CityLab Daily: A Different Kind of Housing Crisis

Hard bargain: By California standards, housing costs have been a relative bargain in Fresno, the poorest major city in the Golden State. Arising from the sea of agriculture that is the San Joaquin Valley, Fresno often feels like a giant farm town, free from the tech boom and oceanfront development that make the Bay Area unaffordable. But even with those relatively low prices, a large portion of Fresno’s population has had trouble making ends meet. Nearly 60 percent of renter households in Fresno County are “rent-burdened,” spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

Now as Fresno’s economy grows, it has become a welcome market to those fleeing higher housing costs elsewhere—and it’s exacerbating housing costs for those who have been there all along. What may seem like a good deal for those with higher paychecks is a burgeoning crisis for longtime residents. CityLab’s Laura Bliss went to Fresno to speak with the people hit by another side of California’s affordability challenge: California’s Poorest Big City Faces A Different Kind of Housing Crisis