How Pasadena’s PORT Team Moves Homeless Residents From the Street Toward a Front Door

A firefighter, a nurse, a social worker and an outreach worker — often someone with lived experience of homelessness — pull up to a curb. They are not responding to a fire. They are trying to talk someone into coming inside — and, eventually, into a home of their own.

That is the everyday work of the Pasadena Outreach Response Team, or PORT, which over seven years has grown from a small pilot into one of the city’s main front-line responses to homelessness.

PORT sends teams of firefighters, public health workers, nurses and outreach specialists into the field to connect people living on the streets with shelter, medical care, mental health treatment and housing. It is a partnership of the Pasadena Public Health and Fire departments, Union Station Homeless Services and Huntington Health, and it is drawing fresh attention as the city weighs its Public Health budget for the coming year.

The team’s approach is deliberate and slow. The program, which the city has variously dated to 2018 and 2019, uses a street-based approach to build trust with people over time and open the door to services. With support from the Police Department, the city added a second team in 2021. Its work is non-enforcement: it operates Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and takes a different path from the Police Department’s HOPE program, which centers on psychiatric evaluation and enforcement-related engagement.

The results are counted carefully by the city. City data presented in 2023 recorded 4,470 encounters, 1,044 dispatch calls, 248 people enrolled in services, 71 housing placements, 108 detox or rehabilitation enrollments and 488 transports to medical, dental and mental-health appointments. During fiscal year 2026, according to the city’s budget document, PORT conducted 250 field-based health screenings, responded to more than 310 homelessness-related 911 calls and distributed more than 80 doses of Narcan.

Councilmember Justin Jones, who has joined ride-alongs, told Pasadena Now that “PORT has become part of our frontline response to homelessness.” The city has echoed that view since the program’s early grant years; in a 2023 announcement of a $900,000 federal grant secured with the help of Rep. Judy Chu, Mayor Victor M. Gordo said PORT had been “instrumental in reducing barriers to care” for unhoused residents.

For the people PORT reaches, the stakes are measured one night at a time. In a 2021 account of a ride-along, an unhoused man who went by “Bobcat” described sleeping on Pasadena concrete with no tent, saying he had to “cover my head with my blanket” just to rest. The team’s aim is to replace that with a door that locks.

The city says the program keeps delivering those outcomes. In a recent post on its official Facebook page, the City of Pasadena said PORT had helped a man secure a place to call home, and that he was looking forward to spending more time with his children and grandchildren while focusing on his health. The city did not name the man, and the account could not be independently confirmed.

Much of PORT’s reach depends on partners. Union Station Homeless Services, which the nonprofit describes as the San Gabriel Valley’s largest social service agency for homeless and low-income residents, embeds staff within the team. Its chief executive, former U.S. Rep. Katie Hill, has framed the wider fight as a shared one, saying “none of us can do this alone.” Public Health Director Manuel Carmona, who has led the department since January 2025 and lives in Altadena, said in 2023 that the model rests on “a commitment to preserving human dignity.”

The work continues against a difficult local backdrop. Pasadena counted 581 people experiencing homelessness in its 2025 Point-in-Time Count, a 4% increase, with the tally taken just six weeks after the Eaton Fire devastated Altadena and struck Pasadena; the sheltered count included 12 people who said they were directly affected by the fire. The 2026 one-night count found 577 people, a 1% decrease.

Now the program’s footing is part of the city’s budget conversation. The proposed fiscal year 2027 budget reduces the Public Health Department from roughly $20.6 million to about $17.7 million, with full-time-equivalent positions projected to fall from 104.15 to 82.61. Carmona has said the department has already reduced its workforce by about 43% since a fiscal year 2024 peak and has identified a roughly $315,000 firefighter funding gap for PORT. The city continues to invest in the program, including a $2 million Proposition 47 grant that funds portions of PORT through June 30, 2029. Councilmember Tyron Hampton, who backed the committee discussion, told Pasadena Now: “Our community’s health is number one.”

Residents who need outreach or want to connect someone to services can reach Pasadena’s Homeless Outreach Hotline at (626) 744-7200; the Public Health Department’s Homeless Services office is located at 1845 North Fair Oaks Avenue, second floor.

Back on the street, the measure of the work is not in the ledgers but in the small turns they represent: a phone call answered, an ID replaced, a night spent indoors — and, the city says, a grandfather now looking forward to seeing his grandchildren in a home of his own.