City Ran Out of Motel Vouchers for Homeless Last Year But Did Not Come Back to Council for More Funding, Councilmember Says

[UPDATED] Pasadena’s homeless service providers exhausted their motel vouchers during the last fiscal year but city staff did not ask for additional funds, as a longstanding policy called for them to do, Councilmember Rick Cole said Aug. 5. 

The vouchers, primarily funded by Federal programs, provide short-term hotel stays to unhoused residents. Besides the seasonal “Bad Weather” Shelter at Trinity Lutheran Church )which operates from November through April when it is rainy or the temperature falls below 40 degrees), vouchers are typically the only resource for outreach teams to temporarily house those in dire need of shelter. 

The disclosure came at the Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee’s kick-off discussion of the year-round homeless shelter the council named one of its top five budget priorities for Fiscal Year 2027. 

“The councilmembers were concerned that there had been a standing policy that when we run out of motel vouchers, when the service providers run out of motel voucher, that would come back to the council for potential solutions to that,” Cole said. “This last year we ran out and it did not come back to the council.”

Homeless Programs Coordinator for the Pasadena Housing Department Jennifer O’Reilly-Jones said the newly formed Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee gives the city staff a venue for more regular updates, but also that running out of vouchers is structural rather than administrative. 

“The only way we would not run out of motel vouchers is if everybody is inside every night,” she said, putting the cost of that at more than $10 million a year — beyond what the city budgets. Bringing people indoors is not enough on its own, she said, because permanent housing resources must be available on the other end so beds turn over. 

Acting Assistant City Manager Jennifer Paige said the voucher and master-lease policy is on the committee’s work program and can be agendized for a dedicated discussion. 

“It’s not clear now,” Paige said. “So I think we need to have that conversation here.” 

Cole said the exchange raised a broader question. 

“I think that that begs the question of whether our longstanding policy makes sense,” he said. Cole noted that both those supporting and those questioning the value of a year-round shelter agree that such a facility is a “band-aid” without the availability of permanent housing placements. “This is a clear case where we don’t even have enough bandaids.” 

The committee’s own record shows the issue surfaced two months earlier. Minutes of the June 3 meeting state that Councilmember Justin Jones asked whether staff anticipated returning to the council to request additional funding for hotel vouchers, and that staff responded they did not. 

At that same meeting, Councilmember Jason Lyon told staff they were formally on notice that work toward a year-round shelter was not progressing satisfactorily, and the committee voted 3-1 to advance the annual action plan with a requirement that staff produce a roadmap for identifying, securing and implementing the shelter. 

A work plan was presented to the full council during budget discussions June 8. 

Pasadena resident Sonja Berndt, who told the committee she has advocated for unhoused residents for more than six years, was blunter during public comment. 

“I guess it was a fiction that the housing staff would come to the city council to ask for more vouchers because that’s what they were supposed to do,” she said. “They’re not doing that, and you’re rethinking that.” 

Berndt asked the city to publish a dashboard updated at least monthly showing how many people are sheltered with motel vouchers, how many nights per person, how much money remains for motel charges and services, and how much more is needed. 

With that, she said, staff could make a documented request or the city could establish the scale of its unmet need. 

She also cautioned that voucher figures presented to the committee describe a single night. City data show 75 people were staying in year-round motel voucher programs on the night of the 2026 Point-in-Time Homeless Count, up from 66 in 2025 and 37 in 2024. Overall sheltered homelessness reached a 10-year high of 255 people, while 322 people were counted unsheltered, a 6% decrease from 2025 and the first drop in five years. 

O’Reilly-Jones told the committee there is no fixed duration for a year-round motel voucher. Some programs use them for short stays, she said — holding someone in place until a substance use treatment bed opens, for example — while others use them as bridge housing until a person moves into permanent housing. 

Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, chief executive of Friends In Deed and chair of the Pasadena Human Services Commission, told the committee that motel capacity is already available. The commission has produced a report comparing emergency shelter with transitional housing and concluded transitional housing is the better path, he said. 

Friends In Deed master-leases six rooms at a local motel, Grater said, and while the model may cost more over the long run, its startup costs are almost none because the rooms are ready and maintained by their owners. He said an owner of the La Casa Motel appeared before the commission prepared to make 40 rooms available, and that other motel operators have said they are ready as well. 

“I said this a year and a half ago,” Grater said. “Tomorrow we have motels that are ready to do this, several in our city. So it just requires the funding to do that.” 

He put the workable size at 30 to 40 rooms per site, and said he would prefer three motels of 40 rooms with dedicated staff at each over a single 100-room facility.

Grater also questioned the shelter timeline, saying his organization could not get bathrooms or a kitchen built in a year at a church operating a bad weather shelter. Cole and Jones both pushed back on treating motels as a substitute for shelter, saying many people living on Pasadena streets have levels of need that a motel room cannot meet. 

Cole said people struggling with mental illness or addiction may be difficult to reach consistently once they are behind a locked door. Jones said residents he has met on Fair Oaks Avenue and near Robinson Park and Memorial Park have told him they would not accept a motel placement because they need services. 

Grater said each person in Friends In Deed’s rooms is assigned a case manager who checks in nearly daily, and that a larger transitional housing program would have on-site services and 24-hour security, as one operated in Monrovia does. 

Cole urged staff to study operating shelters in Southern California rather than rely on national models, naming Project Room Key sites in El Monte, a wraparound service program in Pomona, and shelters in Santa Monica, Long Beach, and Santa Ana. Santa Ana stood up its shelter in 28 days, and it continues to operate, he said. 

“I’m not suggesting we could stand up a shelter in 28 days, but it doesn’t necessarily have to take 28 years,” Cole said. 

At this point, the Council’s push for a year-round shelter lacks an identified site; a cost estimate; or a staff project manager.

Staff’s recommendations for the year-round shelter call for a low-barrier, service-enriched facility for single adults with up to 100 beds, non-congregate rooms, a target stay of 90 to 180 days, on-site case management, and a commercial kitchen. Rose Palace will be studied as a possible location, along with other sites. Asked whether a project manager had been named beneath her, Paige said,”Not yet.” 

Staff committed to a progress update on each committee agenda. The committee’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 2. Councilmember Jason Lyon was excused from the Aug. 5 meeting. 

City staff also warned that Pasadena’s homeless services funding is expected to be significantly reduced across federal, state and county sources, with the County making substantial cuts to homeless services in Fiscal Year 2027.