Pasadena to Require 15% of New Housing for Poorer Residents

Pasadena these days is a victim of its own success.

With the city’s popular Old Pasadena shopping district, Caltech and all the hoopla of the Rose Parade, increasing numbers of home buyers are eyeing the city and more home builders are ready to pour concrete.

That has left the Pasadena City Council with a dilemma: how to ensure its less-wealthy residents are not priced out of the town.

After a month of debate between housing advocates and developers, the Pasadena City Council late Monday approved an ordinance requiring builders of new housing to make 15% of the units affordable for low- and moderate-income people.

At the meeting, council members and others warned of a growing division in the diverse city of 134,000 between wealthy homeowners and its working poor, who live predominately in its northwest.

“Some of the people who made Pasadena attractive are finding it hard to stay here,” said Councilwoman Joyce Streator.

Developers and property owners called the law excessive, while affordable housing advocates said it was inadequate, demanding that a quarter of new developments be set aside for affordable housing.

“Give 25%. Open the door and make history,” Dorothy Moore, a Pasadena resident, told the council. “There’s a blessing for you and there’s a curse for you if you forget your poor brothers.”

Dozens of advocates for the poor and homeless, carrying drums, placards and a bullhorn that was soon confiscated, packed the council chamber, where the suit-and-tie crowd of developers and landowners sat quietly. But both sides spoke passionately to the council.

“It is unfair to single out for discrimination the residential property owners,” said Helen Bunt Smith, a property owner.

Housing experts say Pasadena’s action reflects a longtime movement throughout the state that has seen 70 cities adopt such ordinances.

“This has become more and more common because of a statewide housing crisis,” said Jan Breidenbach of the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing, an organization of affordable housing builders. She said the 15% requirement in Pasadena is fairly typical.

The Pasadena council approved the ordinance 6 to 1, with Mayor Bill Bogaard absent. Council members Streator, Victor Gordo, Chris Holden, Paul Little, Steve Madison and Sidney Tyler Jr. supported the law. Councilman Steve Haderlein dissented, calling the ordinance a “heavy tax that is falling on the few residential property owners.”

The law, which would take effect after a second reading this month, requires any project with 10 or more units to earmark 10% for low-income and 5% for moderate-income renters. It would set aside 15% of housing or condominium projects for moderate-income residents.

Developers would have the option of paying a fee to a city trust to help fund housing for low- and moderate-income residents or building the discounted units elsewhere.

Opponents are threatening to sue to block the law.

Christopher Harding, an attorney for the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles and the California Housing Council, said it violates state laws, including a state rent control act.

Housing supporters say they also are disappointed but by what they called a loophole. Any project approved by the city during the ordinance’s first year will have to allot only 6% of its units for low- to moderate-income people.

City officials said during the next year 2,800 to 3,200 units could be approved. Much of that development would be exempt because the ordinance does not apply to builders who obtain agreements with the city, such as the company that wants to turn the former Ambassador College campus and other properties into more than 2,000 condominiums.