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This story was originally published by Fresnoland, a nonprofit news organization.

Dillon Savory is the executive director of the Central Labor Council, which represents 50 unions and 105,000 workers in Fresno, Madera, Tulare, and Kings counties.

In an interview with Fresnoland last week, Savory said that he opposed SEDA, the city of Fresno’s proposed 45,000 home mega-development in southeast Fresno. 

Fresnoland sat down with Savory to talk about why the Central Labor Council opposes a project that is ostensibly in the wheelhouse of the labor movement: building things. In the interview, Savory spoke about the limitations of the city’s strategy to use suburban sprawl as a jobs and housing program.

This interview was conducted by Fresnoland’s Gregory Weaver. It was condensed and edited for clarity.

What’s the problem with SEDA, from labor’s perspective?

There are so many problems. Really every citizen — not just members of labor unions — should be concerned about SEDA. And the more I dive into it, the more I find that other groups, on different policy issues, have problems with it as well. SEDA’s just poorly planned. It’s a giveaway of money that is unnecessary.

What the city is planning to do is give millions of dollars to the developers to help a smaller pocket of people move out of the city, instead of helping fund what we could be doing in downtown, which is leverage state and federal funds to build tall housing complexes and develop jobs, break open old streets, redo the sewer lines, all of the things that the city desperately needs to do. 

From a labor perspective: this is about the city continuing to finance plans that put taxpayers in debt for decades and not finance other projects that would be more beneficial to homeowners and low-income families who need housing most. 

Note: the city does not currently have a plan for how to pay for SEDA’s $600+ million infrastructure.

SEDA is not helping to get anybody that’s in poverty into an affordable house, which would then address the biggest issues in Fresno: rent affordability and homelessness. And most of all: it’s not really money that multiplies. SEDA will have a hard time leveraging state funds or federal funds, because it’s private sprawl development. 

The city leaders are trying to invest in something that all their successors are going to have to deal with for many, many years. But none of the current staff or elected officials are going to be there at the completion of this project. SEDA is going to require the city to put up an estimated $600+ million on infrastructure to connect streets, sewage and utilities to the new developments, but that infrastructure, that money, is not helping to sustain any living wage jobs after we connect to the sprawl development.

So basically, we’re throwing a massive chunk of money at the developers for them to create fancy new homes for people that already probably have pretty good homes. That doesn’t do anything for real, systemic problems in Fresno that every single resident tells every single elected official we need to solve, which is better jobs, affordable housing, homelessness, and safe neighborhoods.

Will building SEDA use a large portion of union labor? And under the major developers, what wages would union and non-union workers make?