My jaw was practically on the floor as I listened to Pasadena’s Design Commission meeting on Aug. 25. I could not believe what I was hearing. Two thoughts kept running through my mind: We are creating a city that may fail when it comes to transportation and we are tragically proposing and approving apartments where children may never see the sun or have a tree to sit under. And somehow we are calling this progress.
Thankfully, commissioners were finally questioning the lack of meaningful open space, extremely small units, limited daylight, trees and parking, and whether the housing being built would offer families a reasonable quality of life. But what truly floored me was hearing the word “tenements” used by Design Commission Chair Julianna Delgado during a preliminary discussion of a proposed 144-unit, 100% affordable housing project at 2000 E. Colorado Blvd.
“It’s almost like we’re building a whole system of tenements,” Delgado said. “So we went for hundreds of years trying to get away from that, and now we have people stuffed in to give them a roof over their head. But life is more than just that.”
She then observed that people living in historic tenements “at least had a robust street life,” something she noted does not exist along this portion of Colorado Boulevard, and where I personally only see cars whizzing by, empty storefronts and a lack of any meaningful trees.
I sat there wondering how Pasadena could get so far down this road that the chair of its own Design Commission is now comparing the emerging development pattern to tenements?
It was Delgado who raised the evening’s most important question: “What kind of housing is it—just cramming people into little boxes or giving them a good life?”
She is right. We have become so focused on counting units and making everything “affordable” that we have stopped considering the cost. What kind of life will people actually have inside these apartments? The trade-off we are making as a city and state, putting aside our values simply to fit more people within our borders, is a detriment to those we are seeking to house.
Commissioner Marie-Claude Fares supplied an even more disturbing image. She described units with living room and bedroom windows facing a blank wall only 9 feet away.
“Putting kids in front of a blank wall in their bedrooms, never seeing the sun—that really, really, really concerns me,” she said.
We already worry that children spend too much of their lives sitting in front of TV, computer and cellphone screens. Are we now going to build bedrooms with a forced view of blank walls, too?
Affordable housing should not mean housing built to a lower standard of dignity, daylight, health or quality of life. Families of limited means deserve homes where children can see the sun and residents can gather outside to rest under trees that provide actual shade. These families deserve the same careful planning and high standards that Pasadena should demand for any housing.
Delgado identified the larger issue, noting that the problem is not a single flawed project.
“I think I’m more concerned about the pattern that we’re starting to see for acceptable design for 100% affordable projects, which is not acceptable: small units, no open space.”
The critical word is “pattern.” This is not only about one building. It is about what Pasadena is allowing—and increasingly being required by the state—to become standard. The commission’s candor was both astonishing and encouraging to hear. Residents did not begin raising these concerns last month. I have been hammering away at these exact issues for more than a decade: trees, traffic, open space and quality of design.
Many of us warned about approving greater density without equally serious planning for parks, open space and trees, transportation, parking, other infrastructure and the impacts to surrounding neighborhoods. We questioned whether the city was studying the cumulative consequences of all these projects.
For raising those concerns, I and others were too often portrayed as anti-housing—and called plenty of other, far less polite names. Ask about the size of a building and you were deemed anti-housing. Ask where people would park and you simply did not understand the future of transportation or climate change. Ask whether families would have enough open space and you were standing in the way of progress. Our questions were treated as attempts to stop housing rather than legitimate concerns about how Pasadena was growing.
Now I’m angry because commissioners are asking many of the same questions, but perhaps too late. We have arrived at the precise moment many residents like myself warned was coming.
The discussion of parks and open space was particularly revealing. Commissioners considered whether development-related fees could help provide those amenities elsewhere. Fees may be one potential tool, but collecting money does not create open space if Pasadena has not identified and preserved land on which to provide it.
How is the city only seriously confronting this question now, after so many projects have been approved and so much available land has already disappeared? Have we waited so long that most opportunities have already vanished?
The parking discussion exposed the same problem. If projects are permitted to provide little or no parking, Pasadena needs real evidence about what happens afterward or what tools we have to manage such an important problem. Are the promised changes in travel behavior such as bike riding and using public transit or ride-sharing services actually occurring? Some residents may use these modes of transportation, but many still need cars to get to work, take children to school and bring home bags of groceries. Buses don’t travel to every destination.
We have to prepare for the future based on the world as it actually is, not the one we hope might someday exist. This is exactly why planning has to come before approvals—not after the consequences become impossible to ignore. The city should study those consequences now—not wait until 2027.
I recognize that the Design Commission’s authority is limited. Delgado acknowledged that density, height, parking and the loss of amenities through waivers and concessions are often outside the commission’s hands. But “out of our hands” cannot be where Pasadena’s response ends.
It is also time to stop hiding behind the state’s harsh new housing requirements, which have unquestionably limited Pasadena’s authority. Our leaders should push aggressively for changes when those laws produce harmful results. Every single council member should be pounding on the state’s door and saying, “Enough. We will not stand by while Sacramento forces Pasadena to build housing that no one should have to live in.” City leaders are only as powerless as they allow themselves to be.
Pasadena is on the verge of being transformed into a much denser city without the parks, trees, open space, transportation, parking, and infrastructure necessary to support that density. That is not progress. Every project approved without addressing those needs makes the problems harder—and perhaps eventually impossible—to correct.
Pasadena did not arrive at this moment without warning. The writing was on the wall. Residents and commissioners finally appear to be on the same page. There is no more time to waste debating whether these problems are real. It’s time to show up and get to work—and fast. We have a city to save.
We have a city to save. Join me in advocating.
