You do not need an appointment. You do not need to know which program you want. Tell the front desk what is happening and which language you would rather speak, and someone will sit with you.
All three reach the same front desk at 1940 N Fresno Street, and none of them costs anything.
Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Say the language you want to speak first, and we will put the right person on the line.
1940 N Fresno Street, Fresno, CA 93703, the same hours. No appointment, and no form to fill in before someone talks to you. There is a playground and a garden, so children are not a problem.
intake@firminc.org reaches the housing counselors directly. Write in your own language if that is easier; somebody here reads it.
You do not need an appointment, papers, or perfect English. Nothing on this page costs money, and you are welcome to bring someone with you to help you talk.
They share a building and a phone number. Most families end up using more than one.
FIRM is a resettlement affiliate of the Ethiopian Community Development Council and has resettled 523 people over the past two years. Staff meet arriving families at the airport, set up an apartment before they land, and stay with them through the first months: cultural orientation, school enrollment, benefits, the Social Security office, the first doctor.
The Family Welcome Center, opened in 2024, is where needs assessments, job-skills training and school-enrollment help happen.
For families already here who are still finding their footing. Interpreting, help with forms and benefits, school problems, and monthly workshops that families asked for and then shaped: cooking, sewing, concerts, meet-ups. In 2025 the women's group met 19 times and 28 women took part.
The workshops are held in the languages families are most comfortable speaking, not translated afterwards.
English classes, help getting work, and a small-business program. In 2025, 39 students sat 66 class sessions and 29 people started jobs. Nineteen people joined the entrepreneurship program; six earned California food licenses and three opened businesses of their own.
Citizenship help sits here too, for people ready to take the test.
FIRM's community health workers made 7,000 appointments in 2025. They enroll families in Medi-Cal, explain letters from the county, sit in on doctor visits and run the Poison Prevention Fair each March. More than a thousand Hmong and Laotian residents have been signed up for Medi-Cal here.
UCSF Fresno runs a clinic inside the building; 198 people were seen there in 2025.
Five community gardens, Hmong and Lao radio and television programs that were listened to 153,090 times in 2025, cultural celebrations through the year, and advocacy: forty neighbors at the State Capitol for SCR 96, a bus stop installed outside a clinic Afghan families had been walking to, and Southeast Asian elders' treatment in traffic stops raised with the city.
If you have a notice from your landlord, a rent increase you cannot pay, a repair nobody will make, or a lease you do not understand, bring it in. FIRM's counselors are certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2025 they worked with 241 households across the Valley. Landlords can ask too.
Offered in English, Hmong, Lao, Khmer, Ukrainian, Russian, Dari, Pashto and Arabic.
Central California Legal Services partners with FIRM on housing cases across Fresno, Merced, Tulare, Kings, Mariposa and Tuolumne counties.
Bring the letter, the lease, or whatever came in the mail. If English is not the language you read letters in, we will read it with you.
Each garden is hosted by a congregation or a site that opened its ground, and each grew up around a community. There is a bed for you if you want one.
In 2025 FIRM went door to door in an apartment complex with the Fresno Housing Authority to reopen a garden nobody was using. Hmong, Ukrainian, Hispanic and Black residents now grow in it together. FIRM's note on it: it was the first time many residents had spoken with one another about something they could build together.
1940 N Fresno Street
Fresno, California 93703
If you are a caseworker, a teacher or a neighbor calling on someone's behalf, call the same number. Tell us the language and we will arrange the rest.
