This story was originally published by Fresnoland.
It’s been a little over six months since Fresno’s city and county leaders passed anti-encampment ordinances to tackle the rise of homeless campsites. The move was largely seen as a win for local homeowners, small businesses and schools — all of whom leaders say comprised a silent majority of constituents who were at their wits’ end.
That group has remained largely silent, as some fear getting their names published will lead to facing criticism from residents who oppose the ordinance. Local hearings for the “sit, lie, sleep” ordinance drew dozens of angry residents and advocates, who denounced the new laws, arguing that the government had essentially criminalized homelessness.
For the members of that “silent” group who feel comfortable speaking, however, they tell Fresnoland that the ordinance has been nothing short of a win.
Ed Noriego, 61, runs the Valley Remnants & Rolls flooring business in Manchester on the city’s Blackstone corridor. Does Noriego think that the law is working?
“On my end, yes,” Noriego said. “For the community at large, I’m not so sure.”
Noriego is an LA-native-turned-Fresnan, and has been living in the Central Valley for over 20 years. Working in floor covering since he was 12, he said he first started work at his grandfather’s store in Southern California.
He eventually purchased equity in VRR about 10 years ago before buying out the company three years ago. The decision, he said, was spurred by his daughter enrolling in UC Davis. She’ll graduate with her tuition paid for, largely, he said, because of that decision.
Noriego said that, before Fresno’s anti-camping law passed, encampments growing near his neighborhood made it hard to run his business. Glass walls adorn his store and, he said, every single one of them has had to be replaced due to property damage from members of the unhoused community — a repair he said costs him about $5,000 each time.
When the windows weren’t broken, he said he could look right through and see drug deals, and trash littered across the building. He said he’d also been threatened by the unhoused. Though Noriego tried to stomach the issues, he said he reached a breaking point once it started to hurt his business and his employees.
“How would you like to hire someone and tell them that their job this morning is to go pick up all the feces in front of the store?” Noriego said. “No fun, man.”
He thought about moving. VRR used to operate by McKinley, and he contemplated continuing to move up north, perhaps even toward neighboring Clovis. He brought his issues to city leaders, who he said were receptive to his concerns.
“We drop thousands of dollars in sales tax monthly, that’s not going to happen if I close down or move to Clovis – where they don’t have this big of an issue like we do,” he recalled telling them.
When the city introduced the ordinance last summer, Noriego joined the news conference, showing his support for the new law. About six months later, he said, the new law is working for him and the changes are like “night and day.”
“I don’t have people camped out here in the morning. I can go days without cleaning up,” Noriego said. “It’s amazing the amount of trash two or three encampments can produce in an evening. My old routine was I come in in the morning, and I’d walk the perimeter and pick up trash, beer bottles, syringes, drug baggies, feces, tampons … the whole nine yards.”
Still, Noriego said his decisions leave him morally uneasy. He said he’s faced little criticism after publicly supporting the ordinance, but Noriego, like many business owners, tends to be his own biggest critic.
“To be honest with you, asking homeless people to leave at all is morally difficult for me. Jesus and the stranger, the whole thing…I mean, I believe that stuff, so it’s difficult,” Noriego said. “But like I told one homeless group, I said, listen, I don’t want to be homeless. I don’t want my employees homeless. I need to run a business. You’ve got to go. It’s rough … it’s a really sad, sad situation.”
“It’s easier to be merciful or compassionate when you have no skin in the game, right? When it’s not affecting you,” Noriego later added. “But the truth is, it does affect us. I mean, you’re gonna pay more for things. If I move to north Fresno, my rent doubles, then what are my prices going to do? I mean, so everything affects us one way or another.”
Fresnoland reached out to multiple small business owners, public school staff, and homeowners for this story. Many said they felt similarly conflicted about the law — they’re relieved it’s helping their businesses, but feel conflicted about the way the law punishes the unhoused. But most, however, ultimately declined to be interviewed on the record out of concern over criticism or retaliation from unhoused advocates.
Morgan Doizaki, 44, is also an LA-native-turned-Fresnan. He moved to help with the Central Fish Company grocery store and restaurant in Chinatown — a family-business started by his great uncle. The business has been in his family for as long as he can remember; he can recall his first memories when he would make trips to Fresno from L.A. when he was kid.
Like Noriego, Doizaki believes the ordinance has been a success. He said he was happy months ago when he first heard that these laws might pass. Doizaki said homeless camps have been a problem for Chinatown for as long as he can remember.
He said, before Fresno’s anti-camping, there was not much in the way of help for small businesses like his, which reside in a part of the city where homelessness tends to be most concentrated.
“At a certain point, you just accept it,” Doizaki said.
He believes change was spurred mostly by the problem growing to a size that could no longer be ignored.
“When the homeless population just exploded and started going into north Fresno, and saw all the NIMBY people noticed it was hitting areas where they weren’t used to seeing it,” Doizaki said. “They finally got a dose of what normal is to me. It’s always been a problem here in ground zero, in Chinatown, but I guess in order for something to happen, it has to go to areas where they weren’t used to it.”
