How the homelessness crisis hit one of California’s most affordable cities

theguardian.com:

Jesus Ramirez has spent years searching for housing he can afford in Fresno, California. He jokes that he’ll remain on the streets until he’s old enough for a retirement home.

For the last two years, the 47-year-old spent most nights sleeping in front of closed businesses in the heart of California’s Central Valley. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he receives $950 a month in government assistance, but he hasn’t been able to find a place in his budget in Fresno, which had the greatest rent increases of any US city last year.

“I’ve tried,” he said. “But at this point if I haven’t found one of those apartments where it’s based off your income and your mental health, chances are I’m not going to find one.”

Ramirez lost his housing at a time when California’s homeless population surged dramatically amid the pandemic, prompting the state to invest billions in housing and related services to address the longstanding crisis. Fresno, the state’s fifth-largest city and one of its most affordable, saw a substantial rise; the number of unhoused people climbed from 1,486 individuals in 2019 to an estimated 4,239 in 2021, according to city data that both officials and advocates acknowledge is likely an undercount.

Local officials had once considered Fresno a success story – by its own count the city managed to reduce homelessness by nearly 60% between 2011 and 2017, the largest decrease anywhere on the west coast – but numbers started climbing again even before the pandemic. In 2019, Fresno had a higher rate of people living on the streets than any other major city in the US.

Now as rents continue to rise, pushing Fresno’s poorest residents into substandard housing or forcing them to leave the area entirely, homelessness in the city has