Heritage and Homelessness
Trudi Sandmeier [00:08]: Hello, this is Save As, a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage conservation through the work of graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick [00:16]: And I’m Cindy Olnick.
[Perry Como singing (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays]
Cindy Olnick [00:27]: Perry Como, everyone.
Trudi Sandmeier [00:28]: It’s a lovely tune.
Cindy Olnick [00:30]: It is, it is. It’s a nice sentiment. But at the risk of being sort of a bummer, in Los Angeles, more than 40,000 people actually don’t have a home this holiday. Homelessness is a devastating and seemingly intractable problem here. But our neighbors to the east in Pasadena have been working on this for a very long time, and they have a better handle on it. They have cut homelessness in half in the past decade.
Trudi Sandmeier [00:58]: Which is amazing. And, in no small part due to a non-profit that’s been working in Pasadena called Union Station Homeless Services. And, we were fortunate enough to create a class this last semester partnering with them to explore these issues and the intersectionality of conservation and homelessness, and how do these things collide and intersect, and how might conservation be a tool to help put people into housing.
Cindy Olnick [1:35]: Yeah, it seems like sort of a no brainer, right? Here’s some historic houses that may be slated for demolition or need to be moved or whatever, and here’s a bunch of people who need houses.
Trudi Sandmeier [1:48]: So, Pasadena is a great case because there’s Pasadena Heritage, which is this really great non-profit organization, it’s been around for a long time, does really great things in conservation in Pasadena and we have this really strong homeless services organization that does great work. And, they were really interested in partnering with us to think outside the box. Our students really did some creative thinking. Cindy and I were able to sit in on their final presentations for the class and they had some great ideas.
Cindy Olnick [2:21]: Yeah. Each student took on, there were like, what, a dozen of them or so? Oh, and they were heritage conservation students, but there were also architecture students also in the School of Architecture, as well as urban planning students at the Price School of Public Policy. So, it was a really good mix, really multidisciplinary as we say in the academic world.
So, Willa did a section on root causes to set the stage, students did separate projects on looking at existing conditions in Pasadena, specific policies, where there’s hidden density in the city, existing resources they can already use, like churches, parking lots, hotels. And then, looking ahead to strategies and potential solutions, so policy and zoning changes, ideas for bridge housing, adaptive reuse and supportive housing, even helping people experiencing homelessness in natural disasters and pandemics, like extreme conditions. There were also projects on the specific effects of homelessness on various populations, for example, foster youth, which you’ll hear about. And then, wrapping it up, some really great design concepts that illustrate potential uses, specifically, interestingly, for about 50 acres of vacant land smack dab in Pasadena that’s actually a remnant of a huge preservation issue.
Trudi Sandmeier [3:59]: So, the issue of the 710 Freeway completion has been a longstanding preservation battle. And Pasadena Heritage has been at the forefront of this conservation for many, many years. And so, this vacant land is the result of the freeway not being finished, and so there’s a preservation battle that has now led to this opportunity site. So, how can preservation lead to an amazing outcome for the city of Pasadena.
Cindy Olnick [4:30]: It’s super cool. So, these students came up with ideas that actually, not just connect the city, which part of it is currently sort of bifurcated by this huge swath of vacant land, but connect parts of the city to each other as well as to its past. Because Pasadena is associated with historic bungalows and it has a very prominent historic bridge, so there’s a lot of creative ideas around bungalows, about bridges, in every sense of the word. So, it’s super cool. And then, they just turned over to Union Station Homeless Services a ton of information that they could put into action right away. And, it also, I think helped students think about heritage conservation in a different way, which I found really inspiring.
Trudi Sandmeier [5:26]: Yeah, I think as a tool for justice, it’s an important one and we need to be talking about that more.
A few days after the course ended, we sat down with Vinayak Bharne, who is the instructor for the course, and Anne Miskey, who is the CEO of Union Station Homeless Services, and some of the students from the course, to hear about their experience and get a little sense of what they found.
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Trudi Sandmeier [5:55]: I was curious if you could tell me a little bit about what your inspiration was for creating this class.