‘It’s getting ugly out here’
The change can be felt by more than just business owners.
Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias oversees most of southwest Fresno where, he says, the highest concentration of the city’s homeless can be found. Since the ordinance passed last year, Arias said calls to the city have only increased. He said he believes it’s in large part due to residents realizing they now have a new tool in their toolbox to handle these issues.
“And they’ve consistently stayed high because people see that we’re actually cleaning them up,” Arias said.
Councilmembers said during the hearing for the ordinance that they’d be open to future amendments and progress reports to track enforcement. Arias said they’ve had discussions on holding workshops similar to one held last month for the Eviction Protection Program.
However, Arias has shared some data on ordinance enforcement in his district with his constituents during his string of budget town hall meetings.
In 2024, a total of 6,966 individuals were contacted as a result of ordinance enforcement, with 254 people arrested, according to the presentation he shared with his constituents.
The data also shows that 396 individuals contacted, or about 6%, have accepted services. Services are largely subject to availability.
When asked if these numbers could prove whether the ordinance can be considered a success, Arias said he views ordinance enforcement similar to policing — a never-ending battle.
“Let me frame it this way,” Arias said, “when you have gang activity, what do you do? You show up, you provide enforcement, you disrupt the level of gang activity, the level of drug trade … and then people stop for a bit, and it may move to another neighborhood, and then you gotta address that neighborhood … That is the nature of enforcement.”
Arias also believes the “aggressive” steps the city have taken have helped put them “in a trajectory to avoid becoming and replicating the mistakes in San Francisco.”
Arias added that he already has ideas for ordinance amendments, particularly in enforcement — which is largely done by the city’s Homeless Assistance Response Team, or HART.
“I fundamentally believe that every policing district and every police officer should actually be doing this, not just a specialty team,” Arias said. “It’s unconscionable for me to see a police car drive by, actively watch people doing drugs on the street corner, and say, ‘That’s not my job. That’s HART’s job.’”
But while the city’s business owners have largely been pleased with the end results, for Fresno’s unhoused residents and their advocates, the law remains a neverending nightmare, relentlessly forcing them to move along — unwelcome anywhere in their own city.
Fresno city leaders have never answered the question: Where are the region’s roughly 4,000 unhoused residents supposed to go in a community that has fewer than 1,000 beds available?
Fresno-based advocate, and former homeless resident Dez Martinez said that the city’s crackdown has fueled desperation and frustration amongst many of the people she knows. She worries things are just getting worse.
“People are taking care of themselves a lot less, and they’re getting more angry,” Martinez said. “People have to hustle a lot differently than they did before. People are not taking care of each other because you’ve got to take care of yourself. It’s getting ugly out here.”
Martinez also said that, for a large portion of the region’s remaining unhoused community, there are no viable options to escape ordinance enforcement. She said for homeless residents who don’t suffer from substance abuse or mental health disorders, the only recourse tends to be shelters — which are largely temporary solutions to homelessness.
While she acknowledges the city’s efforts in clearing encampments, Martinez said she hopes people do not confuse that for an absence of homeless people in their community.
“Just because you don’t see the trash doesn’t mean we’re not there,” Martinez said. “Now we just have a jacket on and we’re just walking around going, ‘What do I do?’”
Where does Fresno’s anti-camping law go from here?
Last week, the case against Wickey Two Hands was dismissed on technical grounds. The trial would have involved the first homeless man, Two Hands, fighting the ordinance on legal grounds.
The Fresno City Attorney’s office, the prosecuting team, still has a chance to appeal the judge’s ruling. Even if this case passes them by, however, another trial could come in the future, as the ordinance still exists with no signs of repeal in sight.
Attorney Kevin Little, who represented Two Hands during the trial said after the case was dismissed, “if the city is never going to actually seek to take these cases to trial, then that just begs the question: Why do we have this stupid ordinance in the first place?”
The region has not seen an updated homeless count in nearly two years, but they’ll get an updated number following the release of this year’s Point-in-Time Count — a federally mandated practice used to count a local homeless population.
“There is a level of decency that we must treat (the homeless) with, but we must also not give up on them so much that we refuse to have any expectations for them as a fellow human being,” Arias said. “I think too many people have confused helping with enabling somebody to continue in a downward trajectory.”
Fresno’s anti-camping may also hit another roadblock through state intervention. The California legislature is currently set to introduce SB634 – a state bill that, if passed, could essentially void the city’s anti-camping law.
The bill, authored by Democratic state Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, would stop local jurisdictions from adopting or enforcing local ordinances that “imposes civil or criminal penalties on a person who is homeless for any act immediately related to homelessness or any act related to basic survival, or on a person who is assisting a person who is homeless with any act related to basic survival.”
The bill is scheduled to be heard later this month. Should the proposed law gain enough traction to pass, jurisdictions like Fresno may be forced to go back to square one, and businesses may be asked to navigate the challenges they once thought were left in the past.