Wickey Two Hands sat at the defense table on a recent Thursday morning, holding in his lap the red baseball cap he’d doffed out of respect for the judge.

The 77-year-old homeless man was supposed to be the first person tried in court under an ordinance Fresno passed last year making it a crime to camp in all public places. Over the past six months, he’d spent hours in a courtroom, arriving early for each hearing. He’d packed up and moved his campsite multiple times, trying to find out-of-the-way spots where he could avoid getting arrested again.

But instead of sending Two Hands’ case before a jury, the judge — on the day trial was supposed to begin — dismissed all charges. The reason? The city waited too long to prosecute.

Two Hands’ case shines a spotlight on a contradiction seen around the state in recent months. California cities are passing ordinances left and right that allow police to arrest or cite unhoused people for camping on their streets and sidewalks, or in their parks. Police are making arrests. But when it comes to prosecuting, trying or sentencing people for violating these ordinances, some cities haven’t been able to follow through. In many cases, prosecutors aren’t filing charges. If people are charged, their cases often are dismissed quickly. Two Hands’ case was a rarity for how close it came to trial. But in the end, it too was thrown out.

That has some wondering: what’s the point of arresting people at all?

Related Story: Fresno’s Anti-Camping Ordinance Goes into Effect. City Says It Will ...

A Bellwether Case Dismissed

Two Hands’ case was set to be a bellwether to see if Fresno’s camping ban — under which police have made several hundred arrests already — would hold up before a jury. The city and county — as well as Two Hands’ lawyer, activists and even local journalists — invested a considerable amount of resources in the case before it was ultimately dismissed last week without a trial or any public hearings on its merits.

“They wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this case,” said Ron Hochbaum, a law professor at the University of the Pacific who specializes in homelessness and poverty law. “When you think about all the people who were involved, from police to the city attorney’s office to judges and court clerks and so on. That’s probably hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars wasted. And that money would be better spent by simply offering Mr. Two Hands housing without arresting him.”

Resources Expended

CalMatters analyzed the resources that went into prosecuting Two Hands’ case:

At 8:40 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2024, two Fresno police officers came across Two Hands and his belongings on the side of the road and arrested him for camping in a public place and illegally possessing a shopping cart.

Over the next six months, Two Hands attended four hearings in three different courtrooms. Before each hearing, he dropped off his belongings at a friend’s house and then caught the bus to the downtown Fresno courthouse, sometimes arriving as much as an hour early so he didn’t miss anything. After court, an advocate sometimes drove him back to his campsite. On April 10, the day his trial was supposed to begin, he missed work to attend court, skipping his scheduled shift at a wrecking yard and with it, his chance to earn money for food and other necessities for the day.

City and county resources also went into each hearing. Public funds paid for the presence of a judge, a bailiff and staff from the city attorney’s office. The city brought on outside law firm Manning Kass to help prosecute the case.

Kevin Little, a private attorney who specializes in civil rights litigation, signed on to defend Two Hands pro bono. Little estimates he spent between 100 and 150 hours on Two Hands’ case. He had two additional staff members helping him, and they put in another 50 to 100 hours. The week the case was supposed to go to trial, Little said he spent a couple nights working in his office until 3 a.m.

“They wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this case.”

Ron Hochbaum, law professor, University of the Pacific

Another attorney, Patience Milrod, was also in court on April 10. She was there to represent Pablo Orihuela, a Fresnoland journalist who had been covering Two Hands’ case and received a subpoena to testify on behalf of the prosecution. Attorney Karl Olson was standing by to contest a subpoena issued to Fresno Bee reporter Thaddeus Miller, according to the Bee.

In addition to Orihuela and Miller, journalists from CalMatters and ABC30 were there to cover the trial.

About two-dozen activists and local community members also showed up at the courthouse — some arriving as early as 7 a.m. despite work and childcare obligations — to support Two Hands on the day his trial was set to start. Activist Wes White drove two-and-a-half hours from Salinas to be there.

After all that, Judge Brian Alvarez dismissed the case. He found that the trial should have started by March 6, and going past that date would violate Two Hands’ right to a speedy trial. Two Hands’ supporters filed out of the courtroom and filled the hallway, cheering, until a bailiff asked them to keep it down.

“I’m really shocked by how much money and resources they put into this,” said advocate Dez Martinez, who recently helped Two Hands get into a shelter. “There was so much money used in this so they can make a point because they don’t want to lose a case. It just bothers me that they used that (many resources) and finances into punishing Wickey instead of doing what I did: sit down and talk to him, figure out why does he not want to go inside.”

The trial originally was set to start Feb. 20, but the city asked for a delay, which was granted by Judge Carlos Cabrera. Judge Alvarez appeared to disagree with that ruling.

The city blamed Two Hands’ team for the case getting thrown out. The defense’s subpoena request forced the city to review an extensive amount of documents, which took extra time, Deputy City Attorney Daniel Cisneros told the court. The city also had tried to prevent the case from going to trial by offering Two Hands a plea deal, which it said would come with a shelter bed. Two Hands declined, instead opting to try to clear his name through a trial.

“The City’s position is to continue to offer plea deals to defendants who accept housing and services offered by the City,” the city attorney’s office said in an emailed statement from Noemi Schwartz. “It is unfortunate that this defendant declined the services and housing offered by City at a congregate shelter at Travel Inn and will likely end up back on the streets without shelter and assistance.”