Vinayak Bharne [5:59]: This studio, I think, is a project that fulfills a sort of a personal issue that remains very important to me. I was raised in India. I spent the first half of my life in a society and country where millions of people are unhoused in every city and growing up there as a child, I don’t think you can escape this phenomenon of social injustice happening everywhere. It’s extremely confusing for a young person growing up to, to notice that there’s an aspect of society that has another, that doesn’t.
The inspiration to do this came from a business meeting that Anne [Miskey] and I had two years ago. A councilmember in Pasadena had organized a forum and invited Anne to conduct a panel on homelessness and me to conduct a panel on planning. And before the panel began, Anne and I started talking to each other for the first time, really, it was clear that through both our disciplinary trajectories, we were invested and interested in tackling this issue, which was a common ground between us.
So Anne invited me to join the board of directors of Union Station Homeless Services, which I, of course, readily agreed. And one of the initiatives was to form what we call housing innovations that would launch quite literally innovative projects that are not business as usual, and really expand the boundaries of how we think about the subject. You know, it goes without saying, I don’t know enough about homelessness. We all think we do, but we are all outsiders to this phenomenon. And that’s just fact. So I could never have the confidence to coordinate or teach with authority, any of these issues, unless you have someone who is struggling with this subject every single day.
They are what have enabled me and certainly the students to ensure with some clarity and confidence that what we are trying to do here is not academic for the sake of being academic, not some kind of theoretical pie in the sky hypothetical exercise, but really practical and visionary enough that this can be taken to next steps.
Trudi Sandmeier [8:13]: So, I wanted to welcome Anne from Union Station to our podcast, can you tell me about a little bit about Union Station?
Anne Miskey [8:26]: Sure, Trudi, it’s great to be here. Union Station Homeless Services has been in existence for almost 50 years, and really our focus in all of that time has been helping and supporting those people who experience homelessness in our community. We started out very typically with kind of a focus on emergency services like shelters and meals, but in the last 10 or 15 years have really focused on how do we permanently end homelessness for people, and then focusing on getting them off the streets into permanent housing, again, into their homes, as well as looking at large system solutions to the issue of homelessness.
Trudi Sandmeier [9:07]: This was an unusual pairing here. Maybe not the most obvious choice to create this studio project with our students. Can you tell me a little bit about what surprised or inspired you in this experience?
Anne Miskey [9:25]: You’re exactly right in that this was not kind of the usual suspects that we work with on a day-to-day basis on this issue. Bringing together heritage conservation, people who are focusing on architecture, city planning, was a new venture for us, but it was pretty amazing when we saw the synergies that we had with people working on these areas and how we’ve actually been working in parallel. Again, with some of the same goals to create beautiful, healthy, vibrant communities that preserve those wonderful things in our heritage. And I think marrying the two, or the more than two, those different sort of perspectives and sectors has created something pretty magical. And I have learned a tremendous amount that I never even thought of that is actually going to be incredibly helpful as we think about solutions for people experiencing homelessness.
Trudi Sandmeier [10:32]: So my understanding of the way that the groupings of the students were organized were into sort of three main categories. There was a policy analysis group, there was a people analysis group, and then there was a proposals group, the three Ps of design and possible interventions. And so I think in that way it was trying to take a holistic look at all the different ways in which this challenge and opportunity could be explored.
Vinayak Bharne [11:07]: That’s correct. I think it’s fair to say that there was an entire group of students that simply asked the question, if we can shift our vantage point from being outsiders to insiders and empathetic insiders, that were sitting on the same side of the table as the people who are unhoused, how do we better understand their needs? So this was the social side of conservation. What strategies emerge if you begin to understand truly the needs of a person that’s unhoused on an everyday basis. And this is where Union Station’s presence became invaluable to us as part of the studio. The second group simply looked at the city of Pasadena and said, what is Pasadena as a series of resources that gives all the prosperity in this wonderful life to its residents that can afford it, but can we now through strategic policy and intervention make this also available to everyone in various ways, can we truly make it an inclusive city?
