Comment Detail

Comment

Fresno has a deficit of some 36,000 housing units and as we undergo the new Housing Element and the Multijurisdictional Housing Plan, we see why we continue to have increasing numbers of unhoused and failed housing policy that serves the wrong economic group. Seventy-nine percent of residents of 93706 are living twice below the federal poverty limit and is "home" to nearly 4,000 unhoused people. Historically, this is the area where thousands of residents were displaced by the building of interstate 99 , freeway 41, 180 and 168. These 79% cannot afford "affordable housing" which is based on having an income of some 80% of mean area income. Clearly, living twice below the federal poverty limit according to ACS reports will not in any way benefit from the millions to be spent in affordable housing which will further displace residents. In my efforts to talk about this with both Fresno County and City planning departments, I find that they are only able to build these units because that is the way state and federal funding formulas are currently focused. How is this possible? How do we end up living in communities which cannot even manage funding properly to serve the urgent needs of people living in insufferable heat and cold for years due to the absence of housing funding that can actually work for them. Those who were briefly sheltered in motels are now being evicted so that real estate companies can contract construction to remodel them into market value housing which the residents cannot afford. Now these temporarily housed people are thrust back out onto the streets. How can this be legal? Why are there no injunctions filed against cities and counties for misusing these funds? The City of Fresno has has its Housing Element rejected in the past, why is it able to proceed without any effort to study the failure of the last element. Poverty is increasing; housing is decreasing and people are dying on the streets.