Elected officials and community development experts gather for a news conference Nov. 1 near Ashlan and Hayes avenues in West Fresno to announce funding for the No Place Like Home Initiative, which has helped fund consumer financial training and other measures. Photo by Edward Smith

The idea of 1,000 new homes coming to Southwest Fresno keeps Allysunn Walker up at night.

“That is not a small thing, that is huge,” said Walker, who is the president and CEO of Southwest Fresno Development Corp., a non-profit that teaches financial literacy. Those numbers could attract amenities long sought for residents of the area — grocery stores, pharmacies and shopping centers with enough of a surrounding population to support small business owners.

“It’s not just the home-ownership piece. My hope is that this proceeds commercial development,” Walker said.

The opportunity new housing presents for the area could be transformative, giving chronic renters the chance to own a home. But given the current housing market, the window to capture the opportunity is small.

The area west of Highway 99 and south of Highway 180 has been left behind as urban sprawl moved northward, said Walker.

Only in the last few years have developers set their eyes on the area for significant levels of residential development.

Going back generations, many residents in the area have never owned a home, nor have any of their family members, Walker said. That was one of the reasons back in 2012 that Walker — along with former Fresno City Councilman Oliver Baines and Paul Binion, pastor of Westside Church of God — started the development corporation.

The first significant arrival of entry-level homes in the next couple years could be a boon for the community, says Walker. But with severe housing shortages and elevated prices, demand for those homes is expected to be highly competitive. Walker says investors are already looking into the area because of the price points circulating for some of the subdivisions.

“It keeps me up at night when I think about the opportunity that could pass this community by,” Walker said. “It really hurts to think about that.”

So Walker, along with her staff and two dozen volunteer experts, are working to make sure at least some of the families are ready when the homes become available for purchase.

If she can get 50 families from the area qualified to apply when the time comes, she would consider it a success.

“My hope is that — and I don’t know how we do this other than getting people ready to buy — is that the developers will also say they will give preference to or that they will set aside homes for people who live in this community,” Walker said.

Courses at the development corporation range from debt management to budgeting and investing. They have about two dozen volunteers including bankers, mortgage lenders, escrow officers, counselors and Realtors. Courses are done over Zoom, but the organization operates out of Westside Church of God.

Mitchell Shaw, a Realtor with Keller Williams, was urged to volunteer by Binion, his pastor, because of his background in real estate.

He started out volunteering on a Saturday, teaching a class on credit. That Saturday turned into another Saturday until it became a regular thing, he said.

“So many people just felt like that was something so far above their head,” Shaw said. “And really it wasn’t so much as teaching people, it was guiding them to the place where they could access the information to confirm what was being shared with them.”

His goal is “demystify” credit, interest rates and applying for a home. Once a person understands the concepts, they can make financing fit their family situation.

Once at the church, Shaw was talking with a woman about how she was using credit to her advantage. He didn’t recognize her as one of his students until she began referencing the curriculum they use.

“That was probably one of the most rewarding things,” Shaw said.

Shaw says a lot of people in the area come from generations of renters and don’t have a history understanding the benefits of home ownership. There is a lot of mistrust that goes through the community.

“The idea of 1,000 homes going in might be received and understood by some groups, but not others,” Shaw said. “We have to get to a point to understand that there’s a mistrust in communities. That’s a very real thing.”

Most of the budget for the organization comes from bank grants via the Community Redevelopment Act, which the federal government passed in the 1980s in response to decades of redlining, or the discriminatory practice of keeping people from living in certain areas based on their race.

The Fresno City Council granted the organization $1 million as part of its No Place Like Home Initiative, sponsored by Miguel Arias, Esmeralda Soria and Luis Chavez. Arias is the councilmember for the district. The organization is still building the proposal for how to use the funds, said Walker.

Their first choice would be to use the money to refurbish the former Bank of America building at F and Fresno streets. Bank of America shut down the branch and it has since become an eyesore. Walker reached out to the bank to see if they would deed it to her, but so far they have not shown a willingness to do so.

Walker said with the money, they could refurbish it. They would then share the space with the Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce, which recently put a number of people through their Betting Big on Small Black Business program. The building would provide a space for the entrepreneurs.

Walker said she’s not sure if they are in the business of buying the property if the bank offered to sell it to them. Housing is on Walker’s mind. The other plan they have for the money is to buy two or three homes themselves, renting them out to students with the chance to the buy at the same price the organization did once the family has saved enough.

Walker says as the family pays off the mortgage and the down payment, that money can be cycled to purchase more housing and continue the process. “Even though it is a diminishing financial return, it’s an appreciating community return,” Walker said.

The problem is how competitive offers for these new homes are going to be. One of the more significant developments is the Oasis Master Plan being developed by Fagundes Dairy at Marks Avenue and Highway 180. The plan is to bring 599 homes in medium and medium-low density over the next 10 years. Housing prices would start in the high $200,000s, according to the Fresno Bee. The median housing price for the 93706 area code goes for $245,000, according to data provided by Steve Flach, sales manager for Guarantee Real Estate.

At that price, housing will be very competitive, Walker said. “If investors come in and buy all these properties, they extract all the equity that could be built for families that live and love and work and worship in that community,” Walker said. “I just want to give people a chance. How do we give people a chance?”

A real estate investor herself, Walker says she understands that this is how the market works.

Her worry is that the area would become rife with absentee landlords, such as the Lowell District near Downtown Fresno.

She is reaching out to developers to see if a portion of homes can be set aside for residents of the area. In the meantime, she plans to get families ready for the first new homes in decades.

“Now we have these 1,000 homes in this one community that has been economically, socio-economically just pulverized by policies over the last five decades,” Walker said. “How do we change that? Well, this is the beginning.”