So that was the second and the third one, as you said, was purely, you know, there is always a role eventually for physical design. But the question we asked is, instead of just focusing on new development alone, how can new development become a thread of continuity with the past, including identifying all of the pieces like these bungalows and et cetera, that are usually under the radar. And what we’re trying to say in the studio is if we understand the economic wisdoms and the social wisdoms of this, then we can forge partnerships between Union Station developers, et cetera and create strategies where these kinds of beautiful homes don’t have to be lost. And that’s not just a heritage conservation strategy, it’s also a sustainability agenda. You don’t want to do scrap-and-build practices all the time. I mean, saving old buildings is about making the world more sustainable, so it’s all tied together. And that’s what it’s really about.
[Music break]
Trudi Sandmeier [13:06]: So now it’s time to turn to our three students. I asked each of them to introduce themselves, to tell me where they’re from and what they’re studying.
Melissa Miller [13:15]: Hi, my name is Melissa Miller and I live in the city of Pasadena, California. I am a graduate student in the Master of Heritage Conservation program at USC, and my research recently has been focused on relocation of City of Gardens ordinance, traditional homes, and adaptive reuse.
Victor Mendoza [13:36]: My name is Victor Mendoza, I’m from Toluca, a small city close to Mexico City. I’m a student in the Master in Urban Planning [program] with a concentration in the design of the built environment. And, lately, I’ve been focusing on the issue of housing affordability.
Ani Mnatsakanyan [13:51]: Hi, I am Ani Mnatsakanyan, a student in the Master of Heritage Conservation program, and my interests are primarily in the issue of transplanted heritage and displaced communities.
Trudi Sandmeier [14:01]: Let’s talk a little bit about why you took this class. So Ani, let’s start with you.
Ani Mnatsakanyan [14:07]: It was a really interesting choice, I think for me taking it like first semester of my second year, because in the first year we learned so much about like the theoretical sides and the professional sides of heritage conservation, which is I think something so brilliant that the program offers. But when I saw the premise of the class, I thought it was a really great way to combine both of those, both the theoretical side and the professional side, and also having the opportunity to learn from people and listen to lectures from people who are involved with Union Station.
Victor Mendoza [14:47]: Two classmates from Price [School of Public Policy] recommended it to me. I was not aware of this course, and I was attracted about the idea of exploring the potential of a large infill project to address the issue of homelessness, especially in a city so proud of its heritage as Pasadena. So that was the initial description they shared with me and it was intriguing.
Melissa Miller [15:03]: I was interested in this class for a couple of reasons. First, I live in Pasadena, and I live in a bungalow courtyard that is not registered. I always thought, well, every courtyard in Pasadena must be on the National Register. So I had just kind of started doing my own research, but then I also had heard about Vinayak’s classes and that he would be offering this new class and that it would focus on housing the unhoused, and how can we tackle this issue of people experiencing homelessness? It just always had seemed so unsolvable. So I wanted to find out what everybody would do, what everybody would come up with, how would we try to figure this out? And I think as one of our classmates Alex said recently, it is solvable. We do have the resources, we do have viable strategies. It’s just getting the buy-in and getting the community to come together and actually act.
Trudi Sandmeier [16:02]: So Melissa, you were the policy P in this group. So your research looked at the policy side of these issues and in particular land use and demolition and relocation options in Pasadena. So what did you discover?
Melissa Miller [16:18]: In the late 1980s, there was a huge boom, lots of people. The population was increasing in Pasadena. So left and right, small low-density complexes, apartment buildings, bungalow courts were being demolished to make way for medium- to high-density buildings, right. Apartment buildings. So it was happening so fast that the residents of Pasadena felt that they were losing their heritage because the city of Pasadena is known as the birthplace of the bungalow court, bungalow lane. And so a group got together, Pasadena Heritage, with a few other people. And, and I think it was 1991, if I’m not mistaken, 1990, 1991, that they were able to come together. There were many different people, just like this class — planners, community members, preservationists, conservationists, policy makers — everybody was just coming together to craft this City of Gardens ordinance to protect the demolition of homes in the city of Pasadena. So the City requires that any home that has a permit for demolition is first listed on their website for sale or relocation. So often they don’t find buyers, though. And the homes, the traditional homes, do get demolished.
