Stevenson, Garrett
Subject: FW: ED Tech Meeting 8/16/2022 - Agenda #1: "Tiny Villages" as a Strategy for Homelessness in Pasadena
From: Bert Newton < >
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 3:30 PM
To: Stevenson, Garrett <[email protected]>; Rivas, Jessica <[email protected]>; Wilson, Andy <[email protected]>; Hampton, Tyron <[email protected]>; Madison, Steve <[email protected]>
Subject: ED Tech Meeting 8/16/2022 -Agenda #1: "Tiny Villages" as a Strategy for Homelessness in Pasadena CAUTION: This email was delivered from the Internet. Do not click links or open attachments unless you know the content is safe. Report phish using the Phish Alert Button. Learn more ....
Dear Members of the Economic Development & Technology Committee:
I have been a resident of Pasadena for 31 years and I live in District 3 I worked for 15 years here in Pasadena in a Full Service Partnership program with Pacific Clinics. We housed and serviced people with severe mental illness who had ended up on our streets or incarcerated.
I want to thank the ED Tech Committee for agendizing the subject of tiny home villages at this meeting and for your consideration of creating a tiny home village in our City. I also want to thank our Housing Department for the staff report and the Power Point presentation discussing tiny home villages in Southern California.
According to the 2022 Homeless Count, 512 of our residents are still unhoused and 280 of those persons have no shelter at all. According to our Housing Department, it can take over one year for a person to move from life on the street to permanent housing. During that time, unsheltered persons face very substantial daily challenges including possible assault and harassment, loss of belongings, health and mental health issues, food insecurity, lack of readily available bathrooms and hygiene services, inclement weather, and transportation difficulties. Our own Housing Department staff has said "It's very unsafe on the street. People don't sleep much." (12/8/2021 ED Tech Mtg., timestamp 1:16:00.)
Tiny homes provide interim housing - temporary housing from the time one moves from sleeping on the streets, in parks, etc. to permanent housing. There are many benefits of tiny homes as interim housing for unsheltered persons experiencing homelessness, and they have distinct advantages over scattered-site motel "vouchers," our City's primary interim housing model. Some of those benefits/advantages are as follows:
• Ability to lock the cabin door from the inside
• Heating; air conditioning
• Intensive, efficient onsite case management services (health, mental health, substance use disorder treatment, housing navigation, job counseling)
• Sense of community
• Continuity of care; building of trust relationships
• Easy transport to medical, etc. appointments
• Laundry facilities onsite; housekeeping
1 • Meals delivered onsite
• 24/7 security
• Cabins available for re-use, unlike motel vouchers; 10-year life cycle While our City has pursued sheltering our unsheltered residents in motels through the "scattered site" motel "voucher" program, that program provides brief stays for only a fraction of our unsheltered residents. Further, motel stays in "scattered sites" throughout the area is inefficient and costly as compared to tiny home villages, which have case management and other services onsite.
Our hundreds of unsheltered residents need your help. Our City needs to provide substantially more funding to alleviate the suffering these residents endure daily. In addition to providing funding from the City's General Fund, our City has approximately $20 million as-yet uncommitted American Rescue Plan Act funds received this year from the federal government. A tiny home village in our City would provide effective and cost- efficient interim housing and provide the best opportunity for our unsheltered residents to successfully transition to permanent housing. Please ensure that the issue of more interim housing (through tiny homes and through motels converted to interim housing) is agendized before the full City Council on an urgent basis. Please also direct city staff to actively seek out opportunities to create a tiny home village in our City. Thank you for your time and consideration of this letter.
