GUEST OPINION
Homeless Count (File Photo – City of Pasadena)
At the City Council meeting on July 21, 2025, Pasadena’s Housing Department presented its report on two “counts” of persons experiencing homelessness in our city: the Annual Count for 2024 and the Point-in-Time (“PIT”) Count conducted on February 19–20, 2025.
By Sonja Berndt
The Annual Count includes people served by all Pasadena-based programs supporting those experiencing homelessness over the course of the calendar year. It does not include individuals who do not engage with any homeless services. The Point-in-Time Count, by contrast, captures everyone observed during the evening and morning hours of the count.
There was a bit of good news: the Annual Count decreased by 5% last year, down to 1,047. But here’s the bad news: of those 1,047 people, 270 were “newly unhoused,” up from 215 in 2023. As for the PIT Count, the total number of unhoused individuals was 581, up 4% from last year’s PIT Count. This represents the highest PIT total in Pasadena since 2018. The unsheltered portion of Pasadena’s PIT Count, those sleeping on our streets, increased by 7%, to 342, while Los Angeles County’s unsheltered PIT Count decreased by 9.5%. Over the past two years, the unsheltered PIT Count in the City of Los Angeles has dropped 17.5%. According to Mayor Karen Bass, “homelessness has gone down two years in a row because we chose to act with urgency and reject the broken status quo of leaving people on the street until housing was built.”
A crucial problem with Pasadena’s approach to the homelessness crisis is that the buck seems to stop nowhere within City government. There is a glaring lack of accountability. The Five-Year Homelessness Plan—intended to guide our city’s efforts, is prepared by an outside entity. City staff presents the plan to the City Council, but no action is taken because none is required. There isn’t even a requirement for the Council to read the plan!
So, who is in charge? Where is the leadership on this urgent issue?
Various departments of the City are “assigned” to committees made up of small numbers of Councilmembers who develop issues and make recommendations to the full Council. The Housing Department, which covers homelessness, is “assigned” to the Economic Development and Technology Committee (“ED Tech”). The Pasadena Municipal Code states that ED Tech reviews matters related to economic development, technology, and affordable housing, but doesn’t even mention homelessness.
We need a Housing and Homelessness Committee (or Commission) laser-focused on urgently addressing our homelessness and affordable housing crises. At the last City Council meeting, Councilmember Rick Cole proposed creating such a committee, with Councilmembers Tyron Hampton and Justin Jones expressing support. Mayor Victor Gordo, however, did not support the proposal and instead asked the Housing Department and the City Manager to weigh in.
This is no time to dilly-dally
It has been widely reported that the recently passed federal budget will result in draconian cuts to funding for our unhoused and other vulnerable residents. Yet, 76% of our Housing Department’s 2026 appropriations are still projected to come from the federal government! At the Council meeting on June 9, 2025, former Finance Director Matt Hawkesworth gave the Council a long list of substantial federal funding sources at risk—funds our City has long relied on to support programs for our unhoused.
A Housing and Homelessness Committee could immediately:
- Develop a plan to allocate some of the millions of dollars in extra revenue left over from last year—as well as funds from the operating and emergency reserves—toward housing and services for our unhoused neighbors. This should include a detailed presentation on the timing of expected federal funding cuts, their impact on current programs, and a plan for replacing those funds.
- Explore and recommend new dedicated revenue sources for interim and permanent supportive housing, such as a vacancy tax or property transfer tax.
- Explore and recommend more cost-effective models for permanent housing, such as modular housing.
- Develop the interim housing our unsheltered residents urgently need during the long wait for permanent housing. Rabbi Joshua Grater, Executive Director of Friends In Deed, recently stated that there are motels in Pasadena ready and willing to participate in a master lease venture, an approach that could provide basic shelter and coordinated services efficiently and quickly.
Please urge Mayor Gordo and City Councilmembers to create a Housing and Homelessness Committee now—and to ensure sufficient funding is made available this year to provide housing and services for our unhoused neighbors. We can make real progress toward ending homelessness in Pasadena, but only if we act with urgency and accountability.
vgordo@cityofpasadena.net rcole@cityofpasadena.net
thampton@cityofpasadena.net jjones@cityofpasadena.net
jlyon@cityofpasadena.net smadison@cityofpasadena.net
gmasuda@cityofpasadena.net jerivas@cityofpasadena.net
Sonja Berndt, a Pasadena resident, is a retired State Prosecutor.
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