City Council to Vote on Modifications to Affordable Housing Priority Guidelines

The City Council on Monday will vote on modifications to the city’s local preference and priority system guidelines for its affordable housing programs.

If the council passes the item, priority will be given to people who are over housed and former residents will receive priority if they lived in the city for two years or more. 

“The first proposed modification is the creation of a new priority category,” according to a city staff report. “This will be an uncapped priority category, which gives preference to residents of deed-restricted affordable housing units in Pasadena who are currently considered over-housed [a single-person household residing in a three-bedroom unit]. 

“This new ‘Over-Housed’ priority,” the staff report states, “is intended to address inefficiencies in the match between household size and unit size, which occur over time as dependents in larger households move out, and will allow such households the opportunity to move to smaller units and pay a lower rent while freeing up larger units for larger eligible households.”

A second modification would create an additional set-aside of up to 20% of the units, which will be available to former Pasadena residents.

This modification is meant to provide households to people who were unable to remain in Pasadena, whether due to rising housing costs or gentrification, with the opportunity to return to the city, according to the report.

“This set aside would apply to developments with five or more affordable housing units,” according to the report. “Under the set-aside, up to 20% of the units would be available to households who can demonstrate that they had maintained a primary residence in Pasadena sometime in the five years prior to their application for available housing. In addition, to be eligible for this set-aside, a household must have maintained a primary residence in Pasadena for at least two years.”

The item was reviewed last month by the City Council’s Economic Development and Technology (EDTech) Committee.

The Rev. Bert Newton of Pasadena Mennonite Church said officials needed to consider the reasons for the city’s decreasing African-American community.

“The original proposal would have prioritized 20% of affordable housing in the city for people who have been displaced in the past 10 years,” Newton said. “African Americans have been experiencing displacement for over 20 years. In many cases, these are people who have grown up in Pasadena and whose families have been in Pasadena for generations. The timeframe for displacement should be at least 10 years, not five. I really think it should be even longer than 10, perhaps 20 years.”

The modifications aim to help former residents forced to move due to gentrification and increasing housing costs.

The Local Preference and Priority System Guidelines were adopted by the council in 2006 to determine the order in which eligible applicants receive priority to rent or purchase available affordable housing units, including units developed with city subsidy and units created under the lnclusionary Housing Ordinance, according to the city staff report.

Although those policies have been successful, policymakers, stakeholders and housing advocates have come to realize that they fail to address the impacts of housing displacement created by the rising costs of housing and gentrification.

Cities around the nation, including Portland, New York, Oakland, and San Francisco have revised their policies in order to address gentrification and over-housing.