Slamming doors on working poor
City falls far behind in creating housing opportunities for Pasadena’s underclass, activists say
By Jake Armstrong 07/22/2010
A multiyear plan to carry the city through one of the housing market’s most tumultuous times lands before the Pasadena City Council for approval on Monday, but affordable housing advocates say it suffers from a lack of accountability that almost ensures the status quo for the city’s most vulnerable residents.
Parts of the 2008-2014 Housing Element, a 211-page blueprint for matching the community’s housing needs with available resources, may never come to fruition unless the council affixes deadlines to the goals it seeks to achieve, said Jill Shook, a member of the Pasadena Affordable Housing Group (PAHG), which is lobbying council members for several changes to the current proposal.
Many of the goals — from preserving existing affordable housing stock to revisiting the requirements for building so-called “granny flats” — lack a deadline forcing city officials to act on them, said Shook, adding that’s one reason earlier housing plans have fallen short of their full potential to develop affordable housing. “That’s why people have to leave our city,” she said.
Previous housing elements, which are part of the overarching blueprint spelled out in the General Plan the city updates every five years, have laid out strategies for making a portion of Pasadena’s homes and apartments more affordable, but a recent assessment suggests the city is falling far behind in creating housing opportunities for the working poor, while housing for workers earning higher wages has surged ahead.
Of the 10,000-plus single-family and townhome units sold in the past decade, most were affordable only to above-moderate income households, according to the Housing Element’s text. The number of low-income households grew in that period, and the city added 265 new units for very-low and low-income families, while preserving others.
The PAHG is also asking city leaders to seize on opportunities to assist the city’s low-income residents. One suggestion is to form a nonprofit to purchase foreclosed properties to bolster affordable housing stock.
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The City of Pasadena, City Council members ARE NOT (and never really have been) people who mandatorily live overly "modest" (or otherwise, low rent) lifestyles. The very nature of how Pasadena politics is defined insures this.
Council members are not (and never have been) paid an established, competitive wage for the "civic" duties that they perform. Consequently, ANY council member who is not already "financially independent" (or otherwise, without having secured the financial backing of a wealthy -- most likely corporate -- sponsor) would ultimately end up surrendering (or otherwise being forced out of) their council position simply because they just would not be able to afford committing themselves to that full-time job.
You see, elective membership on Pasadena's City Council is, ostensibly, VOLUNTARY. And, by economically sustaining this particular circumstance of institutional control, the historically more affluent population of Pasadena perpetually assures that only its "kind" will ever (as a majority investor) be able to consistently afford performing as members of that exclusive club.
Now, If I were a (historically) rich (... a relative condition) citizen of Pasadena, I would make goddam sure that there was always a majority of council members at that political prison camp located on Garfield Avenue who fundamentally believe (as I would undoubtedly believe as a rich inhabitant) that we really don't need a whole lot of "low-rent" white, or more colored "trash" living within the city limits ... I mean, after all, that's one reason why, to the north, Altadena has always been kept unincorporated. After all, you gotta' hide your ditch-digging, casual labor somewhere.
Anyway, whenever you give them "Grapes-of-wrath" types room to breed, they will. Consequently, the "well-to-do" folks south and to the east of Devil's Gate must ALWAYS be sure that their -- uh -- ("public") servants on the Council never produce any kind of concise deadline or other mandate that may even accidentally commit City Hall to proactively assisting Pasadena's lowest-wage constituents with any kind of circumstancial ability to claim a financially unincumbered, permanent homestead (that is, beyond certain City Council districts that have always historically been relegated to warehouse Pasadena's "lesser," casual labor and services industry types). Really, I mean, you just can't let that kind of poverty-infection carelessly spread into the "nicer" neighborhoods.
Caveat Emptor
DanD