A Pattern Across California

Fresno’s new camping ordinance went into effect in September, making it a misdemeanor to sit, lie, sleep or camp in a public place. But most people arrested aren’t prosecuted, and even fewer come close to a trial. Fresno police made 322 arrests under that ordinance from October 2024 through January 2025. During that time, the city attorney’s office filed charges in just 132 camping cases. The defendant failed to show up in court in more than half of the cases in which charges were filed. Only one other case, in addition to Two Hands’, was listed as headed toward trial.

It’s a similar situation in other cities, from the Bay Area to Southern California. Police in Los Angeles made 238 camping arrests last year, and the city attorney’s office declined to file charges in two-thirds of those cases. In San Francisco, nearly four in five illegal lodging arrests made since August 2024 have not resulted in charges, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Cities and district attorneys aren’t interested in prosecuting the cases because they know they don’t have enough room in jail and prisons to incarcerate everyone who is experiencing homelessness,” Hochbaum said. And they know slapping someone with a fine won’t stop them from sleeping outside, he said.

Instead, he said, many cities are using the threat of arrest to force unhoused people to move when they want to clear an encampment.

For the time being, Two Hands is sleeping inside after five years on the street. Martinez said she got him a 90-day stay at a city-run shelter — with no help from the city attorney’s office.

“(It’s) a pretty good day in my life,” Two Hands said outside the courthouse, after his case was dismissed. “77 seasons I’ve been here, you know, I think I deserve it.”

While Two Hands was hesitant to accept a shelter bed at first, Martinez said after spending months talking to him, getting to know him and showing up at his side to his court dates, she won his trust. She promised to keep fighting to get Two Hands into permanent housing, sign him up for Social Security, help him access health care, and get him whatever else he needs.

“It’s not that he wants to stay outside,” Martinez said. “He’s tired. He doesn’t want to die on the sidewalk. He didn’t want to be given something and have it be taken away.”

Fresno still has yet to try anyone for sleeping outside, but that could change. Little is representing another unhoused man who was arrested for camping — and plans on bringing that case to trial.

“I hope the message the city gets,” Little said, “is leave the unhoused alone. Help them and don’t prosecute them. But if you are going to choose unfortunately to prosecute these cases, then you better come ready, because we’re not backing down.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The post What Happens After a Homeless Person Is Arrested for Camping? Often, Not Much appeared first on GV Wire.

The potential changes primarily concern federal housing vouchers, including those more commonly known as Section 8. The aid generally helps the poorest tenants cover the monthly costs of apartments, town homes and single-family residences.

Focus on Housing Vouchers

Administration officials recently discussed cutting or canceling out the vouchers and other rental assistance programs and potentially replacing them with a more limited system of housing grants, perhaps sent to states, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential discussions. The overhaul would be included in President Donald Trump’s new budget, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.

The exact design and cost of the retooled program is unclear, and any such change is likely to require approval from Congress, as White House budgets on their own do not carry the force of law.

But people familiar with the administration’s thinking said the expected overhaul would most likely amount to more than just a technical change, resulting in fewer federal dollars for low-income families on top of additional cuts planned for the rest of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Thursday, the Trump administration took the first steps toward potentially selling the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

Related Story: Other States Do Housing Better Than California; a New Study Shows How They Do It

Budget Cuts and Agency Impact

Federal voucher programs currently provide assistance to about 2.3 million low-income families, according to the government’s estimates, who enroll through their local public-housing authorities. The aid is part of a broader universe of rental assistance programs that are set to exceed $54 billion this fiscal year. But the annual demand for these subsidies is far greater than the available funds, creating a sizable waitlist as rents are rising nationally.

“If there were a cut to the voucher program, essentially, you would see a decrease to the number of families that are served by the program,” said Eric Oberdorfer, director of policy and legislative affairs at the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, an advocacy group.

At the moment, he added, only 1 in 4 families eligible for vouchers are able to obtain them because of funding constraints. A federal cut would put public-housing agencies in a position in which “they would need to make difficult decisions” and in some cases stop providing benefits, Oberdorfer said.

Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House budget office, said in a statement that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, previously endorsed an end to the federal voucher program. He wrote in 2022 that the Section 8 program in particular “brings with it crime, decreased property values, and results in dependency and subsidized irresponsibility.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to comment on the budget. Appearing on Capitol Hill earlier this year, Scott Turner, the housing secretary, told senators that he believed the goal of the voucher program was to “get people into self sustainability,” not “a lifetime on subsidies.”

The expected cuts to rental assistance reflect Trump’s broader desire to shrink the footprint of government and its reach into Americans’ lives, a project that includes sharp reductions to federal antipoverty programs viewed as too generous or wasteful.

The aggressive campaign has already resulted in the president and his top aides — including tech billionaire Elon Musk — shuttering entire agencies, freezing billions of dollars and dismissing thousands of civil employees, moves that have enraged Democrats and led to a series of court challenges.

The full scope of Trump’s vision stands to become clearer once he submits his budget to Congress this spring, reflecting his priorities for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The proposal is expected to guide Republican lawmakers as they look for ways to pay for the party’s costly ambitions to reduce taxes on people and corporations.

