There is no red-lining going on, but Clovis clearly has an affordable-housing problem
Hidden by the miles of gleaming new homes being built in Clovis is a major housing problem.
The city of 120,000 adjacent to Fresno is known for its wide streets, new subdivisions and quaint Old Town. Housing is in high demand, and in February the median home price in Clovis was $415,000, according to realtor.com (a median is the midpoint on a scale).
The problem is in the lower end of the range. There is not enough affordable housing in Clovis.
While the city is not in the home construction business, its decisions on zoning and land use are critical. So important, in fact, that Central California Legal Services, a housing advocate for people with limited incomes, sued in October 2019 to ensure more planning for affordable housing gets done in the city that has as its motto, “Clovis — A Way of Life.”
To be fair, Clovis has taken steps over the years to get some affordable housing built. Just not enough, according to the legal aid organization. It contends Clovis needs 4,400 units to comply with state law.
Last week the City Council heard an annual update on housing needs. In 2020, a whopping total of zero — as in none — affordable units were constructed within city limits. Rather, 1,124 units for buyers with moderate-to-above-moderate incomes were built. A low-income family of four has an annual salary of $55,900, according to the federal government.
Zero affordable units is not a great look for a city defending itself in a lawsuit on the issue of low-income housing.
Behind on affordable housing
That is not the first time Clovis has fallen short on housing for lower-income levels.
As shown in the current housing plan, Clovis was supposed to approve construction from 2006-13 of more than 5,600 units for very-low-to-low-income residents. How many actually got built? Eighty-six. That was the period of the Great Recession, the end of redevelopment agencies and a drop in state and federal grants for such projects.
Going back to the late 1990s shows that Clovis has helped create about 2,200 units of affordable housing. About half of that consisted of repairing and rebuilding existing antiquated housing to make it habitable. Single-family and apartment projects have also been constructed with lower-income residents in mind, said Andy Haussler, Clovis’ community and economic development director.
But such work has not been enough to meet the state’s expectations for thousands more units.
Clovis a good deal
Patience Milrod, executive director of CCLS, said having a mix of housing types for people with varying income levels makes a community richer. “Communities thrive when they are comprised of families at all income levels. It is good for the economy, it is good for education, it is good for the air because you don’t have folks from south Fresno driving cars out to Copper Avenue to mow lawns.”
For a time in the last century, cities drew red lines on maps to designate where white people were to live apart from Black, Latino and Asian residents. Today, red-lining is forbidden as discrimination, and the state allocates housing demands based on household income levels.
One would expect that real estate demand locally will only grow. Home prices in the Fresno metro area have risen in the last year as employees of companies in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, able to work from home during the COVID pandemic, realize they can get bigger, cheaper housing in the Valley. This adds to the importance of Clovis planning for affordable housing.
Clovis is a fine city with good attributes. Putting out a welcome mat for all home seekers, not just those able to buy into a subdivision, would extend the meaning of that Clovis way of life. The City Council and staff need to do all they can to make affordable housing a reality in Clovis.