Growing Crisis of Homelessness in Pasadena (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).
Frustration, particularly in the response to the growing crisis of homelessness in Pasadena, characterized Monday night’s meeting of the Pasadena City Council.
By Garrett Rowlan
The unfurled sign at the beginning of the Council’s meeting, pushing the Heritage Square project, formed a silent obbligato to a chorus of speakers who, in the Council’s opening twenty minutes, were concerned with the lack of progress on Heritage Square in particular and homelessness in Pasadena in general.
After these speakers filled up the first twenty minutes, they exited the room while the Council went on to other business of a less urgent nature, that is, the purchase of high-voltage electrical switches and a firewall to project institutional computers. The audience in the room dwindled to a mere dozen, and the Council seemed headed for a night of staid business decisions.
It was not to be so. An itineration of the accomplishments of the Housing and Career Services Department, enumerated by William Huang, Housing Director for the City, led to people leaking back into the room with the steadiness of a prolapsed bivalve. Huang tried to put a game face on the Department’s battle against homelessness, citing 161 people permanently housed and 859 provided emergency and-or transition housing in the same time period. Though he allowed that, “We are experiencing difficulty making new affordable housing projects due to limited funds.” He added that, “High rents push people into homelessness making housing vouchers harder to utilize.” Motel vouchers are a valuable alternative since, “Homeless shelters don’t work for many members.” They are scared of physical confrontations, no pets are allowed, and there is no way to secure possessions. Motels provide a modicum of assurance.
William Huang at the Pasadena City Council meeting on Monday, June 11, 2018 (Photo – Garrett Rowlan)
Almost a half a million dollars returned…”we should not have been in this position”
This presentation was followed by the disconcerting news that the city of Pasadena was about to return almost a half a million dollars to the County of Los Angeles because, according to Huang, there was “no project in the works with a formal funding commitment.” Advocates, in open forum, wondered why wasn’t the Heritage Square Project in line for these funds.
Mayor Tornek pointed out that the Heritage Square project would be a 23-million-dollar undertaking, and one of considerable legal and financial complications, and that the less-than-half million grant, while not exactly a drop in the bucket, would have been no deal maker. Regardless, Tornek added that there was, “No disagreement we should not have been in this position.”
The issue was similar to the firecracker ordinance modification on the 5/24 meeting, which had come to the Council’s attention just as the Fourth of July was around the corner.
What made the issue contentious was an exchange between Victor Gordo and John J. Kennedy when the former questioned the meaning of a proviso in the committee’s recommendation that this action not “cause or exacerbate racial, ethnic, or economic segregation in Pasadena.” Kennedy questioned, in response, while the Pasadena Heritage received an inordinate amount of favorable attention from the city. The implication being that preservation of the past takes precedence over protection of the present.
The Council then moved on to budgetary matters.
> Watch the entire Pasadena City Council meeting for Monday, June 11, 2018.
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