What's at stake?
Before approving the deal, Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Nelson Esparza —who together represent the city’s southwest and central districts— asked why the agreement only covered the north side of town.
The Fresno City Council unanimously approved a deal on Thursday that will get the city reimbursed by almost half a million dollars to clear up homeless encampments along freeway ramps in the north part of town.
Caltrans, the state’s transportation department, will reimburse the city’s public works department up to $400,000 to clear camps on highway ramps by Shaw Avenue and Friant Road.
Before approving the deal, Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Nelson Esparza —who together represent the city’s southwest and central districts— asked why the agreement only covered the north side of town. Esparza in particular asked staff whether they considered the optics of the deal, which he said would fuel criticisms that the city spends most of its resources toward its most well-off residents.
“I look at that and, frankly, I think it feeds into the narrative…north Fresno is nice and clean and central and south…not so much, when really that issue does occur across the entire city portion,” Esparza said.
Scott Mozier, the city’s public works director, said that other parts of town can take advantage of the state’s services, pending further funding and council motions.
Phil Skei, the city’s assistant planning director, added that other areas of the city “that really needed mitigation” were already cleaned up by the governor’s sweeps earlier this month. He said the Shaw and Friant areas were selected based on city data showing those parts of town getting the highest frequency of service calls for homeless clearances.
Skei said those areas garnered 62 calls for service “year-to-date.” He said other highway systems see a maximum of 28 calls for service.
Councilmember Nick Richardson, who represents north Fresno, asked city staff to inquire on getting more services reimbursed as part of the deal, such as for the cost of storage of items collected by city staff from campers. He also asked if there was any additional data that illustrated how many casualties are a result of encampments residing by city highway ramps.
Skei said he had no data, but added that he saw that as a good thing.
“The fact that we don’t have data on fatalities, in my opinion, is one measure of success of our work to keep the freeways clean,” Skei said, arguing that the reason the data is not readily available is because the city is proactive in preventing casualties from happening.
“No data ain’t good data, as far as I’m concerned,” Richardson said. “That’s just a lack of data.”
Thursday’s deal follows a trend that’s seen the city move in lockstep with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desires to see local jurisdictions be more aggressive and proactive with homeless encampment clearances.
The push came following the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in the Grants Pass trial, which saw the highest court in the nation defend the rights of cities and counties across the country to clear out public spaces of encampments, without the need to provide a bed if the residents are homeless.
Since then, the city and county have passed penalties that some have called the strictest laws in the Golden State.
