Grateful and humbled, we invite you to help make affordable housing happen on church land

Thank you all for registering for our "There's No Place Like Home" celebration this past weekend. Your presence helped to make our event joyful as well successful. Nearly 200 attended the three-day event!! We are humbled by the outpouring of generosity on behalf of so many of you. Thank you! We have received over $17,000 in donations so far since the beginning of the campaign, which is 70% of our goal of $25,000. If you feel so moved to help us reach that goal, please go to:  https://www.makinghousinghappen.org/donate 

 

All of the individual videos for our three events are now online at our website for your viewing pleasure. You can find them at https://makinghousinghappen.net/2020/10/06/celebrate-theres-no-place-like-home-with-mhch-dec-3-5-2020/  The full edited videos of the three evenings will be available next week, so stay tuned!

 

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED TO MAKE AFFORDABLE HOUSING HAPPEN ON CHURCH LAND

 

We at Making Housing and Community Happen (MHCH) are thrilled that the City is taking seriously our proposal to change the zoning to allow churches to build affordable housing on their underutilized land. But change must go through a number of public processes! This Tuesday, Dec. 15, at 6:00 pm PST there will be a city-sponsored workshop in which Pasadena Planning staff will discuss this topic and elicit public input. If you are in Pasadena or in a city anywhere in the US where you feel such a policy would be warranted, prayerfully consider this is as an opportunity to weigh in and make your voice heard. All you need to do are two things:

1.     Sign on to this meeting at 6pm PST next Tuesday, by going to: https://www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/planning-division/community-planning/religious-facility-housing/

 

2.     After you sign on to the  Zoom meeting next Tuesday, write in the chat: 

 

"As a resident of district ___, and a member of [state your church or organization or neighborhood], I strongly support allowing churches use their underutilized land for affordable housing if they feel so led."

“As a resident of (state your city and state) I know of interested churches and hope that such a policy will pass in Pasadena so we and learn from your city and hopefully adopt something similar.”  

 

That's all you have to say, but if you want to say more, you can go to our blog and find talking points which you can copy and paste into the chat. https://makinghousinghappen.net/2020/12/07/join-us-tues-dec-15-at-6-pm-to-let-the-city-know-that-churches-should-be-allowed-build-affordable-housing-on-their-property/

 

Please let us know if you are planning to take this action. It would be a great encouragement to us.

MHCH is pleased that the City will consider this zoning code amendment which would allow churches to have affordable housing on their underutilized land. Our Congregational Land Committee can work with churches anywhere in the US. We now have 30 churches throughout Southern CA in our pipeline and seventeen churches have indicated interest in Pasadena which would could lead to over 1,000 units of affordable housing spread throughout the city. New Life Holiness now has a proposal for 52 affordable units, but it is zoned commercial—which disallows residential!  

 

We want to flood this public workshop next Tuesday at 6pm PST with chats to demonstrate support so that the city see that this is what the public overwhelmingly wants. Small African American churches like New Life Holiness, with a deep love for their community, have witnessed an exodus of over 25% of Black people from our city. They need to be able to carry out their mission to prevent so much displacement and be a blessing to their community by providing housing that people can afford. We hope that many of you will join this action!