So one of the things that I found actually very surprising and really kind of shocking, not even surprising, after Sue Mossman from Pasadena Heritage and Andrew Salimian from Pasadena Heritage recommended I take a look at the City’s website for their demolition permits. So I did it. And I just looked at the last four years. So 2016 to now, and I only looked at finalized demolition permits. Well, there were 82 demolition permits that were finalized in the last four years. And those were for 65 different parcels. So 65 different properties were demolished that these homes potentially could have been relocated and reused. So then I thought, okay, well, let me look at relocation permits. So I looked for the last five years for the relocation permits, that were finalized and there were 13, but for only four different parcels. And so I thought, okay, something’s wrong here.
So I started looking into the permit process and the fees, and that’s where it all starts to get a little crazy because there’s a six-page document on just how to move a house from one spot to the other. The permit fees pretty much go about a hundred thousand dollars. That’s not including the company that you have to hire and so forth and so on. So it can be done, but I kept getting told over and over well, but you really need a full-blown company to do this, private citizens shouldn’t be doing this. I think we’re absolutely missing an opportunity with the stock that we already have. These homes are being demolished. I think Vinayak said it earlier as well, this is also a sustainability issue. This is an environmental issue. This is a human issue. There’s so many issues that are solvable. So I think that was really the most shocking thing to me. I could not believe that 65 different properties have been completely demolished in a landfill somewhere in just the last four years in the city of Pasadena alone.
Trudi Sandmeier [20:09]: So Victor, your work focused on a vacant parcel in the heart of Pasadena, the site that was cleared many years ago for the 710 Freeway connection that was never subsequently built. So how do you go about understanding that site and designing possible housing solutions for it?
Victor Mendoza [20:28]: Yeah, it an interesting process. I began with a historic review of the site. I focused on the modern history of Pasadena after California became part of the U.S., and what I found from this analysis is that this area has been somehow neglected since the introduction of the railway lines, but we also explored a similar case study of how publicly owned land can be used when land is scarce. And I think that is precisely what is interesting about this project, that empty developable land is not readily available in Pasadena anymore. At least not this kind of centric well-located, well-served quality or on land. This is one of the last opportunities for the City to engage in a large-scale project to address the region’s housing crisis. So with the orientation of professor Vinayak, we analyze the potential of this site to stitch what is today a scar in the face of Pasadena.
We believe that it has a potential of stitching, not only the physical gap, but also the social gap created by systemic injustices in the economic environment. And my initial idea was presenting a comprehensive strategy, a very specific part of that master plan for the city, but discussing it further with Professor Bharne, I realized that at this point, our objective should be to trigger a conversation about the potential of the site. So the best way to do it, we believe, is to show that there are multiple possibilities, that there is not a single way to think about this land and in doing so, we expect that the community gets creative and starts thinking of more solutions and uses for these lands because the input from all stakeholders will be needed if the City wants to develop a successful project here. So I ended up presenting three possible conceptual strategies to address the topographic feature of the site. That was the outcome of this.
Trudi Sandmeier [22:28]: Right, so it’s a big chunk of land right in the heart, just adjacent to historic Old Town Pasadena, and with only streets, bridges that cross over, and it’s now just empty, vacant land. So it seems important to do something with this site.
Victor Mendoza [22:49]: Yeah, that’s true. And it would be a wasted opportunity if it wasn’t used for affordable housing, we believe that’s the most logical and humane use of this land.
Trudi Sandmeier [23:01]: So Ani, your section was really about the people part of the studio, and your research focused on a particularly vulnerable population, which is foster youth. Tell me a little bit about some of the takeaways you had from your analysis. What really stood out to you?
Ani Mnatsakanyan [23:20]: Unfortunately, it seems like foster youth are an invisible population when it comes to caring for people who are at risk of becoming affected by homelessness or experiencing homelessness. So I really wanted to understand a little bit more about what initiatives and what resources are available to them. So I realized that there’s a lot of misconceptions when it comes to foster youth who are at risk of becoming homeless. There’s this idea that there’s a lack of motivation, which is so incorrect when dealing with any marginalized community. It’s not that it’s just that we have to realize that, especially in America, there’s this idea that as soon as you turn 18, you’re an adult. You have all of these responsibilities, you have to be independent, get a job, find housing, go get an education. But the legal age of becoming an adult doesn’t automatically correlate with the brain development that people experience.