Many agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, could lose funds ranging into the billions of dollars, according to those familiar with the White House blueprint, who cautioned that it remained unfinished.

The cuts to housing programs come in addition to an exodus of the agency’s workforce. As of last week, about 2,300 employees opted to accept an offer for “deferred resignation” and leave their jobs, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Related Story: Signs of a More Buyer-Friendly Housing Market Emerge for Spring

Broader Housing Agency Changes

The White House also plans to dismantle a key office in the housing agency that helps communities recover from deadly natural disasters, a move that could slow much-needed emergency aid. Separately, Trump issued an executive order last month eliminating a decades-old, governmentwide commission meant to coordinate the federal response to homelessness.

A potential overhaul of the housing agency comes on the heels of a congressional deal to fund the government through September that increased some housing spending yet did not keep pace with rising rents and the growing demand for federal aid. The funding gap could result in about 32,000 voucher recipients soon losing access to federal housing aid, according to Democrats’ estimates, on top of additional cuts once funding runs out in a pandemic-era program that expanded voucher availability.

Many of the foundational changes the White House contemplates for the housing department are consistent with cuts that the president and Vought, his returning budget chief, previously endorsed. In the final budget of Trump’s first term, the two men proposed a roughly $8.6 billion reduction at the housing agency, though they did not propose to eliminate vouchers entirely.

Years after leaving government, though, Vought specifically proposed a full end to the Section 8 voucher program. At his conservative nonprofit, the Center for Renewing America, Vought in 2022 called vouchers supplied to low-income tenants a “hook for implementing the left’s fair housing agenda,” faulting the government for focusing on racial equity.

Vought previously served as a key author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the Trump presidency, which similarly endorsed a sweeping overhaul to federal housing spending. Ben Carson, who led the Department of Housing and Urban Development during Trump’s first term, wrote in a chapter about the agency that it needed to explore significant reforms to the voucher program, such as work requirements on recipients and limits to how long they could collect housing aid.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Tony Romm/Eric Lee
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

The post White House Eyes Overhaul of Federal Housing Aid to the Poor appeared first on GV Wire.

The rate rose to 6.83% from 6.62% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 7.1%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose. The average rate increased to 6.03% from 5.82% last week. It’s still down from 6.39% a year ago, Freddie Mac said.

Factors Influencing Mortgage Rates

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, including global demand for U.S. Treasurys, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions and bond market investors’ expectations for future inflation.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage loosely follows moves in the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

The yield, which had mostly fallen this year after climbing to around 4.8% in mid-January, spiked last week to 4.5% amid a sell-off in government bonds triggered by investor anxiety over the potential fallout from the Trump administration’s escalating tariff war.

The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.32% in midday trading Thursday.

Related Story: Average US Rate on a 30-Year Mortgage Dips to 6.64% for the Second Drop in 2 Weeks

Impact on Homebuyers

When mortgage rates rise, they reduce homebuyers’ purchasing power.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage had mostly trended lower since reaching just over 7% in mid-January. This week’s increase is the first after three straight declines and brings the average rate to its highest level since Feb. 20, when it was 6.85%.

The increase in mortgage rates may put off some would-be homebuyers during what’s traditionally the busiest period of the year for home sales. Last week, mortgage applications fell 8.5% from a week earlier, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

At the same time, the share of applications for adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, climbed to its highest level in 17 months. ARMs lower a borrower’s mortgage payment by reducing the interest rate on a mortgage for a preset number of years before it adjusts to a higher rate.

Related Story: High Mortgage Rates, Prices Dampen January Home Sales

Housing Market Outlook

Earlier this year, forecasts by housing economists generally called for the average rate on a 30-year mortgage to remain around 6.5% this year.

“Looking forward, competing economic forces are pulling mortgage rates in opposite directions, making it increasingly difficult to predict where they’ll land,” said Jiayi Xu, an economist at Realtor.com. “For buyers, the smartest move is to stress-test their budgets across a range of possible rate scenarios to stay prepared—no matter which way the winds shift.

The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

Easing mortgage rates and more homes on the market nationally helped drive sales higher in February from the previous month, though they were down year-over-year.

Home shoppers who can afford to buy at current mortgage rates may benefit from more buyer-friendly trends this spring homebuying season, including a sharp increase in home listings and lower asking prices in some metro areas.

The post Average US Rate on a 30-Year Mortgage Climbs to 6.83%, Highest Level Since Late February appeared first on GV Wire.

The spiraling cost of housing in California has affected virtually every facet of life.

California has the nation’s largest unsheltered homeless population and among the highest rates of cost-burdened renters and overcrowded homes.

One reason for the seemingly endless upward trajectory of rents is how expensive it is to build new apartments in California. Those costs are a major contributor to “break-even rents,” or what must be charged for a project to be financially feasible.

Comparing Costs Across States

I recently led a study that compared total apartment development costs in California to those in Colorado and Texas. The average apartment in Texas costs roughly $150,000 to produce; in California, building the same apartment costs around $430,000, or 2.8 times more. Colorado occupies a middle ground, with an average cost of around $240,000 per unit.

For publicly subsidized, affordable apartments — a sector that California has spent billions on in recent years — the gap is even worse. These cost over four times as much as affordable apartment units in Colorado and Texas.

