The Housing Justice Workgroup met on May 13 to discuss next steps on addressing Santa Barbara’s multifaceted housing crisis. Workgroup members Wayne Mellinger, Richard Appelbaum, and Frank Rodriguez (CAUSE Policy Advocate) were joined by Lane Clark (CLUE President) and Chuck Flacks (Principal and Founder, Flacks Seed Consulting). Building on Wayne’s “Marshall Plan to End Homelessness in Santa Barbara County” (see also Wayne’s article in this Newsletter, “Building the Affordable Housing We Need”), we recognize that homelessness – a prime concern of CLUE as well as many other organizations in Santa Barbara – is part of a much larger set of problems, including the dearth of affordable housing, rising rent housing costs, and – despite the existence of many excellent programs – the lack of housing with support services for those with substance abuse and mental health problems.
There are many organizations currently working on different aspects of these problems, which all fall under CLUE’s central concern with housing justice. There are also significant efforts emerging that are intended to bring different organizations together under the rubric of housing justice. CLUE has two critical roles to play in this process. First, we can provide, and advance, a moral framework for these efforts, grounded in the different faith traditions in our community. In discussions that are often politicized and confrontational – not to mention technical and data-driven – CLUE can contribute to developing an ethical foundation through its connections with faith organizations. Second, CLUE can educate across faith organizations through presentations, in partnership with their social justice committees, thereby building a faith-based community of faith leaders and members in support of housing justice. Such a community can become important advocates for housing justice when policies are being considered by local governments, well as volunteers to circulate petitions or gather signatures if future housing justice efforts involve referenda.
As a first step, we propose that CLUE host meetings with faith leaders to discuss housing justice proposals currently being considered in our region (a partial list includes homeless programs such as Continuum of Care; rent stabilization; increasing the supply of affordable through a bond issue, real estate transfer tax, or an increase in hotel occupancy taxes). Those meetings could then expand to include progressive business leaders as well as faith leaders and could be professionally facilitated. They would be coordinated with the other organizations involved in housing justice (SBACT, SBCAN, CAUSE, SB Gray Panthers, LWV) with which Wayne, Rich, Frank, and other CLUE members already have excellent connections. CLUE would use the list of faith organizations developed by CLUE Board member Gene Michaels to contact faith organizations, setting this in motion. We propose that the CLUE Board approve this proposed strategy.
All CLUE members are invited to contact us if you are interested in joining this Workgroup.
