Mayor Jerry Dyer travels to Europe in search of solutions to Fresno’s housing crisis

Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer is in Vienna this week with a local delegation to study social housing strategies that could help Fresno’s housing crisis.

Dyer and the team arrived abroad Sunday as part of a consulting company’s week-long Vienna Social Housing Academy, which educates leaders on best international housing practices. So far this week, they’ve participated in several tours and study sessions focused on public housing and density, Dyer told The Bee. The Fresno team will return home Saturday.

Vienna’s social housing model is lauded as making it one of the most livable cities in the world.

Dyer is joined by Deputy Mayor Matthew Grundy, his Chief of Staff Kelli Furtado, former mayor and CEO of the Central Valley Community Foundation Ashley Swearengin, and Janine Nkosi, a Faith in the Valley adviser and Fresno State professor.

The Fresno delegation joins state legislators and representatives from other regions, such as Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Clara. The group is led by Global Policy Leadership Academy, a development consulting firm.

Earlier this year, Dyer’s administration released the One Fresno Housing Strategy and, in June, allocated $40 million to housing initiatives. The study found Fresno has a glut of single-family homes and needs 15,000 affordable housing units by 2025 to accommodate residents.

While Dyer’s One Fresno Housing Strategy focuses on building more housing to meet demand, another report called Here to Stay focuses on preventing displacement by making existing housing more affordable. Community residents and housing activists criticized the One Fresno Housing Strategy, but city leaders stressed both studies present realistic solutions that together can be put into action.

A big takeaway from the Vienna trip so far, Dyer said, is that California mayors and governing bodies will be forced to take an active role in building housing.

“At least in California, that’s not been our charge — providing housing,” Dyer said of local governments. “We provide public safety, we provide transportation, we provide water. We’ve never really said, ‘OK, we’re going to provide housing now.’ So that’s what we’re wrestling with, and that’s why I think this trip was timely for us.”

Dyer said the Fresno delegation is focused on learning how to draw more higher-density housing into the downtown, Blackstone and Kings Canyon corridors.

In Vienna, the government is proactive in purchasing land for development and designing dense, mixed-income housing projects with transportation and other services and amenities, such as schools and retail.

“I think what’s different between us in the United States and Vienna is they are very intentional about housing developments in their city, with a keen focus on the intersection of density with active transportation,” he said. “Every one of their developments are tied into that type of nearby public transportation.”

In Vienna, about a quarter of the housing supply is owned by the government. About 80% of residents qualify to live in social housing, and anywhere from 50-60% of people choose to live in it, Dyer said.

“In California, there’s a stigma attached to subsidies and affordable housing,” he said. “Here, there’s no NIMBYism.”

Another difference is the cultural expectation of realizing the “American Dream” of owning a home and creating generational wealth, Dyer said. In Vienna, residents are satisfied renting for their whole lives, he said.

“There’s some things that they do that we would never be able to do. We recognize that,” Dyer said. “But just their overall intentionality and the active engagement on the part of their local government and housing is something we definitely can learn from.”

Dyer and his team received an invitation from Global Policy Leadership Academy to join the Vienna academy, city officials said. The city paid for travel expenses and registration for the academy. Registration for the academy, meals, lodging, ground transportation and airfare for the three city officials amounts to under $29,000.

Meanwhile, in Fresno, a dozen or so renters and homeowners in the southeast Fresno neighborhood near Winchell Elementary School called on city officials to take urgent action to address the housing crisis.

Community members with Familias en Acción, a group of primarily Spanish speaking women, and Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, on Wednesday, shared testimonies about how high rent prices, barriers to home buying options, especially for immigrants, and deteriorating housing conditions plague the city.

The community members at Wednesday’s news conference are not the only ones feeling the pressure of Fresno’s housing crisis. Nearly 60% of Fresno renters are cost-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income in rent, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The high cost of buying a home eliminates the homebuying option for many low-income families.

“We ask the city council members and the mayor to listen to us and include us in the process for the $40 million,” said Maria Munoz, a renter near Jackson Elementary School. “This money is for the community, and they must take us into account.”

Fresnoland reporter Cassandra Garibay contributed to this report.