There’s no single factor driving these huge differences. Land costs in California are over three times the Texas average. “Hard costs,” or those related to improving the land and constructing buildings, are 2.2 times those in Texas. California’s “soft costs,” which include financing, architectural and engineering fees, and development fees charged by local governments, are 3.8 times the Texas average.

Breaking Down California’s High Costs

There are some unavoidable California-specific costs, like ensuring buildings are resilient to shaking from earthquakes. But the truly lifesaving seismic requirements explain only around 6% of hard-cost differences, the study estimated. The state’s strict energy efficiency requirements add around 7%.

California’s high cost of living may drive up the price of labor, but we found that construction wage differences explain only 6% to 10% of hard-cost differences for market-rate apartments. However, for publicly subsidized apartment projects, which are often mandated to pay union-level wages, labor expenses explain as much as 20% to 35% of the total difference in costs between California and Texas.

“Soft costs” in California are a major culprit. California property developers pay remarkably high fees for architectural and engineering services — triple the average cost in Texas. It’s five times as much or more if you’re building publicly funded, affordable apartments in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas.

Seismic engineering requirements play a role. The bigger factor are complex and burdensome design requirements for affordable housing. These are dictated by state and local funding sources, and have little to do with habitability or safety but contribute substantially to these astonishing differences.

Development fees to local governments make up the largest soft-cost difference in California. Such fees, which were the subject of a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court case, average around $30,000 per unit. In Texas, the average is about $800. (Again, Colorado occupies a middle ground at around $12,000.)

In San Diego, for example, these fees on average eat up 14% of total development costs per apartment.

The Biggest Culprit: Time

But the biggest thing driving up California apartment costs? Time.

A privately financed apartment building that takes just over two years to produce from start to finish in Texas would take over four years in California. It takes twice as long to gain project approvals and the construction timeline is 1.5 times longer.

That means land costs must be carried for longer, equipment and labor are on jobsites longer, and that loans are taken out for a longer term, and so on.

Most of the differences that the study uncovered stem from policy choices made by state and local governments. Many are legacies of the so-called “slow growth movement” in California, which has shaped housing production since the 1980s.

Those efforts worked. Population growth in the state went negative for a few years after 2020, due primarily to the high cost of housing. Even more recently, California’s growth was half the numbers seen in Texas and Florida, with younger and higher earners disproportionately leaving.

These departures have dire implications for the state’s fiscal future and political influence nationally. California recently lost a congressional seat for the first time in its history. If current national population trends hold, it could lose four or five seats in 2030.

The California Legislature has become increasingly focused on reducing the cost of living, but meeting this goal requires substantial progress on lowering housing costs. New proposals to exempt urban infill housing production from state environmental law and a package of permitting reforms are steps in that direction.

Will policymakers also take lessons from Texas and Colorado’s cheaper housing methods? That remains to be seen. But the future of California may well hinge on it.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

The post Why Is It So Expensive to Build Affordable Homes in CA? It Takes Too Long appeared first on GV Wire.

Home sales fell 4.8% in March from February, and together with declines in the previous three months were down 20% from their recent high, posted in November, CREA said on Tuesday.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, sales were down 9.3% on an annual basis and were the lowest for the month since 2009.

The industry group also said its Home Price Index declined 1% on the month and was down 2.1% annually, while the national average selling price was down 3.7% on the year.

“Up until this point, declining home sales have mostly been about tariff uncertainty,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist. “Going forward, the Canadian housing space will also have to contend with the actual economic fallout.

“In short order we’ve gone from a slam dunk rebound year to treading water at best.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on a variety of Canadian goods, including autos, and Canada’s retaliatory measures, are expected to suppress economic growth despite a string of interest rate cuts by the Bank of Canada since June.

CREA slashed its 2025 forecast, expecting 482,673 residential properties to change hands, barely changed from 2024. In January it forecast an increase of 8.6%.

Separate data from Canada’s national housing agency showed that housing starts declined 3.3% month-over-month in March to an annualized rate of 214,155 units, falling short of the 242,500 rate expected by economists.

—

(Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by David Holmes)

The post Canadian Home Sales Post Weakest March Since 2009 on Tariff Uncertainty appeared first on GV Wire.

The Fresno County Economic Development Corporation brought out a panel of experts to discuss housing construction and sales, major commercial real estate purchases, and upcoming development for its 20th annual Real Estate Forecast last week.

The event included a question-and-answer segment between Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer and PG&E CEO Patti Poppe discussing rate increases and hookup delays.

Real estate experts said uncertainty would prevent recovery in 2025, but some highlights could mean positivity for 2026 and 2027.

The number of real estate sales last year paints a picture of the slowdown, said John Kourafas, commercial investment adviser with the Visintainer Group.

Sales volume dropped 31%  in 2024, marking the third consecutive year of declines and the lowest since 2011, Kourafas said. Property values have lost 10% to 20% since 2022.

First quarter data showed a slight uptick but that came before the tumult caused by President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements. That uncertainty will likely prevent any recovery at least for the next six months, Kourafas said.

But after consecutive years of decline, the market appears near the bottom and primed for recovery.

“There’s a lot of optimism that ’26 and ’27 will be bounce-back years,” Kourafas said.

