Local Leaders Hail $1.4 Billion Newsom Executive Order to Address Homelessness

Pasadena leaders are cautiously optimistic about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signing of an executive order calling for $1.4 billion in funding to address the state’s ongoing homelessness crisis.

Governor Newsom’s order mandates that by the end of February, state agencies must develop a strategy to provide resources to help house people. It also calls for a $1.4 billion allocation to help homeless people throughout California.

Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek said this week he was “thrilled” with the news, but added, “The devil’s always in the details.”

Tornek continued, “The question is always, ‘How does it wind up getting down to us?’”

Tornek also noted that the “only silver lining” in the homelessness crisis is that “it’s got everybody’s attention and that attention can turn into funding, and it can turn into action.”

Pasadena City Councilmember Victor Gordo echoed Tornek’s enthusiasm, as well as his cautionary tone.

“It’s important for the state to do its part,” Gordo said earlier this week, “in recognizing that housing is a state-wide crisis. My only hope is that it doesn’t come with too many ornaments on the tree, that may cause the tree to fall over.”

Gordo explained, “What I mean by that is that it’s a significant step for Governor Newsom and the state to recognize that housing is a state-wide issue. I hope that the governor will recognize that local government is in the best place to determine how and where to build that housing. But certainly, putting $1.4 [billion] on the table is a step in the right direction.”

Councilmember Steve Madison took a longer view.

“Our goal [as a city] is to build 20,000 units of affordable housing,” Madison said. “Now, those aren’t all homeless units. Obviously homelessness is itself a spectrum.

“The homeless issue that concerns me, and I think most of my constituents the most,” Madison continued, “are the service-resistant homeless with severe mental and physical disabilities that are very, very difficult to manage.”

“And for those, we need permanent supportive housing with a full complement of services similar to what happens at the YMCA near City Hall,” he said.

Newsom’s executive order will establish the California Access to Housing and Services Fund and will require state agencies to make assessments of available land assets for housing, and it will create a state homeless crisis response team.

“The state of California is treating homelessness as a real emergency because it is one,” Newsom said.

“Californians are demanding that all levels of government, federal, state and local, do more to get people off the streets and into services, whether that’s housing, mental health services, substance abuse treatment or all of the above.”

The order will also make 100 camp trailers available for temporary housing along with mobile health and social services clinics to be deployed across the state.

Of the proposed $1.4 billion budget, $750 million will be dedicated to getting people off streets and into supportive services “quickly,” according to the governor’s office. The money will pay rent for homeless people, support areas to create dwelling units and help stabilize board-and-care facilities — with the money proposed to go directly to service providers, the governor stated.

California state legislators on Monday also introduced a bill that would create a new state agency, the Governor’s Office to End Homelessness.

Figures from the 2019 LA County Homeless Count revealed that on the night of the survey last January 22, 542 people were experiencing homelessness in Pasadena. While the figure represented a 20 percent decrease in homeless locally, a recent Southland homeless count found that more than 36,000 people are homeless in the city of Los Angeles, an increase of 16% since the previous year.

Countywide, the homeless population jumped by 12% year-over-year to about 59,000.

Mayor Tornek also said it is “realistic” to imagine that Pasadena could actually create enough housing units to house the current number of homeless in the city.

“But what you need to understand about that,” he cautioned, “is that even if we house all of those, whatever the number is currently, there’ll be more. We will never solve the problem.”

“What we can do though,” Tornek continued, “and what we can aspire to do, is just to get that number, the number of people who are sleeping on the street tonight, get that way down. And that’s my aspiration. That’s what I think about every night when I go to sleep in my comfortable bed, of course, is that these guys are going around sleeping on the street, and what am I doing?”

The Greater Los Angeles 2020 Homeless Count will take place Jan. 21-23 throughout the county and the data will likely be released in the summer.