Joe Park has spent the past 1 1/2 years waiting for help to get a permanent roof over his head in Pasadena.

He’s filed out paperwork at Union Station Homeless Services several times and been told he has to wait. So he waits, mostly in Central Park, not far from Union Station.

Biding his time until services become available, Park has noticed a marked increase in the city’s homeless population.

“You see it on Colorado (Boulevard) every night,” Park said. “In every nook and corner, there’s someone sleeping there.”

Pasadena had 677 homeless people living in its streets and shelters on the night of Jan. 23, when this year’s homeless count took place. That represents an 18 percent increase from the year prior, according to Pasadena’s homeless program coordinator Jennifer O’Reilly-Jones, who presented the 2018 results to City Council on Monday.

Combined with a jump last year, that means the city’s homeless population has grown 28 percent over the past two years, O’Reilly-Jones said. The rise followed a five-year downward trend from 2011 to 2016, which in sum cut the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city by almost half.

According to the count, the people who have been most impacted are people who are over the age of 50 and those who are considered “non-chronic,” meaning they have not been homeless for a long time.

One of the primary reasons for a surge in the newly homeless is that they simply cannot afford housing, Bill Huang, the city’s director of housing and career services, said.

“We’re battling right now an extremely tight rental market, which makes it extremely difficult to assist folks to be housed in private apartments,” Huang said. “This is also causing many folks to fall into homelessness.”

Park said even shelter housing has been impossible to come by in the last 1 1/2 years. He has been told his paperwork should be approved at Union Station in four weeks.

“And that’s just to sleep on a mat on the floor,” Park said.

In response to the news, council members said they were not surprised given their own observations, but they noted this problem is not unique to Pasadena.

“This is a huge problem for the city and, really, for the region,” Mayor Terry Tornek said, pointing to recent issues that have made headlines in Los Angeles and Santa Ana.

He referred to homelessness in Southern California as an “gigantic, intractable problem.”

“When you’re faced with an intractable problem, you can either throw up your hands and say, ‘Too big, can’t do it, let somebody else solve it,’ or you chip away,” Tornek said, referring to Huang as the city’s “chipper-in-chief.”

While Tornek’s fellow council members seemed to agree with that characterization, they had a harder time agreeing on the best way to move forward.

Councilwoman Margaret McAustin suggested revisiting an idea the council considered years ago but ultimately nixed, to designate some city-owned property as permanent supportive housing, a type of affordable housing for those who have been homeless.

Vice Mayor John Kennedy advocated for convening a blue-ribbon panel of people in the public and private sectors to investigate possible solutions the city hasn’t explored.

Pasadena should dedicate more resources to housing for seniors, as well as push for more inclusionary housing, in which developers are required to rent or sell units to lower-income residents, Councilman Victor Gordo said.

Councilman Andy Wilson didn’t recommend any specific avenue, but he did stress the urgency of addressing the issue, particularly while the economy is still strong.

“We’re eight years into an economic growth cycle, and I’m deeply concerned about the magnitude of this challenge when the economy’s behind our backs,” he said. “We really owe it to ourselves and our community to be clever now, when frankly we have the luxury of trying to solve some of this without a gun to our heads, because I can imagine when the business cycle turns, what those homeless numbers are going to look like.”

Ultimately, Tornek said that while he has his own reservations about using city-owned property or convening more panels, it’s clear the council agrees on the need to try something new.

“What should be clear from the discussion tonight is there is no lack of concern from the people around the dais and no lack of thinking about it,” he said. “I really do think we need to come back with some ideas that have not seemed viable in the past.”

Staff writer Christopher Yee contributed to this report.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article and photo caption was edited to clarify Joe Park and Uno Jensen are waiting for permanent housing solutions.