Related Story: Other States Do Housing Better Than California; a New Study Shows How They Do

Cost of Money, Market Uncertainty to Delay Recovery: Kourafas

Most real estate activity came from essential sectors, Kourafas said. Investors looked to multi-family properties, medical offices, and quick-service restaurants.

Fresno County’s biggest real estate sale — not including apartments — came from Starpoint Towers, which sold for $10.6 million.

That was the only deal that sold above $10 million last year, whereas Fresno County would normally have five or six above that amount, Kourafas said.

In addition to the drop in big transactions, the number of sales in Fresno County dropped 13%.

To him, that means a disconnect between what buyers want for a property and what sellers will pay.

“Values haven’t come down enough to get buyers to justify the cost to purchase,” Kourafas said.

Lending Will Increase This Year and Next: Renney

Experts expect commercial real estate lending to increase in 2025 and 2026, but with challenges, said Matt Renney, principal with California Realty Capital, Inc.

Roughly $950 billion of U.S. commercial real estate mortgages matured in 2024, said Renney.

Many lenders are kicking the can down the road, however, extending loans and pretending everything is fine, he said. About $30 billion in loans were extended to 2025 and beyond.

Related Story: Fresno Mayor Praises a State Bill That Would Speed In-Fill Housing

The dollar amount of loans maturing will continue to rise through 2027, peaking at nearly $1.3 trillion before dropping slightly in 2028.

The cost of money is 2 percentage points higher than the ones that matured last year, Renney said.

Stubbornly high interest rates means builders and investors need to put up more equity or capital if they need loans to start construction, purchase a building, or refinance.

Rising property expenses and slower rent growth will make increase capitalization rates — what lenders look at to evaluate risk.

More and more, private credit is filling funding gaps in projects and sectors that traditional lenders, Renney said. But those lenders often want rates much higher, sometimes to the tune of 12%, adding 1% to 3% in fees.

“If interest rates can come down, real estate transactions can be more feasible,” Renney said.

Normalizing Rents, Vacancies Slowing Down Apartment Construction: Kane

The effects of a slowing economy can be seen in apartment construction, said Robin Kane, managing director for Northmarq.

From 2020 to 2023, builders added almost 3,300 units, driven in part by double-digit rent growth at that time. Rental growth has declined to 2% to 3% a year and vacancies around 4% to 5% — much more normal levels, said Kane.

But with those levels came a sharp decline in construction. Only 600 units came online in 2024.

“Now, all of a sudden what’s made sense makes no sense,” Kane said.

A Look at the Home Market

Home sales in 2025 started strong, but the buyer pool remains small, said Carmen Jimenez Phillips, president of the Fresno Association of Realtors. Available inventory increased in February, dropping slightly in March.

Despite sales declines, prices continue to rise. Median home price jumped from $427,000 in January to $442,000 in February.

In the world of new home construction, high interest rates coupled have kept many buyers on the sidelines, said Ryan De Young, president of De Young Properties.

But those same constraints affect the resale market. Limited inventory of existing homes will help drive new home sales growth to modest levels of around 3% to 5% in 2025.

Builders will have to use financing concessions to get potential deals to make financial sense for buyers. This comes as the California regulatory market already keeps margins low.

Whereas regulatory fees only make up .5% to 3% of the cost of the home, studies show California regulatory fees add 9% to new home costs, De Young said.

Some builders have begun dedicating entire neighborhoods to rentals. Investment companies will make deals with builders for rental properties. De Young said he began negotiations for a contract in Fresno. Build-to-rent neighborhoods still haven’t made significant headway in Fresno, but they’re becoming more popular.

But with limited land for development, it puts build-to-rent in direct competition with properties for home ownership.

Government Deficits Create Uncertainty in Affordable Housing: Williams

Fresno Housing has done a lot of construction in single-family workforce housing, said Tyrone Roderick Williams, CEO of Fresno Housing.

Heritage Estates will bring on 33 mixed-income homes, expected to come online in southwest Fresno in August. They also have five homes in Sanger available. The homes comes after Fresno Housing opened Avalon Commons in north Fresno, a 60-unit affordable housing apartment complex. They will soon demolish the former CVS in downtown Fresno to make way for the Fulton Forum — creating 300 to 400 mixed-income housing units.

Funding for affordable housing projects relies on federal, state, and local grants. 80% of Fresno Housing’s funding is federal. Rollbacks on federal sources cast uncertainty in many of those funds. State and local deficits have also put into question those funding sources.

Roderick Williams estimates it will require 15 years of construction at the current pace to meet the need for affordable housing.

“This is going to be a challenging year from a financial standpoint,” Roderick Williams said.

PG&E Bankruptcy Created Backlogs, Rate Increase Needed: Poppy

PG&E CEO Patti Poppe came to Fresno to discuss energy with Dyer. Taking an apologetic tone for issues around the utility giant, Poppe said many issues from the public stemmed from the company’s bankruptcy in 2019.

Dyer said he frequently received phone calls from business owners about long delays to hook businesses up to electricity and gas.

Poppe said inability to access capital created long wait times for service. She said coming out of bankruptcy, they’ve been addressing that backlog by doing 14,000 hookups.

“Post bankruptcy, we had sub-investment-grade ratings,” Poppe said. “We could not access the capital markets, and we ran out of cash and had to delay and created a backlog that we’ve been digging out of.”

Poppe was not available for follow-up questions from GV Wire.

