{"id":214185,"date":"2026-03-11T03:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T03:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/214185\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T03:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T03:03:10","slug":"will-clovis-required-affordable-housing-rules-raise-home-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/214185\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Clovis\u2019 required affordable housing rules raise home prices?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city of Clovis is on its way to approving<\/a> a local law that could require developers to set aside at least 5% of the units in new residential projects as affordable housing \u2014 unless they pay a fee, provide land or choose another way to help affordable housing get built.<\/p>\n

Clovis doesn\u2019t have much say in the matter. It agreed to implement<\/a> its pending Mixed-Income Housing Ordinance<\/a>, or MIZO ordinance, after two court rulings found the city violated affordable housing requirements mandated by the state.<\/p>\n

Whether through fees or selling units at below-market-rate prices, developers say the ordinance will increase their own costs and, by extension, the price of market-rate housing in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome builders are able to absorb certain fees in order to qualify a buyer in certain instances,\u201d Darren Rose, president of the Building Industry Association<\/a> of Fresno\/Madera Counties, told The Fresno Bee. \u201cBut in a case such as the MIZO ordinance, no, it\u2019s simply going to get passed on to the home buyer.\u201d<\/p>\n

California cities and counties have for years used such ordinances, widely known as inclusionary housing ordinances, to increase production of affordable units \u2014 especially in the Bay Area and Southern California. The impacts have \u201cvaried widely,\u201d said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley\u2019s Terner Center for Housing Innovation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He told The Bee the results depend on how the ordinances are structured, and how much they are balanced with incentives that offset the increased costs to developers.<\/p>\n

The city has said that because it\u2019s a new policy, several unknowns remain. Staff are prepared to monitor its impact and \u201crespond to any impediments which may arise to the development of new housing units,\u201d Chad McCollum, the city\u2019s director of Economic Development, Housing and Communication said in a statement to The Bee.<\/p>\n

Clovis\u2019 ordinance would require new developments of 11 or more units to make at least 5% of the units affordable. It\u2019s based on a city study from last year<\/a> that found a requirement of up to 7% is feasible on for-sale projects. Under current market conditions, rental projects are not feasible in Clovis with or without affordability requirements, the study found.<\/p>\n

The proposed ordinance is one of six concessions related to affordable housing, zoning and development Clovis agreed to in a 2024 settlement agreement<\/a>. The deal followed a 2019 lawsuit from Fresno-area housing advocate Dez Martinez, who accused the city of zoning practices that discriminated against low-income people and people of color. A Fresno County court in 2021 found the city had violated state law by not providing enough sites for affordable housing and, after the city appealed the decision, three appeals court judges in 2023 ruled the same<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s planning commission OK\u2019d the proposed ordinance in late February, and the city council is expected to review it in April.<\/p>\n

\"A A study commissioned by the city of Clovis last year looked examined the level of affordable housing requirements that would be feasible in Clovis. CITY OF CLOVIS Fresno\/Madera builders says ordinance will increase costs<\/p>\n

Rose, of the Building Industry Association, said the fees developers pay because of ordinances, like the one proposed in Clovis, add onto building costs that are already high.<\/p>\n

He said most residential development firms don\u2019t have the profit margins to justify absorbing those extra costs. He added if a project doesn\u2019t pencil out financially in a given area, developers will not be able to obtain the lending necessary to build.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn capitalism, they\u2019re going to deploy their capital where it makes the most sense,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you tax them and impact fee them into oblivion, they\u2019re just not going to build in a certain locality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rose said a starting point for building more affordable housing in the Fresno area is to reduce the cost of building so more home production can increase. In California, fees and regulations create \u201cmany different headwinds facing a builder,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more supply that we build, it keeps homes more affordable,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to produce a lot more homes in the future, and because of cost, it\u2019s kind of hard to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The The affordable housing ordinance feasibility study commissioned by the city of Clovis last year also examined how much the fees developers could pay instead of building affordable housing would add to their overall city fee stack. CITY OF CLOVIS Is Clovis\u2019 proposed affordable housing ordinance balanced?<\/p>\n

Garcia, of UC Berkeley\u2019s Terner Center, said it\u2019s possible for affordable housing ordinances to achieve their targets, which is the inclusion of affordable units in new market-rate communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge is that a lot of cities don\u2019t go through that exercise of determining what the right balance is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Garcia said some California cities have seen all new development slow down because their ordinances required too high of a percentage of new units be affordable. He said the 5% requirement in Clovis\u2019 proposed ordinance is \u201cfairly low in terms of what other cities do, though it may not be for the Central Valley.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of building the affordable housing, developers in Clovis would be allowed to pay $2.80 per square foot of residential floor area in each market-rate unit they build. They could also build the affordable units on land they own elsewhere in the city or donate land for affordable housing, among other alternative compliance strategies.<\/p>\n

The city says the goal of its various compliance options is to provide developers \u201cthe maximum amount of flexibility allowed by the court judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Garcia said cities also should balance affordability requirements with incentives, so developers can \u201cdeal with the extra costs.\u201d That means reducing certain fees or waiving some requirements for builders who voluntarily choose to include affordable units in a project, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose end up being really successful because they are considerate of how the market for housing works,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Fresno Bee<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Erik Galicia<\/a><\/p>\n

The Fresno Bee<\/p>\n

Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea\u2019s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert. Erik\u2019s work is supported through the California Local News Fellowship program.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Clovis is on its way to approving a local law that could require developers to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[98265,98262,112,114,113,98264,98263,91462],"class_list":["post-214185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-central-valley-development","tag-clovis-affordable-housing","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-housing-fees","tag-inclusionary-housing-ordinance","tag-mixed-income-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}