What's happening with MHCH? June, 2021, report of Anthony Manousos, Co-founder of MHCH

Jill has been so busy this week that she asked me to give the ED report. As co-founder of MHCH as well as Jill’s full-time husband,  I’m happy to do so.

In fact, as this slide shows, I’m ecstatic.

The big joy this week was attending the historic Juneteenth event, sponsored by an Altadena racial justice group called My Tribe Rise.

We had a booth which was visited by dozens of people, including Senator Anthony Portantino. He’s a big supporter of MHCH and has sponsored a bill that would incentivize cities to allow affordable housing to be built on commercial property. We feel this is a good bill and suggested ways to strengthen it, which he appreciated.

We were overjoyed to see such diversity at this event—a sign that more and more people care about racial justice.  

Racial justice is an essential component of our housing justice work so we put together a statement against racism and inequity and posted it on our website this week. Check it out at makinghousinghappen.org.

Some more good news: we’ve hired three interns for the summer: Ryan McCune from APU will help us evaluate and improve our communications. Kevin Roman from APU is working with Morgan Tucker on a short film about MHCH. And Wendy Masias from Fuller Seminary is working with our North Fair Oaks Empowerment Initiative.  We feel blessed to have these talented and committed young people on board. We’re also very pleased that we have an outstanding new executive assistant, Carla Marr.

The bad news has been how COVID is affecting the housing market. People who’ve been couped up in apartments for a year are super eager to buy homes and the prices of homes have skyrocketed. This has incentivized landlords to sell their rental properties, thereby forcing out tenants. This recently happened to my sister, much to her dismay, since rental homes are extremely hard to find. Unless the government intervenes with subsidies, tax credits, and a host of other policy initiatives, we’re going to see more and more people evicted, priced out of their homes, and ultimately homeless.

As we work with the Pasadena Affordable Housing Coalition, we’re looking at a menu of policy options not only to make more affordable housing happen, but also to address the needs of tenants. Tenants comprise 58% of Pasadena’s population and many are severely cost burdened, paying more than 50% of their income on rent. When rents rise, they are forced out of their homes.

That’s why MHCH supports strong tenant protection and rent control, which has gotten a bad rap but is a very effective tool for stabilizing rents and keeping people housed. I hope you will sign that Rent Control petition that the Pasadena Tenants Justice Coalition is circulating, and also sign up people.

Since homes are what end homelessness, we continue to advocate for giving congregations the right to have affordable housing built on their underutilized land. This has widespread support in the community and among Council members, but our Mayor needs to be encouraged to put it back on the agenda. Please write to the City Council and let them know you think this is an excellent policy that should be agendized and approved as soon as possible.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one more high point of this month, hearing Jill preach at the Knox Presbyterian Church. In my unbiased opinion, she did an excellent job of explaining how Micah 4 relates to affordable housing. This passage has been turned into a song: “Every one ‘neath their vine and fig tree shall live in peace and unafraid. And into ploughshares turn their swords, nations shall learn war no more.”

 Our logo contains the vine and fig tree motif because it sums up what Jill and I are about: ending poverty and war. Ten years ago Jill and I met at a Palm Sunday Peace Parade, organized by Bert Newton. One reason she married me is because I am a pacifist.

During her sermon Jill mentioned that I work with a national Quaker lobby group called the Friend Committee on National Legislation.. We’re currently working on repealing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq (or AUMF), which has been used by Presidents as a blank check to justify numerous military interventions in the Middle East. We’ve convinced Senators Feinstein and Padilla to co-sponsor a bill to repeal the AUMF, which passed the House and hopefully will pass in the Senate.

We have a wonderful speaker tonight so I will close by thanking you all for joining our Zoom meeting and being supporters of affordable housing. We can’t do this work without you!