Fresno’s poorest neighborhood changed the city. How residents took their community back
In a city that is no stranger to change, perhaps no place has changed more in recent years than the Lowell Neighborhood.
In the 1960s, the historic neighborhood’s Victorian-style mansions housed wealthy residents beside multi-family properties where less wealthy residents lived. About a decade later, Highway 180 cut the neighborhood off from the newer parts of the city to the north.
Wealthier residents moved north and the ones who stayed behind dealt with what was left — deteriorating apartments and homes that became breeding grounds for drugs, gangs and prostitution.
The reputation gripped the community.
But then residents took action.
Barbara Fiske, Lowell Neighborhood Association president who moved to the neighborhood in 1999, says meetings in-person and on social media gather her neighbors to discuss everything from confronting a liquor license to street pavement issues.
Children also get involved, offering their thoughts on things like playground equipment in neighborhood parks.
Since about 2008, the city of Fresno has pushed for revitalizing historically distressed neighborhoods. The gradual involvement of residents in Lowell who recognized since the early 2000s that their neighborhood was worth saving eventually inspired similar action at about 15 neighborhoods that became a focus for revitalization by the city.
City leaders say the involvement of residents in Lowell over the years has been a telling sign of the neighborhood’s improvement.
“When this neighborhood started changing back in the day and people were moving out, what we lost was we lost voice, we lost money, we lost power, we lost business,” said Nancy Donat, a Lowell resident who is a local director for a youth mentoring organization. “Anything was allowed into this neighborhood and nobody would speak against it. Now there’s a collective voice, we’ve got people who are speaking out.”
Aside from new affordable housing built by the city and improved homes refurbished by private investors, much of what exists in Lowell today is not much different than the last decades.
But through rough years of crumbling homes and hopes, a wave of involvement among residents not only improved conditions, but also built a blueprint for other parts of the city to learn from.
As communities up and down the state have changed due to fluctuating incomes and economic conditions, neighborhoods like Lowell provide an example of how residents maintain in their neighborhoods, community groups say.
‘Reweaving the fabric’
H. Spees, a community activist and one-time candidate for mayor who now works as director of strategic initiatives at City Hall, moved to Lowell from Clovis in 1993.
Spees said his family felt a “deep sense of calling” to live in the community and take part in the neighborhood’s change.
“Our faith has taught us that when we do that, good things happen,” Spees said.
The involvement of residents was significant to the neighborhood’s improvement. But, Spees said, it mattered that the city listened to residents about their needs rather than the city saying what goes. He learned three aspects emerged from the change that took place in Lowell and has filtered into other communities. They include: working from the inside out, allowing for collaboration, and building civic infrastructure for resident empowerment.
“It’s residents reweaving the fabric of their under-resourced neighborhoods,” Spees said. “When that happens, the institutional investments from the outside have so much impact.”
When the federal government offered in 2014 to help low-income communities across the country facing deep inequity issues, Fresno was the only city west of the Mississippi River chosen. The government chose four cities nationally.
Lowell served as an example of the work the federal Building Neighborhood Capacity Program sought to provide. El Dorado Park in northeast Fresno and Southwest Fresno were a focus of the community revitalization effort.
Those efforts then led to a citywide plan to build on the revitalization. The Restore Fresno Initiative was introduced under former Mayor Ashley Swearengin to extend the improvement projects to about 15 other neighborhoods within the city.
Phil Skei, City of Fresno neighborhood revitalization manager, said the improvements have been surprising.
Skei said there has been a 16% increase in residents reporting issues to the city and taking part in community development. Crime is down by at least 8% across the neighborhoods, he added. The most significant improvement the city has recorded since revitalization efforts began, according to Skei, has been a 95% reduction in blight.
“If you improve people’s quality of life, quality of housing, reduce blight, reduce the number of fires in a neighborhood, then what you have is children who are sleeping at night, instead of being awakened by gunfire,” Skei said.
