residents should be prepared.
“My hope is that they are closed for conversion, not because we’re broke and out of money,” Arias said.
Dez Martinez, an advocate for the local homeless at We Are Not Invisible, said the shelter closures are guaranteed to increase homelessness in the region by forcing residents out of their shelter before they can comfortably find employment or a permanent residence.
She said the stress felt by people like Throop only serve to “retraumatize” homeless residents, especially amid anti-encampment laws at both the city and county levels.
“I’m fully disgusted, “ Martinez said. “They blame this on us but…how many times are we going to have to keep taking people off the streets?”
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