Dyer asked about the utility’s $2.48 billion in profit in 2024 — a 9% increase from 2023 — despite a 56% increase in residential energy rates. The utility also requested a rate increase to pay investors.

Poppe said rates went down in 2025 and should go down in 2026. She also record profits followed the company’s bankruptcy, and it needs to look good to investors. She said the company pays the lowest dividends to investors.

“Let me tell you why it’s in your interest that PG&E is profitable,” Poppe said. “When we make that capital investment, we have to go to the capital markets, we have to attract capital to come to California. And if I am successful leading this company financially, then we can attract lower cost capital. We are still sub-investment grade as a company because of the bankruptcy. That means it costs more for us to borrow.”

Property Owners Face Potential Vacancy Tax, Commercial Rent Control

Talking commercial real estate with state legislators can be challenging, said Matthew Hargrove, president and CEO of the California Business Properties Association.

Most only want to talk housing, he said. Every year, the state creates between 400 and 500 bills that affect commercial property owners.

Senate Bill 758 would put a $5-per-square-foot tax on properties vacant longer than 180 days.

Assembly Bill 380 would limit price increases and commercial rent control during emergencies. It also affects multifamily properties.

Hargrove pointed out that California is currently under the type of emergency that would trigger the rent control rules.

The post What Are Fresno Real Estate Experts Predicting for 2025 and Beyond? appeared first on GV Wire.

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.Overwhelmingly Californians rate the intertwined issues of housing supply, living costs and homelessness as the state’s most pressing issues, as a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California confirms.

The terrible trio, as one might term it, also draws constant verbal acknowledgement from the state’s politicians, from Gov. Gavin Newsom down, and he and legislators have enacted dozens, perhaps hundreds, of measures to address it.

Nevertheless there’s little evidence that their efforts have had material impact. Either the three situations are beyond the capacity of politics to address — a distinct possibility — or the political efforts to date have not been vigorous enough.

California’s Housing Struggles

Why, one must wonder, is California plagued while residents of other states enjoy lower housing and living costs and experience much lower rates of homelessness? Shouldn’t our political and civic leaders be examining what these other states are doing right, or are they so afflicted with self-righteous hubris that they cannot entertain such a thought?

A new and very detailed study of housing policies in the nation’s 250 largest metropolitan areas confirms that California is an outlier when it comes to increasing housing supply and moderating its costs.

Lessons From Pro-Growth Metros

Titled “BUILD HOMES, EXPAND OPPORTUNITY,” the report is a product of the George W. Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University.

“America’s fastest-growing cities offer lessons on how America can address its housing affordability crisis,” the report declares. “Based on our analysis of the 250 largest metropolitan areas and a deep dive into 25 large metros in the Sun Belt and Mountain states, places scoring best for pro-growth housing and land-use policies are mostly large Sun Belt metros from the Carolinas through Texas to Utah.”

The metros doing the best job of meeting their housing demands, the report says, have policies that make it easy for developers to build. That includes allowing higher-density housing in “substantial fractions of every city,” reducing minimum lot sizes, allowing residential construction in commercial areas, reducing or eliminating parking requirements and embracing innovative technologies such as modular construction and 3D printing.

In addition to adopting specific housing policies that spur development, the report continues, metros that are meeting demand also pursue complementary policies, such as having enough educational and medical services, allowing  “fine-grained mixing of land uses and human activities in as many places as possible,” allowing “dynamic changes in land use rather than trying to freeze neighborhoods,” and providing amenities such as “walkability, revitalized live-work-play downtowns” and “great parks and trails.”

Where California Falls Short

So, one might ask, which metro areas are hitting all the right buttons and which are not, as determined in the study?

The 25 top pro-housing metros are all either in the Sun Belt — particularly Texas, California’s arch-rival — or in the mountain states such as Utah and Idaho. No. 1 is Charlotte, NC. and No. 2 is Austin, the Texas capital which is becoming a powerful competitor with California’s Silicon Valley.

Not surprisingly, California metros are heavily represented on the list of the nation’s 25 “most restrictive” metros. While Honolulu is the least accommodating, Oxnard is No. 2.

Nine of the 25 are in California. They include, in order after Oxnard, San Jose, San Diego, Riverside-San Bernardino, San Francisco, Sacramento, Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton.

It would be tempting to dismiss the Bush Institute’s report as biased because it comes from Texas, but it contains a wealth of detail and explains how the data were evaluated.

A better response from California politicians would be to read the report and determine what more California could do to make the state housing-friendly. The state’s current path on housing, other living costs and homelessness is going in the wrong direction.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

The post Other States Do Housing Better Than California; a New Study Shows How They Do It appeared first on GV Wire.

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

When California became a state in 1850, it had fewer than 100,000 residents and 27 sparsely populated counties. Several were larger in land area than some states.

However, its population was exploding with Gold Rush immigrants and almost immediately they began pressing the Legislature to create new counties so they could more easily access services such as filing mining claims.

Over the next 57 years, 27 counties became 58 counties — one of which, Glenn County, was carved out of Colusa County in 1891 and named for my cousin, Hugh Glenn, the state’s largest farmer until his murder in 1883. All or parts of 12 new counties were formed by dividing up immense Mariposa County. The 58th, Imperial, was formed in 1907 from the eastern portion of San Diego County.

