Fresno isn’t building enough housing to meet demand. But is the General Plan the problem?

In 2020, Fresno gets to revisit one of our oldest debates: Is suburban sprawl a good deal for Fresnans?

Last month, the Fresno City Council nearly voted on a proposal led by City Councilmember Luis Chavez to initiate an update of the 2014 General Plan, which was adopted after three years of intense community participation. Facing community resistance and a lack of funds to officially kick off the process, the resolution evolved and on Dec. 12, the City Council created a new 17-member committee to evaluate the plan’s effectiveness as a first step towards an update.

It’s an understandable impulse to want to know if a plan so bitterly debated is actually achieving one of its primary goals, namely, instigating massive investment in housing and infrastructure in Fresno’s long-forgotten older and majority-Latino neighborhoods.

The plan called for half of all new homes to be built within “infill” areas (generously defined as the area within the city limits, as of 2012). And while as of 2016, 93% of all new homes were built in infill areas, most of that growth was along the northern edges of the city, rather than in downtown and along Blackstone and Kings Canyon, the city’s major bus lines.

But amidst a crisis in affordability — and with increasing shares of homes being built in the unincorporated enclaves of Millerton New Town in Fresno County and Rio Mesa in Madera County, along with Clovis — some councilmembers are worried that Fresno is losing its ability to build as many homes as it could, driving up home prices and detracting from the city’s ability to attract regional shopping centers and jobs needed to grow the city’s tax base.

And so, despite the surplus of available land in Fresno ripe for development (planners estimate that there’s enough capacity in the city’s current growth boundary for roughly 289,000 homes), suburban developers, still skeptical that building homes downtown or in Fresno’s older neighborhoods can be profitable, are eager to revisit some of the core debates of the 2014 plan.

At the top of their wish list? Expanding the city’s growth boundary further into southwest and southeast Fresno; reducing mandated densities along the edge of the city; and, opening up land in the city’s Southeast Development Area for development now by purchasing a new water contract and making funding for infrastructure to serve this development a top priority.

All of this growth isn’t exactly a free lunch: a 2010 City Council Audit and Finance Committee report identified infrastructure costs for building out the Southeast Development Area upwards of $400 million. New development doesn’t exactly pay for itself in Fresno, either, and the city often steps in to pay (or seek grant funding) for core infrastructure that development impact fees aren’t covering, like a $3.5 million general fund expenditure earlier this year to pay for a permanent facility for Fire Station 18, west of Highway 99.

Meanwhile, community organizations in Fresno’s older neighborhoods are applying for their own funding to build parks in older neighborhoods, where city leaders have decided that there’s not enough resources for park maintenance to justify building new ones.

Not to mention, this is happening amidst a backdrop of increased concern over the effects of climate change. In Fresno, over half of local carbon emissions come from transportation — in part due to the spread-out nature of the city and disproportionate investment in roads and freeways compared to transit and safe walking and biking paths.

If the policy goal is improving affordability, we have to ask: If we’re having to subsidize this growth to make it happen, is that money better spent more directly helping people who already can’t keep up with increasing rents, let alone afford a $350,000 home?

And if the policy goal is spurring private investment to grow the city’s tax base, can we be absolutely certain that we’re generating enough funding to offset the city’s decades-long neglect of marginalized neighborhoods while covering our new maintenance obligations?

The 2014 General Plan is far from perfect. But as a study on infill development in Fresno by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency noted, one of our greatest challenges is a lack of entities willing to take a risk on Fresno’s marginalized neighborhoods. The General Plan doesn’t do much in the way of mandating where public investment goes. Those are discretionary decisions that our elected leaders make. Are they making token investments in older neighborhoods, while still investing millions to enable growth for affluent communities on the fringe; or, are they willing to make big bets the people and neighborhoods of Fresno with the most to lose?

Nominations for the committee close on Dec. 31st. If you want to serve on the committee, send your resume to your City Councilmember and/or Mayor Lee Brand today.