FRESNO, Calif (KSEE/KGPE) – Community leaders broke ground on new affordable apartments in southeast Fresno Friday.

“It’s an opportunity,” Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said. “It’s an opportunity for stability for families and an opportunity for people just to say ‘we have a home.’”

Dyer says the city has been in a housing crisis since 2021, with demand far exceeding supply.

One of the groups hit hardest is the farmworker community.

“We produce about $8 billion a year annually in crops, and behind those numbers are people,” Dyer said.

Integrated Community Development partnered with the city of Fresno to address the housing crisis for farmworkers.

They are building 54 units on East Ventura Avenue.

“For many years, this property has remained an empty lot, along with some of our southeast Fresno’s most important corridors,” District 5 city council member Brandon Vang said.

So they are turning that empty lot into a modern apartment complex.

This phase of the project will cost $40 million, with $5 million coming from the city’s Housing Trust Fund.

“As I was driving down Ventura Avenue and I saw the American flags, it really symbolized to me this is what America is about: providing opportunity for immigrants, providing opportunities for people to bring their families here, to be able to raise their families, to get them educated so that they too can go on and become prosperous,” Dyer said.

Dyer says he’s excited to see the walls go up, but he’s more excited about what will happen within the walls: farmworkers feeling safe and secure, putting down roots in the city of Fresno.

“When they’re embracing the 105-110 degree temperatures here in the valley, they need a place to come home to that they can say is home, and it is stable,” Dyer said.

Developers plan to have the 54 units ready to go by the end of 2027.