Focus Turns to Affordable Housing Crisis, Homelessness

An expert panel will examine the issues and controversies surrounding affordable housing and how it relates to homelessness on Wednesday, April 18, 7:00 p.m., at the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center, Galpert Sanctuary, 1434 North Altadena Drive, Pasadena.

Organizers say that Pasadena is one of the many cities across the country suffering from the growing shortage of affordable housing and increase in homelessness, with development agencies and smaller non-profit volunteer groups working to keep as much people as they can off the streets.

“We became aware of the issue when one of our temple members talked to our committee about a residence hotel … in downtown Pasadena. It housed many senior people and disabled people and they were evicted in favor of a new luxury hotel and condo development,” said Yudie Fishman, Pasadena Jewish Temple Social Action Committee Chairman. “That got our attention and we began to ask ‘What’s going on here?’'”

The panel includes Michelle White, Executive Director of Affordable Housing Services (AHS) in Pasadena; Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College; and William K. Huang, Director of Housing for the City of Pasadena.

Arnold Siegel, Board Chair of Union Station Homeless Services, the largest provider of services to the homeless in Pasadena, will moderate. Siegel is also Clinical Professor and Director of Legal Writing and Ethical Lawyering at Loyola Law School.

The discussion is open to the public;  a reception will follow.

The event is co-sponsored by Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center Tikkun Olam (Hebrew for “repairing the world”) Committee and Greater Pasadena Jews for Justice. It is just one of the initiatives of the Tikun Olam Committee to addressing the issues of homelessness.

“We all enjoy this wonderful development in Pasadena over the last decades — Old Town and all these great hotels and restaurants — but what about the problem of the people who work there and can no longer afford to live in our community? The people who we count on to provide services at these hotels and restaurants?” said Fishman what he says is  the continuing displacement of lower income housing opportunities in the city.

Fishman points to recent changes in state funding and the elimination by Governor Jerry Brown of community redevelopment agencies as factors impact local housing and homelessness.

“Those redevelopment funds were a double-edged sword in that they  provided money for some of these fancy developments,” Fishman says, ” but at the same time there were mandatory set-asides from the redevelopment fund for affordable housing.  Well now, it’s all gone, all the money, overnight, disappeared. What’s going to happen next?”