Trudi Sandmeier [24:20]: So one of the statistics that you mentioned in your presentation the other night was about the percentage of foster youth that end up experiencing homelessness. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Ani Mnatsakanyan [24:33]: Yeah. So about 20% of transitional-age foster youth will immediately become affected by homelessness right after emancipation. There are certain programs available to them to help ease the transition from being a minor into legal adulthood. So, for instance, they can choose if they’d like to extend their time in the system from 18 to the age of 21. Unfortunately it is that issue of experiencing mental fatigue and burnout from dealing with the system and choosing to forge their own independent paths, which can be risky and lead to those statistics.
And another thing that I found fascinating when it came to understanding and analyzing the numbers is that when foster youth were interviewed, 70% of them said that they want to go and get a higher education and get a college degree, but only 3% are actually able to achieve that. That’s a huge gap between people’s dreams and the ability to achieve it. So to have these misconceptions that it’s a lack of motivation or they don’t want it that is so erroneous, especially whenever we’ve been talking about people in certain more affluent neighborhoods like the NIMBYs and like not in my backyard sort of folks. I feel like this is a part of that mentality as well.
Trudi Sandmeier [26:01]: I think that throughout this entire class I think the focus was really on leading with empathy and that we’re all people, we all have many of the same shared issues and concerns but less access to resources in many ways. And I think we’re only one earthquake away from needing to find shelter or needing to find food or resources and things like that. And so these lessons are applicable to all of us.
Ani Mnatsakanyan [26:37]: Right. And I mean, even the current pandemic and all the lockdowns has really amplified our need to focus more on marginalized communities, because honestly all of us are closer to becoming affected by homelessness than we are closer to becoming millionaires. And so that’s this divide that we need to acknowledge and realize like, who are we fighting for and what is the work that we’re doing for? And so a part of that I think is also on the terminology that we use to, you know, we can see we’re striving for equality, but that’s not enough. We have to focus on equity to make sure that we all have the same ability to reach the same goals and the same level, and finally, justice to make sure that we fix the system so that these things aren’t impacted, and that all ties into policy that ties into planning that ties into the human aspect.
It’s basically this giant circle. Everything relies on each other. And I think that’s something that’s really beautiful about this class too, is that it showed that all of us come from different experiences. We come from different backgrounds. We were such a diverse class and all of our, in our professional interests and all the work that we do in our passions, but we were able to put them together and get inspired by people from Union Station and all of their stories in order to say, well, this is my skillset. This is what I’m putting forward. And this is what I want to contribute to this situation at hand. And I think that that’s something that we need to take in our professional model.
Trudi Sandmeier [28:17]: So what were some of the aha moments for you in this class realizations that you had? Why don’t we start with you, Victor?
Victor Mendoza [28:26]: Yeah, I can mention two. The first one was about the causes of homelessness. I used to think about homelessness and its causes always relating them to mental issues and addictions. I thought that was the main root of the problem, but someone from Union Station used this analogy that is very beautiful. And at that moment it was mind blowing. They made this parallel with coronavirus and pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and overweight. You don’t get COVID because of having diabetes of being overweight. And of course those conditions have the potential of making everything worse, but that’s not something that infects you from the virus. In the same way, you don’t end up living on the streets or falling into homelessness because of a mental disease or a substance abuse. That can happen or not, that can come as a consequence, but that’s not a defining cause.
And that’s really important to understand because we can get distracted with those factors and not see the real causes and thus, the real solutions may remain hidden for us. And the second learning was about heritage conservation. I used to think of heritage conservation merely in physical terms. And from the case studies analysis, I realized that social features such as diversity or inclusiveness features of our community, social features, can also be actively preserved. It allowed me to be more creative and think of heritage conservation in a broader way. So for instance, in the strategies I proposed, I thought of care and appreciation for nature that people in the community in Pasadena can have, and also the pride of closing gaps with bridges, perhaps, that also can be a source of inspiration for the strategies we propose for the sites.
Trudi Sandmeier [30:31]: Okay. Great. How about you, Ani?
