Hello friends of CHOA,
Hope you are well. Housing continues to be a key topic; you hear about housing issues locally, state-wide, and nationally. It’s a hot and important topic here in Arcadia. Let’s continue to learn and find how we can make a positive impact together.
We want to remind you of our upcoming gathering in 11 days, on April 29th. Join us! Also, in this newsletter, we focus on some of the numbers on housing. We share the key numbers around the Housing Element, and the cost of leaving homelessness in Arcadia left unattended.
Here are the topics in this update:
1) CHOA gathering on Saturday, April 29th, 9:30am to 11:30am
2) Housing Element – Affordable Housing increase in Arcadia
3) Cost to the city with no proactive approach to homelessness
Gathering on Saturday, April 29th, 9:30am to 11:30am
Join CHOA and others in the Arcadia faith community to gather, listen, learn, and get further engaged around housing.
Our upcoming gathering will be on Saturday, April 29th, in the morning, from 9:30am to 11:30am. We will be at the Hill’s Church, 805 N. 1st Avenue, in Arcadia, see the flier below. You may be familiar with them, as we have send out many spotlights of them distributing free food on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month (from 10am to 12pm).
Housing Element:
The State of California needs more housing. In this 8 year cycle of the Housing Element, cities across the state are charged to allow for large development of housing. Arcadia is included, and is set to provide 3,200 residential units. Half of these will be Affordable Housing units. Not only do we just need more housing, but some of this housing needs to be affordable…even in Arcadia.
In our gathering on April 29th, we will review the basics of what this Housing Element is. You can image that Arcadia will change, in providing this new amount of housing. The City of Arcadia staff has created a good plan to develop this housing, spread across the city. 6 areas/strategies are identified for this new housing, see the chart above. It will be mostly mixed-use (commercial on the bottom floor, and residential above). These could be tall, 4 or 5 story buildings. Not only will this provide more housing, but it can also revitalize parts of our city, allow for walkable living (for workers to be able to live close to work, to parks, and to stores and restaurants). Recall how Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia has turned out, as well as Old Town Pasadena; there is a lot of new housing development around those centers. This Housing Element plan has taken over a year to finalize, and it has been adopted by the State of California in January this year.
However, the city still needs rezoning changes to be fully compliant with the state. This rezoning will increase the density in these 6 focused areas in Arcadia. The plan is NOT to rip up single-family residences. Instead, this high-density housing is placed in key parts of the city. For example, the “Downtown Mixed-use” strategy will be around the Gold Line station. The plan will also require developers to build a certain amount of affordable housing.
To make this work financially, the developers get incentives to allow them to build more units. To get this right for Arcadia, there will be a study this year to figure out what the appropriate percentage of Affordable Housing will be for each development, and this percentage is the main factor in our new Inclusionary Ordinance. Pasadena already has 20% of new residential development be affordable housing. Arcadia will determine what percentage is right for our city.
As we work to understand this better, the key for us is, how does the faith community view this change? Should it be embraced? Should we advocate for this change? Is this completely just a deal left for the market, or do we see land use in a different way? Who owes/created the land?
The above is a lot to take in. The city has provided good material and videos for us all to learn more, at our own pace. Use the city link below to read more. Come to our gathering on Saturday, April 29th (see our Events page), to see how you can help make this a reality.
Food for Thought
CHOA from time to time will share opinions and thoughts…in our “Food for Thought” section. Our first is from Mayor Pro Tem April Verlato, at the January 17th City Council meeting. She highlighted how much it costs the CIty of Arcadia nearly $80,000 per month for our Arcadia Police Department and Arcadia Fire Department to respond to calls for service for the unhoused in Arcadia. She noted, these are taxpayer funds. The chart below are the amounts that Mayor Pro Tem Verlato provided.
The question is: Should we allow this to continue? Would we rather spend funds to actually address and assist our unhoused neighbors, to work to get them housed? (Keep in mind, it is not a crime to be unhoused; our police cannot just move unhoused folks outside of the city.)
Mayor Pro Tem Verlato started off by saying that she receives numerous calls from businesses each week about Downtown Arcadia, that the unhoused are camping, sleeping, trying to take residence in and around businesses, especially during the holiday. She stated that even though the City has an anti-camping ordinance in Downtown Arcadia that is supposed to be enforceable that prevents camping, it doesn’t seem to be effective at all. She said that even as a business owner herself they are feeling like there hasn’t been any positive outcome from Arcadia’s anti-camping ordinance.