Sincerely,
Rev. Bert Newton
Making Housing and Community Happen
2 Stevenson, Garrett
Subject: FW: Economic Development and Tech Comm 8-16-22 agenda item comment From: Wendy and David Gist<>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 12:36 PM
To: Hampton, Tyron <[email protected]>; Wilson, Andy <[email protected]>; Madison, Steve <[email protected]>; Rivas, Jessica <[email protected]>; Stevenson, Garrett <gsteve nso n@cityofpa sa den a. net>
Subject: Economic Development and Tech Comm 8-16-22 agenda item comment Greetings,
I am writing to you to comment on your agenda item 1 for tonight's meeting:
1. "TINY VILLAGES" AS A STRATEGY TO ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS* My name is Wendy Gist and I have been a resident of Pasadena for over 20 years. I live in the Fair Oaks Court housing development and work for the Presbytery of San Gabriel as the Mission Advocate for Hunger, Poverty and Peacemaking Issues.
As a person of faith and a strong advocate for just and equitable systems, I am urging you as my City representatives to take action on the creation of Tiny Villages to help address homelessness in our city. There is a serious need for housing for our neighbors who find themselves homeless. I have participated in the Pasadena Homeless Count several times and so I am aware that we have lots of individuals living in cars or on the street because just one thing went wrong for them. We can and should act now to help. Creating Tiny Villages is a fairly quick way to create housing and we have several neighboring cities where Tiny Villages have already been established that we can learn from.
Tiny houses can be a first step of getting people off the streets and out of their cars and it is vital that Pasadena do that sooner then later to the best of our ability. Please move forward in the creation of Tiny Villages instead of just letting this item be bumped to a later date. We need to take care of our neighbors who find themselves on the margins of society and have fallen through the cracks.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter.
Sincerely,
Wendy Gist
Pasadena, CA 91103
1 Stevenson, Garrett
Subject: FW: In support of Tiny Shelters
From:
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 10:16 AM
To: Madison, Steve <[email protected]>; Wilson, Andy <[email protected]>; Hampton, Tyron <[email protected]>; Stevenson, Garrett <[email protected]>; Rivas, Jessica <[email protected]>
Subject: In support of Tiny Shelters
CAUTION: This email was delivered from the Internet. Do not click links or open attachments unless you know the content is safe. Report phish using the Phish Alert Button. Learn more ....
Dear Members of the Economic Development & Technology ("ED Tech") Committee:
I am a resident of Northwest Pasadena and co-founding director of Making Housing Happen (MHCH), a housing justice organization committed to ending homelessness and housing insecurity through affordable housing. I am writing in favor of Tiny Shelters because I have a deep personal concern for people experiencing homelessness. A formerly homeless person has lived in our back house rent- free for many years and I have helped unhoused people to become housed. I have also volunteered for the homeless count and at Union Station.
I am especially concerned about a 73-year-old woman who lives in her vehicle here in Pasadena.
She grew up in San Marino, went to USC, and had a good job until serious illness struck, her savings ran out, and she had to move out of her apartment and live in her car. When I had lunch with her, I was impressed by her positive attitude. I was moved deeply when she told me she is teaching a young homeless man to sing! She'd like to be a nanny, and I think she would do a great job working with children. She has a beautiful heart. She told me that some people look down on her because she is unhoused, and said, "If this can happen to me, it could happen to anyone." This is a lesson we should take to heart. Most of the 500 people who are experiencing homelessness have lived in our city for 20 years or more. They are not :"transients," as the police call them; they are our neighbors. They have hopes and dreams just like us, and deserve a decent, affordable home.
While MHCH believes in and advocates for permanent supportive housing, which is what ends chronic homelessness, the need is so great we also are advocating for more bridge and transitional housing. I am especially concerned about women and mentally ill people who are living on the street and need a safe place to stay until they can find permanent housing. Congregate shelters don't work well for this population. Individual Tiny Shelters are safer and preferable.
I want to commend Sonja Berndt for all the excellent research she had done about how to start and fund Tiny Shelters. As she notes in her op-ed that appeared in today's Pasadena Now, this is an ideal time to tap into ARPA funds to start this program.
It will take political courage to support Tiny Shelters. Whenever a new initiative like this is proposed, there will be vocal opposition from those who fear change or harbor prejudices against unhoused people. It takes courage to stand up for what is right and desperately needed in the face of 1 NIMBYism. But once a Tiny Shelter program is launched and is successful, the public will appreciate the benefits that housing our homeless neighbors brings to our community, just as they appreciate projects like Marv's Place.
