City Commission to Hear Pitch for 3D-Printed Transitional Housing

[UPDATED] The Pasadena Human Services Commission hears a pitch Wednesday, Sept. 9, for transitional housing built by 3D printer, a month after the commission voted to send the City Council its own case for leasing a motel to house people living on the street.

Gene Eidelman, co-founder of Azure Printed Homes, presents at 6 p.m. at the Jackie Robinson Community Center, 1020 N. Fair Oaks Ave. The company prints its units from recycled polymer at a factory in Gardena.

Eidelman’s material points to two example California projects. In San Luis Obispo, 62 units were manufactured in Los Angeles in 10 weeks, and a three-quarter-acre site is to serve 54 unhoused people with interim and permanent housing and services, the materials say. The company puts the span from design to opening at 10 months. In Camarillo, six tiny homes were reportedly manufactured in six weeks for a 6,000-square-foot lot.

The commission arrives at the presentation with a position already on paper. Commissioners voted unanimously on Aug. 12 to send their report to the council and the Housing, Homelessness and the Planning Committee.

The report sets out a master leasing strategy: the city rents every room in an existing motel for a year and provides them to unhoused people and families for extended stays as a transition to permanent housing. Commissioners wrote that this is not an alternative to an emergency shelter and that the two can run together.

They also wrote that Pasadena’s street population is “a number that we feel can be reduced to functional zero.”

The report puts the city’s homelessness rate at 423 per 100,000 residents on the 2025 point-in-time count. It identifies 38 federally subsidized properties in Pasadena holding 2,289 rent-restricted units, against 7,541 households living below the poverty line, enough to serve 30 percent of the city’s low-income population. For a 50-bed site it estimates annual operating costs of $3.5 million to $4 million under master leasing, and upwards of $2 million less in one-time startup costs than an emergency shelter would carry.

Also on the agenda: selecting a vice chair, an item held over from August; welcoming Loris Memic, the new District 7 commissioner; and nominating an agency representative to fill a vacancy. Commissioners also reviewed the Pasadena Police Department Community Brief for July 2026, which records no homicides and 9,412 calls for service that month.

Speakers may hand a card to the recording secretary at the meeting. Written comments reach commissioners if they arrive at jconcul@cityofpasadena.net at least 30 minutes before the 6 p.m. start.

Wednesday, Sept. 9, 6 p.m. Jackie Robinson Community Center, 1020 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena.