Born and raised in Pasadena, Brandon Lamar is running for Pasadena City Council District 3, a position he ran for last year and got 41% of the vote, according to Lamar.
“This has been a part of my life and a part of my blood since I was a teenager. To make people that can’t really advocate for themselves or people that can’t show up to commission meetings and people that can’t show up to city council meetings to make sure that they have a voice,” Lamar said.
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Lamar was chair of the Human Relations Commission twice in Pasadena and is currently the Vice Chair of the Risk Stabilization Board in Pasadena. He created coalitions and made friends and partners within those spaces that help him to stay accountable to his community, he said. He is also currently serving on 4 local nonprofit boards as well.
“I really want to bridge the gap between the community,…oftentimes we hear from candidates only when they’re running, but after they get the position you rarely hear from them. They don’t knock on your door anymore until the next election. It’s a big deal for me to continue that ongoing outreach to the constituents of District Three because I believe that District Three is the most diverse district in the city of Pasadena,” Lamar said.
Lamar’s focus initiatives include the unhoused community, affordable housing and public safety.
“People are being priced out. People are being gouged out, people are being sent to other communities because they ultimately cannot afford to live in Pasadena, the same place where they grew up, same place where they went to school and for me, that’s a big issue,” Lamar said.
Approximately 145,000 people are living in Pasadena and around 500; about less than 1% of their population are homeless, according to Lamar’s unhoused community count.
Lamar wants to create vigorous programming for the unhoused to make sure that they are not only housed but can stay that way. He wants to ensure social services, mental health support, and counseling to help assist them in this transition.
Public safety is one of Lamar’s biggest goals in Pasadena when it comes to crime as well as pedestrian safety.
“My district alone has more shootings than all other districts combined in the city of Pasadena, and I think that we have to have a robust avenue to really create prevention in our city because I believe in intervention,” Lamar said.
Another concern Lamar has is the dwindling percentage of African Americans living in Pasadena.
“We have to really do something to preserve our history and our culture here in Pasadena because it makes no sense that we’re 6% of the population here, and with 33% homeless, we have to do something to challenge the status quo,” Lamar said.
In his grassroots campaign, Lamar and his team have been knocking on every single door. However, his campaign has shown him that people are still unaware that there’s an election that is happening and District Three, has a history of being the lowest voting count in the city of Pasadena, according to Lamar.
“My thing is to encourage the people in my district to just get out there and vote. Our right to vote is something that people overlook. So often we complain about the challenges that we see in our community,” Lamar said.
“At the end of the day, it’s our local election that really governs our day-to-day life.”