Since leaving office, Swearengin says she has noticed “a movement afoot” in the city by residents actively engaging in revitalization. She said the momentum has kept up primarily in the areas south of Shaw Avenue, the storied line that many believe divides Fresno’s wealth.
“What’s happening south of Shaw with resident-driven community development and community change is exciting,” Swearengin, now president and chief executive officer of the Central Valley Community Foundation, said.
Craig Scharton, Lowell resident and longtime figure in the city’s revitalization, said the neighborhood improvements didn’t happen far from him. A home across from his on Glenn Avenue at one point had no roof and was a popular place for hideouts and crime. Once the roof was replaced and the home’s exterior was painted, there was a noticeable reduction in crime and homeless traffic along his street, he said.
Scharton said some of the improvements to the homes have to do with the city’s new rental inspection ordinance. The Rental Housing Improvement Act, launched January 2018, is seen by some as a safeguard for residents who are vulnerable to living in substandard housing.
So far, over 85,000 rental properties have been registered with the city and over 7,000 inspections at more than 2,000 of those properties have been conducted. Kevin Watkins, City of Fresno rental housing manager, said about 67% of all inspections so far have resulted in a need of correction. More than half of all inspections lead to compliance, he said.
“It’s the best thing Mayor (Lee) Brand has done. He was really the best person to get it through,” Sharton said. “We were 20 years late to getting it done, but we got it done.”
There was pushback to the ordinance from some councilmembers. But Brand, a property owner himself, said he understood concerns from other property owners in the city. He also saw the need to help renters living in unsafe conditions. Over 80% of residents in Lowell are renters.
“We hammered out a deal that everyone was willing to accept,” Brand said.
Generosity among neighbors
Residents said one downside to the ordinance was neighbors forced to move because property owners refused to pay for improvements.
That was the case at two homes near Oscar Rodriguez’s house on Glenn Avenue. He said it was an unfortunate effect of the ordinance, but the neighborhood’s rebound provides some comfort. He said with the city’s help, residents like him have been able to contribute to Lowell’s improvement.
Rodriguez manages Martin Park, a private park located on property that he purchased about six years ago.
He said the park is a symbol of the change that transformed Lowell in recent years. The park was there before he arrived, but he kept it up, he said, to provide a safe place for kids to play. The park is also where mothers join for morning Zumba classes, and parent meetings and community events are held.
Martin Park, along with a nearby family’s garage, is also home to the Wise Old Owl tutoring program, which brings in children who are left out of the nearby school’s after school program.
Residents also get access to the Lowell Community Garden, which sits under Highway 180 on a piece of land that formerly sat empty.
The garden and park are seen by residents as treasures.
“Everything we need is already here,” said Esther Carver, executive director for the Lowell Community Development Corporation. “Yeah, sometimes it takes a little bit of city money, our politicians saying ‘yes’ to things to get the momentum going, but we know what we need.”
Residents say there are still challenges ahead for communities that have faced disadvantaged pasts. The zip code that encompasses Lowell has a lingering poverty rate at 60 percent — the highest in the city.
Like poverty, many challenges in communities like Lowell have persisted.
“If unmarked vans pull up in our neighborhood, people are going to know,” Fiske, the neighborhood association president, said about the neighborhood’s undocumented immigrant population. “People are concerned for their neighbors. The people who can pick up the phone, call.”
Donat, the youth mentor, said also that Lowell residents face transportation limitations. Many families don’t own cars.
The densely residential neighborhood also lacks grocery store options. Residents are looking forward to a new store opening along Divisadero Street.
Still, the residents have made use of what they do have. And they say as long as neighbors look out for each other, communities like Lowell will thrive. An example of that: Neighbors pitch in for two scholarships awarded annually to Lowell students headed to college.
“You see the generosity of those who have absolutely nothing. They will take what they have and they will give it to you,” Donat said. On the other side, “You see people who have education and things like that using their understanding of systems to better influence the neighborhood.”
This article is part of The California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in California.
