Every week, I watch Fresno families do the same painful math. They love their neighborhood, their schools, the friends who live three doors down. And every week, more of them conclude they simply cannot afford to stay. So they pack up and cross the San Joaquin River into Madera County, chasing the one thing Fresno is no longer producing in sufficient quantity: a home they can afford.

We should be honest about why this is happening. Fresno’s residential vacancy rate is among the lowest in the state, while home prices and rents have climbed sharply. In recent years our rent increases ranked among the ten highest in the nation, and the average home sale price jumped nearly 19 percent. The result is a city where 41.3 percent of households are cost-burdened, paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing, against a local median income of roughly $53,568. When demand far outpaces supply, prices rise. That is not ideology; it is arithmetic.

This is where the Southeast Development Area comes in, and why the Fresno Association of Realtors supports it. SEDA is forecast to deliver roughly 14,000 homes beginning in 2030, real supply, in a range of types and price points, inside Fresno’s own boundaries. For comparison, Madera County is planning for some 16,000 units. The question for our community is simple: do we want that growth, and the families and tax base that come with it, on our side of the river or theirs?

I want to be clear about something the supply debate often gets wrong. This is not infill versus growth. Demand exists in every planning area of our city. We need the downtown apartment and the corner duplex, and we need new neighborhoods on the southeast edge. Pitting one against the other only guarantees we build too little of both. SEDA calls for higher densities and a full spectrum of housing types, which means it can finally match what families actually want, a starter home, a townhome, a place near transit and jobs, with what is available to them.

Some neighbors worry that growth means sprawl, traffic, and lost farmland. Those are fair concerns, and the plan takes them seriously, with walkable communities, preserved agricultural land, and design that reduces car dependence. But we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the housed. A family priced out of Fresno today does not avoid a commute; they simply drive it from Madera instead. Building complete neighborhoods close to where people work is the climate-friendly choice, not the alternative to it.

I talk with first-time buyers and renters every day. They are not asking for a handout. They are asking for an option, a home they can actually afford in the community they already call home. Every unit we add eases pressure on the units that already exist. More supply is what brings rents and prices back within reach. There is no version of housing affordability that does not involve building more homes.

SEDA is not the whole answer. We will still need infill, smarter financing, and faster permitting. But it is a serious, sizable step, and it does something our families have been begging for: it keeps Fresno families in Fresno. Let’s stop exporting our neighbors across the river. Let’s match the homes we build to the neighborhoods our families want. Let’s build.

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Jason Farris is president of the Fresno Association of Realtors.