Marking Seven Years, Pasadena Housing Nonprofit Honors Displaced Families and Champions ‘Right to Return’

Making Housing and Community Happen (MHCH) is celebrating its 7th anniversary as a housing justice nonprofit on Saturday, Nov. 22, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Trinity Lutheran Church, which has a Safe Parking program that MHCH helped to start. Those living in their vehicles are provided not only with a safe place to park but also with case management to help them become permanently housed. 16 parkers have been housed, and some will attend this event.

Featured at this year’s event will be the Benn Family Singers. Their extended family lost 17 homes during the Eaton Canyon wildfires. The Benn Singers performed at “America’s Got Talent,” where they shared their heartbreaking story as they introduced their song, “Rescue.”

Also featured will be Louise St. Juste, who lost her home to the wildfires and wants to rebuild so she can pass on her home to her children to build generational wealth. She will be provided with a virtually free RV for one year so she can live on the site while her home is being rebuilt. Her RV will be presented to her at the event, and she will be sent off with flowers and prayers. Information will also be provided about how those who lost their homes and income-qualify can obtain up to $50,000 for a used RV through a Salvation Army program.

The theme of this gathering will be the “Right to Return.” MHCH is partnering with Pasadena’s Clergy Community Coalition (CCC), comprised of over 100 pastors that meet monthly to hear from and pray for city officials. MHCH and CCC’s Housing Justice Committee are working to promote the Right to Return for Altadenans displaced by the wildfires and for Pasadenans displaced for economic reasons. During the CCC’s 20th anniversary celebration in September, MHCH was honored for its housing justice work.

Affordable Housing Rock Stars will be given this year to Friends In Deed and Abundant Housing. The John J. Kennedy Legacy Award will be given to Virgil Nelson, a pastor from Northern California who started the first Habitat for Humanity affiliate in California in the 1980s and has been a tireless advocate for affordable housing ever since.

Also honored will be MHCH’s N. Fair Oaks Empowerment Initiative Fellows who completed a program on what it takes to revive a once thriving “Black Main Street”: Wilma Mitchell (Deliverance Christian Church); Leah James (Bethlehem Church); Pastor Helen Mfwilwakanda (Wholicare Church); Wanda Martin (Bethel Church) and Diane Lee (New Guiding Light Missionary Baptist Church).

MHCH will also honor a newly formed nonprofit, the Congregational Land Partners, that started under the auspices of MHCH in 2019. This team of experts has been approached for advisement by over 100 congregations seeking to have affordable housing built on their underutilized land. They have helped 34 congregations that are expected to produce 1,600 affordable units.

Previous Affordable Housing Rock Star award recipients include Pastor Sharon Richter (Trinity Lutheran Church), Councilmembers Jess Rivas, Margaret McAustin and the late John J. Kennedy; Pastors Dan Davidson and Brita Pinkston; activists Blair Miller, Ed Washatka and Allison Henry; the Salvation Army Hope Center and the Pasadena Tenants Union; affordable housing developer Hugh Martinez and urban planners Phil Burns and Margaret Munoz; formerly unhoused Pasadena native Stephen Hill and Polytechnic high school student Brendon Poon

MHCH is a faith-rooted organization that equips congregations, community leaders, and neighbors with practical tools needed to transform their communities to end homelessness, and to stabilize the cost of housing through education, advocacy, organizing, and advisement. MHCH has organized affordable housing bus tours, housing justice educational forums, and one-day housing justice institutes in cities across the United States. It has successfully advocated for ADUs, rent control, inclusionary zoning, SB 4 (that allows congregations to have affordable housing built on their campuses), and other measures to facilitate affordable housing. MHCH’s N. Fair Oaks Empowerment Initiative works to “beautify but not gentrify” and restore this once thriving “Black Main Street.” To learn more about MHCH, go to makinghousinghappen.org.

The annual celebration of MHCH includes refreshments. To find out more and register, go to makinghousinghappen.org/events.