Westlands gives land for housing in Mendota
270 homes on 40 acres planned for low-income families.
MENDOTA — The Westlands Water District will donate 65 acres of fallowed land to Self-Help Enterprises for a housing development project for low-income families in this agricultural community.
"This is a big boost for an overpopulated area that needs low-income housing," Fresno County Supervisor Phil Larson said. "A lot of people are living in garages here."
Larson on Friday announced plans for the 270-home project at Mendota City Hall.
The houses will be built on about 40 acres, while 15 acres will be donated to Mendota Unified School District for a school.
A 10-acre ponding basin and park also will be part of the project, said Thomas J. Collishaw, vice president and director of development for Self-Help Enterprises.
Self-Help is a nonprofit housing and community development organization that helps farmworkers and low-income families in the central San Joaquin Valley.
The project is next to an earlier Self-Help 75-unit housing development northwest of Belmont and Derrick avenues.
Construction of the $40 million project, which will be developed in three to five phases of about 50 houses each over the next 10 years, likely will begin in 2007, Collishaw said.
The houses are reserved for low-income families. For example, a family of four that earns less than $36,000 a year — which is about 80% of the county's median income — would be eligible to buy a house, Collishaw said.
"Some of the families we are working with earn $20,000 a year," he said.
The development is part of Westlands Water District's land-retirement plan, under which almost 200,000 acres of irrigated farmland is being retired, after severe drainage and water supply problems.
This also left several farm- workers without homes, since they had to be relocated.
"If you walk around Mendota, you will see the desperate need for good-quality, low-income housing," said Thomas W. Birmingham, general manager of the water district.
The district, which covers more than 600,000 acres of farmland in west Fresno and Kings counties, serves about 600 family-owned farms and about 50,000 people living and working in and around the district's boundaries.
A supply of clean water has always been a critical issue in the westlands, said Wendy Turner, a district board member.
"The city [Mendota] is probably right on the edge of not having good-quality water supply to sustain itself," she said, especially with a new federal prison planned just outside the city.
To meet the rising demand for clean water, the city added three wells in 2002 and is expanding a water treatment plant that will double its capacity from 1.24 million gallons per day to 2.5 million gallons in the next two years, said Gabriel A. Gonzalez, Mendota's city manager.
"Presently, we have adequate supply for all the development projects in the city," he said.
The reporter can be reached at ssen@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6319.
