City’s latest community brings affordable housing, support services to north Fresno

Wednesday was a good day for the Fresno Housing Authority.

The group held a ribbon cutting ceremony at its latest project, Alegre Commons, a 42-unit complex of modern-looking affordable housing pocketed among the existing apartment complexes on Barstow Avenue just west of Blackstone Avenue.

“Any time we are opening up housing units in Fresno, it is a good day,” said Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, who stopped in at the grand opening after a similar ribbon cutting for the city’s new fire station.

The fact that these one-, two- and three-bedroom units and townhouses are affordable is “a bonus for our community,” he said.

The city is in a housing crisis, especially when it comes to affordable housing. Some 6,900 affordable housing units are needed in the next three years, even as projects like this and the Monarch in Chinatown coming online.

Alegre Commons is service-enriched housing; specifically designed within easy access to public transportation and with a built-in hub of support services on site. Along with a high-ceiling community room and common kitchen, exercise room and outdoor courtyard space, there is a conference room and several offices lining the front of the complex.

Residents began moving in in late September.

More than a dozen came from temporary and other housing in the city. Several families in the complex had been unhoused.

This is “critically important work,” said Susan Holt, director of the Fresno County Department of Behavioral Health, which is a partner on the project

“Without supports, any one of us — anyone — is at risk of being unhoused,” she said.