During the late 19th century and well into the 20th, California counties had a few relatively simple functions, such as rural law enforcement, road maintenance and maintaining property records. However, during the latter part of the 20th century, federal and state governments created an array of health and welfare programs and California opted to have counties manage them, rather than the state itself or cities, as some other states did.

Counties’ Evolving Roles

Counties became bifurcated as both agents of the state and providers of local services, and those roles were often in conflict because the former was inescapably mandated while the latter was more important to local voters and taxpayers.

The creation of more than 400 incorporated cities in the 1900s also complicated local governance. Cities diverted streams of property and sales tax revenues from counties and also tended to have concentrations of social ills — poverty, crime, drug addiction and homelessness — that county-managed health and welfare programs were supposed to address.

Thus, California’s counties and cities, particularly in highly urbanized regions, have often evolved into adversaries rather than partners in dealing with issues of high public and media visibility.

What happened last week in California’s most populous county and its largest city, both named Los Angeles, exemplifies the intergovernmental tensions. The catalyst, of course, is homelessness, which sits atop Californians’ list of issues.

LA City vs. County Feud

Read More: With Measure A, Los Angeles voters embrace a bigger response to homelessness

The state has spent more than $20 billion in recent years to deal with homelessness but the ranks of the unhoused have continued to climb and now approach 200,000, by far the largest population of any state both quantitatively and relatively. Gov. Gavin Newsom regularly accuses local governments of dragging their feet on creating effective programs to deal with it.

In Los Angeles, city and county officials have squabbled for decades over responsibility, and in the 1980s the city even sued the county. Thirty-two years ago, they agreed to form a joint agency, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, but the infighting never stopped. In recent years, it has become more intense.

For the last five years, federal Judge David O. Carter has presided over a lawsuit filed by the LA Alliance for Human Rights, demanding to know how the authority has spent homelessness funds. Carter has excoriated the agency for a lack of action and a lack of transparency, and it has also gone through two scathing audits.

Last week, the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to pull out of the joint agency and create its own department to deal with homelessness, spurning pleas from city officials, including Mayor Karen Bass. City and county officials are also squaring off over newly amended legislation, Senate Bill 16, that would require counties to provide more money to cities for homeless shelters.

Statewide Reform Needed

Homelessness is just one of the many issues that poison relations between city and county officials. The rational response would be a statewide reconfiguration of the responsibilities that recognizes 21st-century realities and reduces the friction.

It’s not likely to happen, so the rivalry will continue to fester.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

The post LA Feud Is Prime Example of Constant Clashes Between CA Cities and Counties appeared first on GV Wire.

LOS ANGELES — This spring homebuying season is shaping up to be more favorable for home shoppers than it’s been in recent years — as long as they can afford to buy.

Home prices are rising more slowly. Mortgage rates remain elevated, but have been mostly easing and could be headed lower if the U.S. economic outlook continues to darken over the Trump administration’s widespread tariffs, which have rattled financial markets and stoked fears of a recession.

Most importantly, the number of homes on the market is up sharply from a year ago.

While the inventory of homes for sale nationally is still low by historical standards, active listings — a tally that encompasses all homes on the market except those pending a finalized sale — surged 28.5% last month from a year earlier, according to data from Realtor.com. Listings jumped between 44% and 68% in many large metro areas, including San Diego, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Washington D.C.

Prices Dropping in Many Markets

As homes take longer to sell, prices have started dropping in many markets. The median listing price was down last month from a year earlier in most of the nation’s biggest 50 metro areas, including a more than 6% drop in Austin, Miami and Kansas City.

These trends should give prospective homebuyers more leverage as they negotiate with sellers this spring, though they are unlikely to be a game-changer for many aspiring homeowners priced out of the market after years of soaring prices.

“It’s a little hard to say that it’s a buyer’s market, but I’d call it a much more balanced market than it’s been in the last couple of years, where it’s really been a predominantly seller’s market,” said Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com.

Ryan Vasko and his wife, Whitney, recently navigated both sides of the housing market equation in their move from Oregon to Colorado.

In December, the couple sold their three-bedroom, one-bath house in Portland for $505,000. That was $10,000 below their list price, but still above the $500,000 minimum they hoped to get.

Listings Soar, Prices Fall in Metro Denver

At the same time, the couple searched for a home in the Denver metro area, which is among the markets that’s had the biggest increase in homes for sale this year. Active listings soared 67.3% in March from a year earlier. As listings jumped, the median listing price fell 5.6% to $585,000.

Last month, the Vaskos closed the deal on a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house in Littleton, Colorado, about 10 miles south of Denver, that had been on the market at least three weeks.

“We got under contract week one, we found out we were pregnant week two and we put an offer on this house week three,” said Vasko, 41, a creative director at an advertising agency.

The price: $680,000, or $5,000 above the list price. Still, the seller agreed to cover the cost of lowering the couple’s 6.9% mortgage rate for the first two years of the loan to 4.9% and 5.9%, respectively.

“It gives us a little wiggle room, if we need it,” said Vasko, noting that he’s hoping to eventually refinance to a lower fixed rate.

A Mixed Market

The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years. Easing mortgage rates and more homes on the market nationally helped drive sales higher in February from the previous month, though they were down year-over-year.

