Friday, March 20, 2026

State Senator Joins Local Tenants Calling for Audit of Caltrans Home Sales Along 710 Corridor

Residents in Pasadena and South Pasadena say a program meant to provide affordable homeownership has instead blocked them through opaque pricing

California State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) announced she will join tenants and community leaders Friday to call for an independent audit of how Caltrans has administered the sale of homes along the defunct 710 Freeway corridor, which includes properties in Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno.

The call follows a late 2025 lawsuit filed by three residents — including Pasadena’s Julia Cox — who allege Caltrans determined they had “negative” calculated affordable prices that rendered them ineligible to purchase homes they had maintained for decades, according to the complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It comes 14 years after a state audit found Caltrans wasted millions mismanaging the same properties, and weeks after Pasadena sold 13 vacant former Caltrans homes for $19.6 million to fund affordable housing, according to the Pasadena Weekly.

Caltrans acquired approximately 460 parcels beginning in the 1950s for a freeway extension that was legislatively killed in 2019. Under the Roberti Act, a 1979 state law, the agency is required to offer surplus homes to qualifying tenants at affordable prices, according to Caltrans’ SR-710 Property Sales page.

Tenants say the agency has wrongfully disqualified long-term residents, delayed escrow for years and refused to disclose how prices are calculated, according to public testimony at the South Pasadena City Council on November 19, 2025.

“I heard from all sides from those living in the 710 homes about how difficult it was to be a tenant of the Caltrans homes,” Pérez said in an interview with the Pasadena Weekly. “They moved at a snail’s pace.”

Caltrans has stated that every tenant received a solicitation and that more than 70 properties have been purchased by tenants, according to LAist.

A 2012 California State Audit found Caltrans “passed up roughly $22 million in rental income” between 2007 and 2011, and spent $22.5 million on repairs while collecting only $12.8 million in rent, according to State Auditor Report 2011-120. Whether those problems were corrected is among the questions tenants say an audit would address.

The corridor includes Pasadena properties on St. John Avenue, State Street, Madeline Drive and Palmetto Drive, according to the Pasadena Weekly. In February, Pasadena city officials wrote to Caltrans Director Dina El-Tawansy requesting a hold on sales of tenant-occupied homes pending resolution of legal concerns, according to Pasadena Now.

Tenants have called for future sales to be transferred from Caltrans to the Department of Housing and Community Development, according to testimony at the November 2025 South Pasadena council meeting.

“To have homes vacant while the state is in the middle of a housing crisis is utterly unjustifiable,” Pérez said.