The Fresno City Council unanimously approved a new plan for the neighborhoods west of the 99 highway on Thursday in a move proponents believe will pave the way for benefits like more walkable neighborhoods while combatting the food and other resource deserts plaguing the west area. Going into Thursday’s meeting, not all councilmembers were fully on board, disheartening some residents who had awaited the new land use plan’s approval for seven years.

The Fresno City Council on Thursday voted 4-2 to approve a market-rate housing project in northwest Fresno – a year after they rejected the same proposal, prompting a legal battle the city lost quickly. The proposed apartment complex consists of three three-story buildings and one four-story building of 82-unit market-rate apartments. It will be on the northeast corner of West Herndon and North Prospect Avenues, neighboring Orchard Park and H.

Years of back-and-forth struggles between the residents of a local mobile home park and its property owner seem to be over following a financial award from the state. California housing officials awarded the City of Fresno about $5 million on Thursday toward the acquisition and preservation of La Hacienda Mobile Home Park. The money comes as part of a new mental health and housing initiative, and ends years of legal battles between the park’s owners and tenants.

For the first time, Arte Américas welcomed participants from diverse backgrounds to join the Mexican tradition of honoring loved ones through this year’s Día de los Muertos ofrendas.

When Dayana migrated to the United States from Perú in 2022, her main goal was to finish her education. Dayana’s family was split apart – her older brother and mother stayed in Perú. Meanwhile she and her father, Roberto, left to seek out better economic opportunities and safer living conditions. They declined to share their last name for publication in fear of deportation.

The Fresno City Council will weigh on Thursday whether to support a new plan for the growing neighborhoods west of the 99 highway, a policy seven years in the making. Supporters of the new land use roadmap, known as the West Area Neighborhoods Specific Plan, hope it will lay the groundwork for future development that they say is better tailored to the community’s needs.

Years of inaction by the US Forest Service station near Fresno put one of the agency’s last stands of old growth forests in California on the brink of disaster. And then lightning struck. For six years, scores of scientists pressured the US Forest Service in backroom meetings to complete a prescribed burn on the Teakettle Experimental Forest, an ancient grove in the Sierra National Forest near Fresno which was widely feared to be ripe for gutting by a wicked blaze if wildfire struck.

After advocates noted that there had been no indication of whether Gov. Gavin Newsom would sign the bill as of last week, he vetoed it late Monday.

Residents of south Fresno and environmental advocates are urging the Fresno City Council to reject a project that would relocate an industrial facility closer to an elementary school. If that sounds like a familiar story, that’s because it is. This is only the latest in a decades-long fight over land use in the south central part of Fresno. These battles regularly pit the city’s industrial and business interests against environmental activists and residents fighting against the…

RH Community Builders, a Fresno-based service provider, will continue managing a recuperative care facility for the homeless on the city’s Blackstone corridor following an abrupt announcement earlier this week that the site was set to shut down. The facility on 4080 N. Blackstone Ave. in a former Motel 6 just north of Ashlan Avenue sheltered around 250 people recently discharged from a hospital, but were deemed to sick to return to the streets.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sunday to sign or veto California’s first law acknowledging transnational repression as a threat, requiring the state to develop training to help law enforcement recognize and respond to it. Advocates told Fresnoland that there’s been no word on whether Newsom plans to sign the bill. In an emailed statement to Fresnoland, Graham West, managing director of policy and communications for the…

After an audio recording of Fresno State professor Barri Brennan commenting on Charlie Kirk’s death went viral, the incident has sparked many questions about free speech and privacy within the university. The controversy also reflects a broader national debate over academic freedom and the free speech rights of faculty. In the recording, Brennan is asked by a student if she had heard about Kirk’s shooting before his death was officially confirmed.

Overall, schools in Fresno County saw their test scores head in the right direction, but the area’s largest district still remains behind the curve. The 2024-25 results from the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) were released on Thursday and show the number of students in Fresno County who met or exceeded state standards reached 46.44% for English Language Arts and 34.09% in math, increases of +2.14% and +1.91%, respectively.

