Mayor Terry Tornek poses with members of Pasadena’s AAU football team (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).
Last night’s meeting of the Pasadena City Council was both a textbook case in the diversity of issues facing the city, and after the meeting passed the four-hour mark, it began to feel like reading a long, repetitive textbook—and there was still over an hour to go.
By Garrett Rowlan
The majority of people who showed up—once the winning teams of AAU football from Pasadena were acknowledged and had their picture taken with the Mayor—were there to weigh in on the Zoning Code Text Amendment for Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), whereupon the issue of affordable housing raised its ugly head, and remained a theme throughout the night.
PPD body-camera video to be released
As attendance was high, so were emotions at some points, too. The mother of a Pasadena man beaten in a November 9th confrontation with police told the council how the incident, captured on video, “appalled” her. “I’m outraged,” she said, and, referring to the time limit imposed on public speaking added, “Three minutes is not enough in front of you to say how this has affected my family and my community.” Steve Mermell, City Manager, says the body-camera video of the incident will be released.
She was the second speaker to voice discontent with an encounter with the police.
Decker House and Gill Court
Emotions of a more controlled kind showed in a discontent with the proposal before the Council to fund the completion of two projects. Both are associated with the development of affordable homeownership projects: Decker House and Gill Court, placed cheek-to-jowl, at 1661 North Fair Oaks. Because of lost funding, HUD involvement, and the breaking of one project into two, the project, or projects, require an additional five million dollars to complete the project. Council member John Kennedy, responding to the process that produced this result, compared it to a “bait-and-switch,” whereby funds had already been spent, and yet more was asked. William Huang, with the Department of Housing, admitted that several million dollars had already been spent, but that the city shouldn’t waste this opportunity to preserve Decker House, in addition to the building of sixteen affordable houses. At last, the Council voted to approve the additional funding, acknowledging the money that had already been spent and that the opportunity to build affordable family houses—when rentals are the main focus of government money—are diminishing, and likely to be more so with the President’s new tax plan—according to Mayor Tornek.
Winning teams of AAU football from Pasadena were acknowledged at the CityCouncil meeting on Monday, Dec. 11, 2017 (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).
ADUs in Pasadena
Affordability was also the issue as the meeting dragged into its second hour, this time the issue was the amending of regulations for the ADUs in Pasadena. These so-called “granny flats” are basically add-ons, converted garages in some cases, attached rooms in others, or newly built bungalows, detached huts in other sites. Right now, the basic square foot size for construction is 15,000 feet, though audience members carrying signs that said, “We support ADUs with no minimum lot size,” evidenced a hands-off approach to the problem. The staff recommendations came in with a sort of the Solomon’s judgement, splitting the baby of lot size suitable for ADU construction between zero minimum space—which many of the 40 speakers scheduled to speak advocated—to leaving the existing regulations in place. As a result, staff stipulated 7,200 feet as the magic number suitable for construction.
Many of the arguments in support of removing the restrictions were reminiscent of the Airbnb debate of several weeks ago. The need to augment an income, to accommodate people who have health issues, or nowhere else to go, and to create personal space was mentioned. And yet—as in the earlier debate—the wariness over having speculators build add-ons and then flipping the property and doubling the price was also a concern, with the kicker that a motion to increase affordability would only raise housing prices.
Overarching this issue is the fact that the average of a house in Pasadena is now past the ¾ of a million mark, and rising, and that almost half of Pasadena residents spend half their income on housing.
Also of note were the fees required to build these structures. As councilm Margaret McAustinember Margaret McAustin noted, why charge so many fees if the “granny flats” are there to quell the growing problem of affordable housing.
In the end the Council accepted the staff’s suggestion regarding the amendment of the basic footage while tabling the fee structure part of the proposal until further study.
Share housing, five hours later
At 11:30 p.m., the issue of share housing arose, but at this point most people had left, the Council was looking weary , even irritated, and at five hours into the late-night proceedings, this issue would have to await a further glancing to escape the cloak of the surreal.
Leave a Reply