Last year, higher mortgage rates dampened the start of the spring homebuying season. This year, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage is down to 6.6% from just over 7% in mid-January, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac, although that’s still elevated relative to the 2-year low of about 6% it fell to in September.

Another plus for buyers: Lower prices. The median listing price fell in March from a year earlier in 32 of the 50 largest metro areas, including Kansas City, San Francisco, Miami and San Diego. Nationally, it was $424,900 last month, unchanged from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com.

The market shift may give home shoppers more leverage when sellers ask that buyers waive home inspections. Sellers may also be more willing to pay for closing costs, contribute cash to make repairs or make other concessions, real estate agents say.

“Pretty much every buyer is asking for concessions, unless they know that they are in a multiple offer situation,” said Afton Hartmann, a Redfin agent in Denver.

Such situations, although less common than a few years ago, still exist.

Gilad Hoffman, executive director at a synagogue, knew his home search was over when he spotted a four-bedroom, 2.5-bath house for sale in Escondido, 30 miles northeast of San Diego. He felt the home, listed by the estate of its late owner for $1.079 million, was “severely underpriced.”

Hoffman, 41, paid $13,000 above the asking price for the home in February as he fended off bids from three other prospective buyers — including one offering to pay all cash.

Elevated mortgage rates didn’t dissuade Hoffman. He accepted a 7% rate in exchange for a credit from his lender to put toward closing costs.

“My philosophy going into the whole thing was: get into something now that you can afford with these high interest rates,” Hoffman said. “Hopefully in two years, they’ll come down and then you can refinance. And that’s still my intention.”

Affordability and Uncertainty Are Still Hurdles

Despite some buyer-friendly trends, the housing market remains largely out of reach for many Americans, especially first-time buyers who don’t have home equity gains to put toward a new home. While home price growth has been slowing, the decline is negligible against the 47% gain in prices over the last five years.

And while home listings are up, many more are needed to return the market to more of a balance between buyers and sellers. Consider, there were 1.24 million unsold homes on the market at the end of February. While up 17% from a year earlier, that’s still about 44% below the 2.21 million monthly average going back to 1999, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

As of January, a household earning the median U.S. annual income of $79,223 would have to spend 47% of that to cover payments on a home at the median price of $390,333. That share of income matches the highest it has ever been on records going back to 2005, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. When the annual cost of homeownership exceeds 30% of the median U.S. household income, it’s considered unaffordable by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

If the decline in mortgage rates accelerates in coming months, that would boost homebuyers’ purchasing power.

Trade War’s Effect on Mortgage Rates

Economic forecasts generally have the average rate on a 30-year mortgage staying around 6.5% this year, but those forecasts may be outdated now.

A sharp downward move last week in the 10-year Treasury yield as bond investors reacted to rapidly escalating trade war between the U.S. and nations around the globe points to lower mortgage rates.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which banks use as a guide to pricing home loans, dropped to 4.01% Friday, its lowest level since October, as global trade tensions escalated.

Still, tariffs are typically inflationary, and the 10-year Treasury yield tends to rise on expectations of higher inflation. That could keep mortgage rates where they are, or nudge them higher.

If the trade war worries do pave the way for further mortgage rate drops, “those lower rates may be cold comfort to prospective buyers who are increasingly worried about job security and inflation,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS.

The post Signs of a More Buyer-Friendly Housing Market Emerge for Spring appeared first on GV Wire.

Re: “7 takeaways from our investigation into California homeless shelters”

For those who take a dim view of homeless shelters, I can only suggest they spend a night or two sleeping in alleys, under bridges or on freezing beaches, shivering and starving, with no bathroom facilities and predators of all kinds circling.

In the desperate journey of a homeless person, these shelters provide safety and the basic necessities of life. Since attaining housing is rightfully regarded by most as a pipedream, these shelters can also provide a sliver of hope to the hopeless.

In any decent shelter, a person is treated like a human being, often for the first time in many years. They suddenly have the dignity of running water, toilets, showers, food, mail, etc. If ever they might dare to hope again, that’s the time.

Depending on an individual’s personal history of trauma, sleeping near — very near — 100 suffering strangers can be a terrifying experience, but it’s better for some than freezing and starving and trying to sleep with one eye open. On the outside, some folks turn to drugs so that they can stay awake and vigilant throughout the entire night.

Sadly, some people cannot be convinced to try to sleep in a room full of strangers. They’ve been assaulted and lied to so many times that they have no belief in safety, even as a concept. Others simply can’t sleep through the night without screaming out, which disqualifies them from shelter living.

Are these folks “service resistant” or are they just suffering?

In order to grade the quality of a shelter, we have to throw out stats like rate-of-housing, because shelters have no part in creating housing opportunities. Their housing estimates rely on the projections provided by housing authorities, developers and contractors. When new housing units fail to become available, no one can move out of a shelter. That is a system failure, not a shelter failure.

I was provided with a pipeline to housing, and eventually attained it. If I hadn’t had a place to sleep safely, send and receive mail, and eat and shower and advocate for myself, and get help from case managers, I might not be housed even today, a couple years later. That’s how shelters are supposed to work.

About the Author

P. W. Robinson is an advocate and is formerly homeless. He lives in Ventura.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The post CA’s Homeless Shelters Aren’t for Everyone. That Doesn’t Mean They Don’t Work appeared first on GV Wire.