Ani Mnatsakanyan [30:34]: I feel like after every lecture I had one aha moment, but like, you know, understanding the history and all of the political decisions that lead to this issue, the very blatant racism and inequalities in the system and the overall faulty system, ultimately the most vulnerable populations are the ones that being affected by this.
Trudi Sandmeier [31:01]: So, Melissa, how about you? Did you have any aha moments?
Melissa Miller [31:04]: My aha moments were that the issue of housing the unhoused or people who are experiencing homelessness, that it is solvable. We do have the strategies, we have the means to do it. We just have to do it. And then I would say another really impactful or takeaway moment for me was we had we had a guest lecturer. Her name was Dorothy. She was a person who had experienced homelessness and addiction and lots of really traumatic, horrible things in her life. And she came in and she spoke and she talked about living in her bungalow now and her dog, her pet that she absolutely loved. And she goes around speaking and her boyfriend and just all of the human everyday things that everybody does and everybody has. And I thought, oh my God, she’s so much like me. She’s exactly like me. She lives in a little bungalow. She likes to garden. She has her partner. She loves her pets. I mean, she’s exactly like me.
I would say the last kind of big takeaway that I’ve mentioned a little bit earlier was after Anne Miskey and you Trudi said our fields are so close, we’re all reaching for the same goal. And I thought, yeah, we are, we are fighting for something or someone to get a second chance at life. These places, these communities, these people have a history, they have meaningful memories, and they want more just like the rest of us, the same desires are ones that we have.
Trudi Sandmeier [32:40]: Thank you so much for spending a little time with us here on Save As just to talk about this amazing project work that you all did this semester. We’re really grateful for your time.
[Music break]
After chatting with the students, I turned back to Anne Miskey to get her final thoughts about this project.
How do you hope to amplify or expand the ideas that the students created going forward?
Anne Miskey [33:06]: So, you know, I think some of the things that were really exciting to us were, how do you look at community from this physical perspective and how can you create things that both celebrate heritage and what is so good about our communities, but at the same time, expanding and bringing in new things and new opportunities. I know that a lot of the work that’s done around conservation is very people focused, the human centered design, but this is bringing a new element of marginalized people into the mix and creating this idea of not just beauty and vibrancy, but how do communities and, and what’s around us in our heritage also affect health and wellbeing, not just of those marginalized people, but of the whole community.
And the students, they brought together some amazing research that I didn’t even know we needed that now we’re going to use as we work with local city officials and planning and our own work to take some of that research to say, okay, this is where we are right now in our community. Also with some of the great design concepts, I saw some pictures of ideas for our community that I went, Oh my gosh, not only does that help the people we’re trying to help, but it integrates community in a way that again, takes away from that isolation, separation, segregation, and, and joins people in ways through the physical environment that I think are so exciting. And we know from our experience, those are the things, it’s those human connections that cause healing, health, and actually end things like homelessness and poverty. So the work that the students have done for us is so thrilling and exciting because it gives us a brand new platform to talk about the issues that we have dealt with for so many years.
Trudi Sandmeier [35:14]: Thank you to you, Anne, for coming in, talking with us today, and sharing your time and energy with the students and with the faculty and now with everyone through the podcast. And thank you, Vinayak, for spending time thinking this through so creatively and engaging the students and engaging everyone in this process. I look forward to working with you both to move things forward to see what the next exciting steps are.
Anne Miskey [35:48]: I really believe that we’ve opened up an amazing can of worms, or maybe I should say a can of, of dreams and opportunities that I think could not only be a model for Pasadena, but I truly believe we are creating a model that other communities can use. And that is something that that I think is, is priceless. And it is just the beginning. We are going to take this and we are going to run with it. So thank you for this amazing opportunity.
Trudi Sandmeier [36:25]: Well, let’s get busy, people! We’ve got things to do.
[Music break]
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Cindy Olnick [36:33]: That is just such an inspiring project. So, what’s next, Trudi, how and when can we all see what’s going on with this thing?
Trudi Sandmeier [36:42]: The report’s being prepared right now, and we hope that early next year we’ll be able to post it on the show notes page of this episode, in addition to other places, but that’s where our listeners can find it easily.
Cindy Olnick [36:55]: Fantastic. That is so exciting.
