Image above, architect's rendering, CORE, as shown in Urbanize.LA
Image right, courtesy Google, as shown in Pasadena Now |
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POP’s Housing Justice Committee meets regularly to promote affordable housing in our community. We recently supported the successful push to use the lot across from City Hall (which has been used as a parking lot for nearly 100 years!) as a site for 112 apartments for low-income seniors. Rents will be set to achieve an average affordability of 50 percent of the area median income, with 10 percent of the apartment homes set-aside for permanent supportive housing for previously homeless seniors.
Urbanize Los Angeles, Oct. 27, 2020, "National CORE secures development rights for City-owned property"
Pasadena Now, October 20, 2020, "Talks with Developer For Affordable Housing Near City Hall to Get Council Approval"
POP is focusing it efforts on the upcoming Housing Element that must be developed by October of 2021 by the City to meet the Regional Housing Needs Assessment target for Pasadena of 9,409 units to be built by 2029. More than 60% of those units should be affordable to very low, low and moderate income households.
The City will soon be considering Councilmember John Kennedy’s proposal to develop incentives to ensure the construction of 1,000 units of affordable housing in the next three years. POP will be organizing the community to support the proposal as a first step to meeting the larger target.
Pasadena, where 57% of the population live in rental housing, faces critical decisions to protect low income residents and people of color from displacement, overcrowding and homelessness. The depth and urgency of the current crisis is real. The imperfect annual count of homelessness in Los Angeles County estimated 66,000 unhoused residents just prior to the onset of the pandemic. Half the tenants in our County are “rent-burdenend” – defined as spending more than 30% of their incomes on rent. Nearly a third pay over half their income.
POP regularly works in coalition with other Pasadena area affordable housing advocates. Join in and work with us to help Pasadena meet the long-delayed promise of Truman’s Fair Deal spelled out in the historic Housing Act of 1949: "... the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family, thus contributing to the development and redevelopment of communities and to the advancement of the growth, wealth, and security of the Nation."