![]() I just don’t understand why everything has gotten so expensive.” ‘Fresno is becoming very popular’ I have two kids and I want their environment to be better. It used to be easy to find two-bedrooms for around $900 a month, Miranda said, but now those same apartments go for $1,500. “Since May I’ve been looking but I haven’t found anything.”Īshley Miranda, a mother of two who works at Starbucks, has spent six months trying to find a new place that’s safer and quieter for her children. “I have nowhere else to go,” Leon, 53, said in Spanish. The Leons have applied for at least eight apartments, paying fees of $30 each time, but in Fresno’s competitive rental market they have never heard back. Leon’s son, who works in fruit label manufacturing, is the primary breadwinner in the house, and there are few options the family can afford. They currently pay $650 a month, but their landlord is planning to raise the rent by at least 45% to cover the cost of renovations to the building, meaning they could soon be paying $1,000 a month. The Leons have been looking for a new place to live for months. The situation has left families with few options, forcing them to stay in substandard housing, move in with other family members or even leave Fresno entirely, Morales-Tilgren said. “The labor market in Fresno is not catching up to the price of housing.” “In places like Fresno you have really high rates of poverty and a significant share of people who have really low incomes,” said Carolina Reid, a faculty research adviser with the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Landlords keep raising rents and people have nowhere to go Jovana Morales-Tilgren, a housing policy coordinator Many people were struggling and are still struggling. During Covid, Fresno and Central Valley rents just kept increasing. About 50% of households make less than $50,000 a year, while a quarter of residents are in poverty, according to US Census data.įifty per cent of Fresno’s population is Latino, and several residents told the Guardian they immigrated here decades ago from Mexico because of Fresno’s job opportunities and affordability – a reality that is quickly disappearing. But Fresno is among the most diverse cities in the US, and also one of the poorest. ![]() ![]() With a median cost of $1,141 for a one-bedroom and $1,421 for a two-bedroom, Fresno rents are still below those of San Francisco or Los Angeles. Landlords keep raising rents and people have nowhere to go.” “Many people were struggling and are still struggling. “During Covid, Fresno and Central Valley rents just kept increasing,” said Jovana Morales-Tilgren, a housing policy coordinator with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. ![]() Rents, which had been steadily climbing for years before the pandemic, are still rising and, coupled with a shortage of homes, that’s hitting low-income residents hardest. But even as life returns to pre-pandemic norms, those who live here say the situation isn’t getting any better. Locals attribute the surge to people seeking to escape the high cost of living in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
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