Northwest Commission Approves Letter to City Council Urging New Cold Weather Shelter

The Northwest Commission on Tuesday unanimously approved the language of a letter urging the City Council to locate a site for a new cold weather shelter.

“I would not want to sleep outside tonight,” said Commissioner Ryan Bell responding to the biting cold and increased winds on Tuesday night that Pasadena’s unsheltered residents were forced to spend the night enduring.

Bell and District 5 Commissioner Stephanie Nava-Angeles drafted the letter that will now go to the City Council recommending action.

One amendment was made to the letter, which will also ask the City Council to find identifying partners to establish a cold weather shelter. 

Before the commission spoke, Housing Director Bill Huang told the commission that the City met just last week with the owner of a property that could serve as a new shelter. 

Responding to a query from Pasadena Now earlier in the day, Huang said there was “no further update” on a potential site being vetted as a location for a cold weather shelter.

Huang announced that the City had identified a potential site and was close to coming to terms in a meeting last month.

Later he told Pasadena Now that the process is in the “early vetting stages and said it is too early to predict the outcome or the timing.” 

The new shelter would continue to be operated by Friends In Deed.

According to the letter,  Pasadena’s housing mission, as adopted in 2000 and codified in the housing element, reads: “All Pasadena residents have an equal right to live in decent, safe and affordable housing in a suitable living environment for the long-term well-being and stability of themselves, their families, their neighborhoods, and their community.”

According to the letter, of the 512 unhoused residents in 2022, 32% identify as Black or African American despite only representing 8% of Pasadena’s general population and 44% identified as Hispanic/Latinx compared to 33% of the general population.

“Certainly, with all the property in the city either owned by the city or available to the city, staff should be able to find a location,” the letter reads.

The City has been without a bad weather shelter since the pandemic began. 

Friends In Deed began offering the shelter in 1988 at the Pasadena Covenant Church on Lake Avenue after a man experiencing homelessness died on a bus bench during freezing weather. 

The shelter typically operated when the weather was forecast to be colder than 40 degrees or there was more than a 40 percent chance of rain.

Last summer, the City sent out a request for bids to property owners for a new site, but received no responses. 

Friends in Deed. which operated the shelter, has been giving out motel vouchers to the homeless, and in January received emergency funds after Friends in Deed Executive Director Rabbi Joshua Grater announced he could not house all those who asked for shelter because he needed to ration his funds to last the entire cold weather season.

“The city has resources at its disposal. The Northwest Commission urges the City Council to not rest until it has located a suitable space for our unhoused residents to get in out of the cold and rain this winter and every winter until there are no more unhoused individuals in Pasadena,” according to a Feb. 8 draft of the letter contained in the current commission agenda.