Pasadena’s first try at converting a motel into permanent supportive housing for the homeless isn’t off to a great start.

Things came together quickly: Just two weeks after the City Council approved rules that would allow such conversions, a developer is in escrow on East Colorado Boulevard’s Ramada Inn and the council on Monday was set to consider contributing as much as $4 million to the project.

But that’s all in jeopardy before the plan could even get off the ground after a raucous community meeting this week where neighbors in opposition came out in droves, fueled by fear and a doctored letter falsely ascribed to city officials.

“It very quickly devolved into a shouting match,” Union Station Homeless Services CEO Anne Miskey said. “Nobody was listening to the fact, or any of the research, that it’s been done successfully here in Pasadena.”

But city officials and homeless advocates are taking this as a learning experience as they figure out how exactly to get people behind desperately needed solutions to permanently house some of Pasadena’s approximately 677 homeless people and the more than 52,000 living in Los Angeles County.

The project

National Community Renaissance, also known as National CORE, of Rancho Cucamonga is in escrow with the Ramada Inn at 2156 E. Colorado Blvd. It had intended to seek city approval to create permanent supportive housing — using services provided by Pasadena’s Union Station — to house more than 10 percent of Pasadena’s homeless population and also seek out city and county dollars to help with the cost.

If the sale does go through, National CORE would still need to go through a city public hearing process to seek approval for the project — regardless of whatever money the city might offer down the road — one of the requirements laid out in the ordinance passed earlier this month.

Council members Margaret McAustin and Andy Wilson, whose districts include or are near the property, planned a community meeting for Wednesday to discuss the particulars of the project and the planning process quickly after the buyer entered escrow.

“There was significant opposition to this project,” McAustin said. “People felt the project was sprung on them — I sure understand that.”

As a result, city officials no longer plan to discuss funding for the project at Monday’s meeting and are taking a step back.

But that doesn’t mean the project is dead: National CORE officials are still considering their options with an understanding they would face an uphill battle with neighbors, CEO Steve PonTell said.

“We want to be sensitive of the neighborhood,” he said.

They’ll need to decide how to move forward quickly: Tuesday is the deadline to apply for a round of county funding. And that deadline was one of the reasons why things have already moved so quickly, PonTell said. “Normally, we would spend more time out in the community,” he said.

The opposition

Some 200 people gathered at St. Gregory Armenian Church on Wednesday, many of them to air fervent opposition to the plan. Many were concerned about the motel’s proximity to the church and the associated St. Gregory A. & M. Hovsepian School.

“We don’t want them to open up right across the street from our children’s school,” parent Rita Elkaddoum said in an interview. “There are other parts of Pasadena where they could open this up — where it’s not dead smack in the middle of Pasadena where you have children and schools and houses.”

Elkaddoum said her position is informed by her work as a marriage and family therapist. She works with people who, like many people experiencing homelessness, are battling mental health issues or addiction. She said she knows how unpredictable they can be.

Shahe Mankerian, the school’s principal, took issue with the entire public process.

“As we questioned and as we probed, what really didn’t sit well with the audience and myself and the whole community … is the fact that the ordinance had passed — there was no feedback or communication with the community,” he said. “People are livid.”

The Planning Commission did spend hours this summer workshopping the ordinance in public before forwarding it to the City Council, which made further refinements after hearing residents’ concerns before approving it earlier this month.

But Mankerian raises a question about how much process — in a city known for its love of process — is necessary to build some sort of consensus around a plan while easing the neighbors’ concerns.

Learning moment

“I learned a lot,” McAustin said of the church meeting. “We have to have a larger conversation when there’s not a project on the table about we can do and what we should do as a city to help homeless folks who are from Pasadena.”

Indeed, homeless advocates say fighting misinformation to change attitudes is becoming an increasingly important part of their work — right along with connecting clients to housing, jobs and medical care.

“We need to do a better job about explaining the issue and the solutions — doing some myth-busing and some perception-changing — it is very difficult to do that,” Miskey said. “People are afraid. They see the homeless, quote-unquote, on the street. They see the person who may be dirty or may be mumbling because they have a mental health issue.

“What they don’t understand is when a person is stabilized in a home, it’s a completely different situation. They think once homeless, always homeless. Once people are housed, they are simply your neighbors,” she said.

Here’s the way Union Station is tackling that: The nonprofit plans to hire a new staffer focused on community engagement. That person will help round up the thousands of people who volunteer at Union Station to serve as ambassadors to the community — people who can speak from the heart about how effective housing can be, Miskey said.

The idea is to make it personal — because it is.

“If Joe Smith homeowner says I want a building in my district, that’s much more powerful,” Miskey said. “We also looking to build a larger group of formerly homeless individuals who can go out and speak and put a face to the issue.”

The facts

Part of changing attitudes involves providing people with data that shows how vital housing is to address homelessness, advocates say.

Here are the facts: Homelessness is a symptom of larger problems, William Huang, the city’s housing director, said.

“Mental health issues, economic issues, domestic violence — a whole host of issues,” he said. “You have to address those root causes to keep that person housed and have that person succeed.”

That means getting a roof over someone’s head while also treating those problems with services. The Ramada project is permanent supportive housing: It’s not a homeless shelter, but a place to call home where residents would sign leases and get assistance with rent.

The supportive part would come in the form of on-site assistance with employment, education, counseling, life-skills training, budgeting and connections to health care. Case managers would be assigned to each tenant to keep a close eye on their progress and hopefully stay on top of any minor issues before they become bigger problems.

Staff would be on-site 24-hours a day. Applicants would be thoroughly vetted and priority would be given first to people currently living on Pasadena streets or in a shelter in the city, then to those who work or go to school in Pasadena or have another connection here before going to other applicants.

“There’s a very high success rate for this kind of housing — over 90 percent of people will remain housed for a year on,” Huang said.

It costs a lot, but allowing people to live on the streets costs more: An L.A. County study found that housing formerly homeless people saves $32,000 annually per person because assisting homeless individuals often falls to police and other government services that cannot efficiently treat those root problems.

“For the city of Pasadena, they have 500-and-some-odd homeless people that are consuming other services at a very expensive price point,” PonTell said. Housing “makes economic sense — obviously it makes human sense.”

Pasadena has already found success with permanent supportive housing in Marv’s Place at North Mar Vista Avenue and Union Street and Centennial Place at the former YMCA across from City Hall, officials said.

The misconceptions

It’s quite likely that many of the people who showed up to Wednesday’s meeting were brought there by a lie.

Someone distributed a doctored letter sent by McAustin and Wilson that falsely said the City Council had already approved a specific conversion and now were trying to push forward a second one, the Ramada project, McAustin said.

In reality, the council has only approved an ordinance that makes these kinds of conversions possible. Any proposals must be approved following a public hearing in which people would be given an opportunity to provide information that could influence officials’ decision.

Despite the public hearings before the ordinance was passed and the community meeting held to discuss the Ramada project, officials say they understand even more conversation will be necessary to successfully create housing for the formerly homeless.

Discussion is a strategy that New Directions for Veterans, which administers services in permanent supportive housing developments in places such as El Monte, understands well.

“Including all the stakeholders to be able to provide feedback so they feel like they’re developing the project along with the developers, that’s crucial,” said Leo Cuadrado, chief operating officer of the nonprofit.

His organization focuses on projects for veterans — a specialty that might be more palatable for Pasadena residents.

The idea of housing only families, seniors or women in the Ramada project was among the suggestions at Wednesday’s meeting, McAustin said.

Those are among the options that PonTell said his organization is considering as a way to help build consensus and succeed in his goal of housing people who need homes — a burden he says must be shared across Southern California and the country.