Luxury, meet poverty

A couple of us at the office were strolling around the neighborhood at lunchtime the other day and noticed a suitcase sitting on the curb along Pasadena Avenue between Dayton and Valley streets, where all those new luxury apartments and condos are being built on the former Ambassador College property.

Taking a closer look, we saw that the suitcase actually contained nearly all of a tiny human; a woman engulfed in an oversized black winter coat, her head and face wrapped in a powder blue scarf. She was wearing tan knit gloves which, given the season, seemed, like the coat, a little bit extreme.

But then again, we weren’t up all the previous night warding off dangerous strangers and wandering around aimlessly, as we’ve seen this woman — the latest addition to Old Pasadena’s growing homeless community — do on more than one occasion on the streets and in nearby Central Park. And always she’s slogging that empty suitcase, that portable bed and shelter — her home — behind her.

Her presence in that spot — a place where developers have been building some of the priciest homes and rental units in the city — struck us as a pretty stark contrast to all that was going on around her and us; unparalleled luxury, meet your new neighbor, abject poverty.

To its credit, the latest developer in the neighborhood, Sares-Regis of Orange County, is planning on setting aside 85 its 820 units for folks living on low incomes. That’s a little bit unusual. Rather than give up units to the poor, most developers choose to pay into a fund to help create affordable housing. But would this lady be able to one day afford such a place, even at the supposedly more affordable low-income rates? Probably not.

The fact is, more and more people are finding it more difficult than ever to make ends meet, whether it’s families depending on two paychecks or seniors on fixed incomes. Prices only continue to climb as wages and government benefits keep falling and everyday life becomes more difficult by the moment.

These threats posed by an economy teetering on the edge, along with images like our young, destitute woman living in a suitcase on a busy city street, tell us that more — not less — needs to be done for people who are one or two paychecks away from homelessness.

That’s why we cannot oppose Proposition 98 in the June 3 primary strongly enough.

As Deputy Editor Joe Piasecki, one of the PW staffers who tried to get the homeless lady some help after spotting her lying on the curb, reports, Proposition 98 would not only restrict government’s ability to use eminent domain to seize property, but also make all forms of rent control — including the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance mandating construction of some affordable housing — illegal.
As Greg Spiegel, a housing attorney with the Western Center on Law & Poverty, told Piasecki, Proposition 98 “is going to have devastating effects on renters.” It will “end rent control for 1 million California families and jeopardize a myriad of tenant protection laws that are longstanding — things like fair return of a rental security deposit, a notice period before a no-fault eviction, how much a landlord can charge for a credit check.”

For people with real concerns about government’s penchant for taking things, opponents of 98 are asking voters to choose Proposition 99, another eminent domain initiative that would cancel out 98 if it gets more votes.

Opponents of 98 include our last two Republican governors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson. It’s also opposed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, AARP, several other senior and renters’ rights groups, the League of Women Voters – California and the League of California Cities.

Maybe they all know what we strongly suspect: that if things get any worse and 98 passes, our lady in the suitcase, along with lots of other people who don’t have a place to call home, will be camping out in front of all of our comfortable homes before too long.