#OneHealthyFresno Campaign Shines Light on Blight

Colby Tibbet Contributor

FRESNO-- Over six months into Faith in Community’s (FIC) #OneHealthyFresno campaign, the City of Fresno took action against the urban blight that plagues neighborhoods across the city, and especially in southeast and southwest neighborhoods.

On May 14, the Fresno City Council decided to change city ordinances to mandate a $250/day fine for blighted homes, create a registry of vacant homes, require landlords to keep the exterior of homes in good repair, which means that Fresnans that live in blighted areas should be seeing less plywood on doors and windows of vacant buildings. Additionally, the council created a 5-person blight team aimed at assessing the problem and assigning fees.

For, FIC, this is the result of a long campaign to improve parts of the city that suffer from blight. "[The campaign is] part of this broader emphasis that South Fresno neighborhoods [have] been left behind and neglected for decades and aren’t really prioritized by the city," said Andy Levine, Executive Director of Faith in Community.

Blighted homes are often vacant, with desolate lawns, stained driveways, and makeshift plywood on the windows. They are not only an eyesore, but also bring down the market-value of neighboring houses. Additionally, vacant lots and blighted lots often attract crime, drugs, gang activity, and a lower standard of living for residents. Some of these vacant homes, Levine says, have been empty and ignored for upwards of 8 years.

Levine told the story of an eight year-old girl who he met during one of FIC’s “night-walk” events, where the organization brings out community members to walk in neighborhoods with high rates of violence. Levine asked her what she would change in her neighborhood, and she immediately pointed to one of the handful of boarded-up homes on her block.

“She didn't need to know the policies or the background of what the business model is to know that this is not right and it’s not normal, and the city could be doing something about it,” said Levine.

The recently-approved 2035 Fresno General Plan includes finding solutions to the problem of blight. One proposal is to replace the plywood on boarded-up homes with durable plexiglass, which improves the appearance of the home and also aims to keep out would-be transient occupants.

In January, Mayor Ashley Swearengin and city officials held a media event to show off how indestructible the plexiglass is by inviting a former professional baseball player Terance Frazier to use a bat to try to break the plexiglass. In a surprise twist the plexiglass broke.

Levine believes local policy makers do understand the need to for strategies to address blighted homes. The change to two city ordinances is only a start, though.

"We are hearing that there is a shared concern that this is a real problem,” he said. “I’m just not sure what that means in actual policy change.”

Last October Mayor Swearengin designated a code enforcement task force, which includes City Council members Oliver Baines, Paul Caprioglio, and Clint Olivier plus other officials and community leaders. During a meeting in April, the task force drafted a final ordinance for Phase 1 of their project, which includes abandoned homes and urban blight.

FIC had four recommendations for the ordinance: a fee for property owners who have homes vacant for more than 60 days; an inspection on vacant properties before tenants move back in; transparency in code development that includes a periodic report from the city attorney on properties that are improved; and an inclusion of a private attorney clause which would allow outside legal action if the city fails to uphold their codes.

Levine is pleased with the direction the city is moving in, but said that the other recommendations are common in cities across the state, but that Fresno only partially approved of them. Critically, they left out the mandatory inspection on homes that have previously been vacant before new tenants move in and they refused to include a private attorney clause to protect tenants.

“We have significant concerns about the ordinance...that it isn’t going nearly far enough,” said Levine. “We believe this is a chance to address this problem and we believe the mayor and others want to get this done, but there is a genuine concern of commitment to this.”

Whitney Aguilar and her husband rent a home in the Lowell District, which borders downtown. An abandoned property sits directly across the street and has been unoccupied for a year and a half. Aguilar noted that her landlord wants to purchase it, but has been hitting roadblocks as the city now owns the property.

“It upsets me that the city won’t do more to try and sell it to someone who helps our neighborhood a ton,” said Aguilar.

Around the corner from Aguilar’s home there are signs of revitalization, such as the Granville Urban loft apartments which have been filling up as soon as they are built, plus new restaurants and local businesses which have been sprouting up on the Fulton Mall. But Aguilar says even one abandoned property affects the entire area.

“My neighborhood has gotten a lot better in the last 3 years and that house is dragging the street down,” she said.

FIC to conduct research on the public perception of urban blight. Sociology major Clayton Whited has been involved with the project, where he has been working with opensource technology to track and observe urban blight over time within Fresno. The aim is to understand what causes concentrated areas of blight in certain parts of town.

“The goal is to bring attention to [blight], and then find a way to have community partners, the people who live in the neighborhood, and city officials and the property owners to come together and find a common ground and solution to this,” said Whited.

In the researchers’ first day of canvassing blighted areas, they found 250 vacant and abandoned homes within the city limits.

“It’s very important for us to take what we learned in the classroom and put it into an application outside the field, and do some good in the community you live in,” said Whited of the students involved in the project.

Whited said he would like to see more clearly defined language in the municipal code and a more substantial budget devoted to code enforcement.

“There needs to be the means to communicate from the neighborhood to the city and from the city to the neighborhood, and to the property owner, and accountability on all accounts,” he said.

Phase 2 of the process to update the code will begin later this year. To get involved or find out more, contact Faith in Community at their website, faithinfresno.org, or on their Facebook page.

A Fresno State-led project has been working alongside