Northwest Commission Demands Action on New Bad Weather Homeless Shelter

The Northwest Commission will vote to approve language in a letter to the City Council demanding a new cold weather shelter.

“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. 

In January, the City Council approved emergency funds be transferred from the General Fund to the City’s health department to provide supplemental emergency shelter services.

The move came after Friends In Deed Executive Director Rabbi Joshua Grater told Pasadena Now he could not house all those who asked for shelter because he needed to ration his funds to last the entire cold weather season.

A series of storms dumped parts of California with more rain than usual.

Some areas received 400 to 600% above the average rainfall. 

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. 

At the January meeting, the City’s Housing Director Bill Huang announced that the department was close to coming to terms on a site that will serve as a cold weather shelter.

According to Huang, the process is in the early vetting stages and it is too early to predict the outcome or the timing. 

“In recent weeks the City Council has taken action to add urgently needed funding to the motel voucher program,” the letter reads. “The Northwest Commission applauds this move.”

“However, the motel voucher program has well-documented limitations. For example, due to the scattered nature of the housing, it is difficult to administer, and it isolates individuals from the service providers, making it difficult to connect unhoused individuals with long term solutions.

“Pasadena urgently needs an emergency bad weather shelter. The Housing Department put out a request for bids for a site for a bad weather shelter this summer and got no bids. … 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.”

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.”

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.

Friends In Deed began offering the Bad Weather Shelter in 1988 after a man experiencing homelessness died from sleeping outside on a bus bench during freezing weather. The nonprofit stepped forward to offer a reprieve from inclement weather for the unhoused members of the local community. 

The shelter was located at Pasadena Covenant Church on Lake Avenue.

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

Nonprofit Friends In Deed was forced to shift from its former shelter during the pandemic in 2020 due to social distancing protocols which limited the number of people able to use the shelter and the ability to quarantine people that became sick. 

In July, the City announced it was searching for a new location for a Bad Weather Shelter for homeless people during cold winter weather. The City put out a request for proposal but received no responses.