New Shelter Awaits Pasadena Park Dwellers

For more than a year, Leroy Dowden and 10 other homeless people made Pasadena’s Memorial Park their home.

In the park’s Art Deco band shell, they set up a tent-like encampment with overturned shopping carts, rope and canvas. They posted pictures of their grandchildren and Martin Luther King Jr. They watched TV together on a small portable plugged into a band shell outlet.

On good days, they pooled their money from collecting cans and bottles to pay for dinner--chicken in the toaster oven, instant mashed potatoes and a couple of cans of green beans.

Recently, though, they collected their belongings in plastic sacks, swept up the band shell and left the park for good. In a unique agreement, Pasadena city officials and social services providers reached a deal with regulars in the park’s homeless encampment, asking them to leave in exchange for a program designed to help them find a new life elsewhere.

Dowden, 60, was so excited by the prospect that he couldn’t sleep during his last night in the park, tossing and turning and then waking at dawn, like a little boy on Christmas.

Sure, the encampment was like family; sure, he called the place home. But he chuckled at the thought that he would want to stay.

“Mind leaving here?” he said with good-natured sarcasm. “Mind going on to something better? I look at it like this: The beginning is now to start anew, rebuild ourselves.”

For years, Memorial Park has been a popular homeless encampment, with its broad expanses and charming band shell. Church volunteers regularly dropped off food and clothing. Park officials left the bathrooms unlocked at night. Police officers didn’t enforce the park’s 10 p.m. curfew.

But last year, during the Altadena wildfire, the homeless encampment drew attention because its inhabitants lit fires at night for warmth. Then the Pasadena Senior Center, next door to the park, announced expansion plans.

And then a local theater group, Theater Quest, announced plans to use the band shell for classical theater productions for high school students.

So the deal was put together, with suggestions from the park’s regulars, by city officials and Joe Colletti, director of Lutheran Social Services in Pasadena. The city agreed to contribute $15,000 for the interim shelter and case management program.

Under the arrangement, the nine homeless men and two homeless women get 45 days of interim shelter at New Revelation Baptist Church in Pasadena. During that period, Lutheran Social Services case managers will work with each person, helping with everything from job interviews, transportation, legal papers, credit advice and welfare benefits.

The goal is to get each person into a rehabilitation program, shelter or housing within 45 days, Colletti said.

The 11 homeless people have agreed to never sleep in Memorial Park again, and police will start enforcing the park’s curfew and no-camping ordinance, officials said.