Tag: homelessness

  • October 14 Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee meeting (part 2)

    Agenda Item 2: Update on Major Housing Projects Currently Under Review

    Dear Mayor Gordo and Committee Members,

    As you receive an update on Pasadena’s major housing projects, I hope you will look beyond the number of units moving through the development process and consider what all this growth is going to mean for our city.

    The materials accompanying this meeting identify 23 major housing projects totaling 4,160 units, either submitted for review or under construction. That’s a substantial amount of development, and I wonder whether Pasadena is growing faster than our ability to plan for it.

    I’ve lived in Pasadena for nearly 30 years and raised my three children here. For more than a decade, I’ve followed our planning decisions, attended meetings, read reports and raised concerns about the direction our city is heading. And I have to tell you, I’m increasingly troubled by what I’m seeing.

    Pasadena didn’t become the city we love by accident. Generations of residents have worked hard to protect its architecture, neighborhoods, mature trees and character. We have spent decades establishing standards that have made Pasadena a desirable place to live. Are those standards still being upheld as we accommodate more development?

    Are our streets ready for thousands of additional residents? Do we have the infrastructure to support this growth? Where will the additional parks and open spaces be? Are we protecting the mature trees that make our neighborhoods special? And are we looking at the combined effects of these developments rather than evaluating each project in isolation?

    These are not new questions. Many residents have been asking them for years, and I believe they deserve more than assurances that everything will work out.

    Somewhere along the way, we seem to have started measuring success by the number of housing units being produced rather than the quality of the city we’re creating. I think it’s time to bring some common sense back into the discussion of growth.

    I’m not suggesting Pasadena shouldn’t grow. But growth must be accompanied by responsible planning, and I want to know who at City Hall is taking responsibility for the bigger picture.

    I ask this committee to request that future housing updates address more than the development pipeline. Show residents whether our streets, parks and infrastructure can accommodate the anticipated growth. Explain how Pasadena’s development standards are being maintained, what deficiencies have been identified and what the City intends to do about them. We should also be measuring whether the commitments made during project approvals are being fulfilled after construction.

    Perhaps the most important question is this: When we look back ten years from now, will we be proud of what we’ve allowed to be built? Or will we wonder why we didn’t ask harder questions when we still had the opportunity?

    We need to get back to what has always made Pasadena special. I don’t want to see decades of careful planning and preservation lost because we failed to consider the consequences of our decisions.

    We have worked too hard to protect this city to simply watch those qualities disappear. Growth is inevitable, but losing what makes Pasadena a wonderful place to live should not be.

  • When Zero Doesn’t Mean Zero

    Pasadena has a thing for zero. Zero Waste. Zero traffic fatalities. One hundred percent carbon-free electricity. And now “functional zero” street homelessness. Who can argue with the aspirations? We all want less waste, safer streets, cleaner energy, and fewer people living on sidewalks. But that is exactly my point: fewer is a goal. Zero is an absolute. And when zero doesn’t actually mean zero, the word begins to lose its meaning.

    Pasadena’s own Zero Waste plan is a perfect example. It calls for Zero Waste by 2040, while projecting a minimum 87 percent diversion rate. That may be a worthwhile goal. But it isn’t zero. The City Council has also adopted a goal of zero traffic fatalities by 2035, and Pasadena is pursuing 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030. Now, we are talking about “functional zero” homelessness.

    Pasadena’s own homelessness data says that even after helping more than 1,000 people exit homelessness into permanent housing over three years, the number of people entering homelessness continues to grow. So before announcing “zero,” shouldn’t we first ask what is realistically achievable?

    If homeless inflow continues to outpace housing, what does functional zero actually mean, and is it achievable? What number are we trying to reach if not? By when? At what cost? And how will we know whether the policy is working? No business could survive by announcing “zero” as the goal and figuring out the math later. Yet government too often does exactly that. We wouldn’t run our households that way either. Imagine raising children around a series of absolute “zero” expectations — zero mistakes, zero bad decisions, zero problems. Real life doesn’t work that way. Real life requires judgment, priorities, tradeoffs, and measurable progress.

    Our city government should work with reality, not slogans. Let’s start with a realistic goal, a clear timetable, a reasonable price tag, and regular reports showing whether we are meeting it. Let’s focus on goals we can measure and ultimately hold our government accountable for meeting them. Businesses do it, and so should our government.

    An aspiration like “zero” cannot replace a well-prepared goal, and a slogan is not a measurement. I would rather Pasadena promise “fewer” and show us the progress than promise zero and later explain why zero never really meant zero in the first place. If City Hall wants to keep promising us zero everything, then residents should insist on three things in return: accountability, fiscal discipline, and no new taxes.

    Define the goal. Show us the numbers. Report the progress. Tell us what it costs. And if reaching “zero” requires another tax, assessment, or revenue measure, that should be part of the conversation from the start — not a surprise at the end. Maybe the most important zero for residents is this one: Zero blank checks.

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