I urge you to have the courage and wisdom to approve Tiny Shelters and bring it to the City Council for consideration.
Respectfully,
Anthony Manousos
Co-founder of MHCH
2 David D Winters & Rachel M Lausch
August 15, 2022 -- via email
Chairperson Tyron Hampton (thampton@ cityofpasadena .net) Vice Mayor Andy Wilson ([email protected])
Councilmember Steve Madison ([email protected]) Councilmember Jessica Rivas ([email protected]) [email protected]
Pasadena, California
RECE IVE D
2022 AUG 16 AH 8: 28
Re: ED Tech Meeting 8/16/2022 - Agenda #1: "Tiny Villages" as a Strategy for Homelessness in Pasadena
Dear Members of the Economic Development & Technology (ED Tech) Committee:
My husband and I have been residents of East Pasadena for the past six years and live in District
4. My husband is a retired pastor and I am a retired social worker. Both of us during our careers had occasion to advocate for persons experiencing homelessness both here in the USA as well as during a number of years when we lived and worked in Guatemala. We attend All Saints Episcopal Church and have volunteered with two Homeless Counts.
We thank the ED Tech Committee for including on today's agenda the subject of Tiny Villages at this meeting and for your consideration of creating a tiny home village in our City. We also would like to thank the Housing Department for the staff report and the Power Point presentation discussing tiny home villages in Southern California.
According to the 2022 Homeless Count, 512 of our residents are still unhoused and 280 of those persons have no shelter at all. According to our Housing Department, it can take over one year for a person to move from life on the street to permanent housing. During that time, unsheltered persons face very substantial daily challenges including possible assault and harassment, loss of belongings, health and mental health issues, food insecurity, lack of readily available bathrooms and hygiene services, inclement weather, and transportation difficulties. Housing Department staff have commented that it is unsafe to be on the street, and that people don't get much sleep while there.
Dr Areta Crowell shared with us what she wrote in her letter to you, and we totally concur with her thoughts:
Tiny Villages are a superior way for the city to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness .
1. Properly organized, they allow for sufficient stability to help residents get the resources they need to resolve issues, find identity, jobs and housing.
2. Case management is provided onsite so it is much more effective. 1 3. "Stuff' can be saved onsite, too.
4. Most allow pets, which is very important to the mental health of many homeless persons.
5. An added advantage over other responses to persons experiencing homelessness is the personal safety which they provide. That is of extreme importance especially to women and seniors, who are increasing in number in our local unsheltered population. A private locked sleeping space is priceless for promoting a person's mental health.
Tiny Villages are not permanent supportive housing- that is the goal, but we should not leave people unsheltered while the city finds ways to increase supportive housing. That resource takes years to develop.
Please think realistically about the hundreds who need shelter every night- not just in bad weather, but EVERY Day all year round. Tiny Villages are valuable interim resources which will, overall, increase the success of the city responses and reduce the homeless population.
Our city is a great city. We cannot let these needs continue to diminish our community.
While Pasadena has pursued lodging unsheltered residents in motels through the "scattered site" motel voucher program, that program provides brief stays for only a fraction of our unsheltered residents. Further, motel stays in "scattered sites" throughout the area are inefficient and costly as compared to Tiny Villages, which have case management and other services on-site.
Pasadena's unsheltered residents need your help. Our city needs to provide substantially more funding to alleviate the suffering these residents endure daily. In addition to providing funding from the city's General Fund, our city has approximately $20 million as-yet uncommitted American Rescue Plan Act funds received this year from the federal government. A tiny home village in our city would provide effective and cost-efficient interim housing and provide the best opportunity for our unsheltered residents to successfully transition to permanent housing. Please ensure that the issue of more interim housing (through tiny homes and through motels converted to interim housing) is placed on the agenda before the full City Council on an urgent basis.
Please also direct city staff to actively seek out opportunities to create a tiny home village in our city.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter.
Sincerely,
David D Winters & Rachel M Lausch
2