A homeless shelter along Fresno’s Blackstone corridor abruptly announced on Tuesday that it would shut down operations, leaving city leaders scrambling to find answers for the 250 or so people suddenly facing the possibility of returning to the streets. Residents remained housed Wednesday at the Soul Housing homeless shelter – formerly a Motel 6 – on Blackstone, north of Ashlan Avenue, but it wasn’t immediately clear how long they might get to remain.

Posterboards covered in statistics and infographics populated a packed Valdez Hall inside the Fresno Convention Center on Tuesday. The displays informed attendees about the progress a local coalition of residents and organizations say they have achieved in trying to bridge equity gaps in the Central Valley. The pageantry was brought on by Fresno DRIVE, a coalition of local leaders who hosted a celebration marking their fifth year of progress.

This week on Fresnolandia, Danielle and Jordan speak with Rob Parsons, Senior Editor, for a wide-ranging news roundup on the biggest issues shaping Fresno and the Central Valley. From the fierce debate over Proposition 50 and its implications for redistricting, to the chilling rise in ICE activity locally. They also dig into Fresno’s cooling housing market, the challenges of building affordability in a changing economy, and the community effort to preserve West Fresno’s overlooked history through a public art project.

Advocates say Fresno and Clovis are confronting a widespread clergy sexual abuse crisis that extends beyond the Catholic Church to other denominations that mishandle reports.

Almost 185,000 lower-income San Joaquin Valley residents – and nearly 2 million statewide – who purchase health insurance through Covered California will see their monthly premiums skyrocket in January after Congress failed to reach agreement on extending “enhanced tax credits” that subsidize a large share of the cost. The result is that thousands of families likely won’t be able to afford health coverage and will join the ranks of the uninsured, said Jessica Altman, Covered California’s executive director.

When Fresno County voters receive their ballots this week, they'll face a single question with sweeping consequences: Should California abandon its independent redistricting system for the rest of the decade to counter Republican gerrymandering in other states? Prop. 50, the Election Rigging Response Act, would temporarily replace California's citizen-drawn congressional districts with Democrat-designed boundaries through 2030, potentially flipping five of the nine Republican-controlled seats in California blue.

As a kid, Ronda Kelley remembers seeing Napoleon riding around West Fresno. Not the pillaging French emperor, but a much more welcome visitor to her side of town in the ’70s. In West Fresno, Napoleon sold fruits and vegetables out of his truck when there weren’t any grocery stores you could get to without having to “hop the freeway,” she said.

Local immigrant rights advocates are sounding the alarm on immigration authorities arresting undocumented people outside courtrooms in Fresno and Madera. Just last week, an undocumented person was arrested by immigration authorities after reporting to a court hearing in Fresno, said Sarait Martinez, the executive director of Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oxaqueño. The same happened last week outside a courtroom in Madera, Martinez added.

During the COVID-19 boom, Fresno realtor Jeff Zimmerman had a routine customer: a techie from the Bay Area. With a remote, salaried job in hand, they would often come to Zimmerman to trade in their newfound flexibility for a Fresno classic: three beds and two baths. "It was like the housing market on crack," said Zimmerman. "They moved from renting out a two bedroom townhome in the Bay to buying a really large, 3,800 square-foot home near Buchanan."

On this week's Fresnolandia Podcast, we shared the recording from Fresnoland's September 25 live event at Tioga Sequoia Brewing downtown on what Fresno can learn from LA's massive public transit expansion over the last decade. You'll hear Danielle moderate a conversation with former LA Mayor and current candidate for California governor Antonio Villaraigosa, who successfully championed Measure R in 2008, which helped kickstart a new generation of light rail lines across LA County; Denny Zane, the founder of MoveLA and a former Santa Monica mayor and city councilmember; and, Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias. Spotify | Apple Podcasts Further Reading Fresnoland brings leaders together to discuss the city’s transportation future

The City of Fresno’s 2026 election season may have informally kicked off, as one of the soon-to-be-vacant city council districts held an election forum Monday. The Black American Political Association of Fresno held a candidate forum for the city's District Three election, the southwest Fresno council seat. The event was held at the Westside Church of God on West Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

A group of local and statewide poverty-fighting organizations want Fresno to reimagine how it does its banking. Fresno, which ranked ninety-seventh out of 100 in small business lending in a national study just over a year ago, lags behind the rest of the country in providing its residents access to capital. Some proponents believe a model relatively new to American soil (