April 16, 2010
Faith groups to meet with elected officials: To ask for housing commitment, expanded public transportation
By PAUL R. LEINGANG (Message editor)
About 1,000 people from diverse faith traditions in the Evansville — Newburgh area are planning to attend a meeting Thursday, April 22. They will ask elected officials to make decisions and commitments in two areas — affordable housing and public transportation, according to Myeda Hussain.
The assembly will be held at St. Benedict Cathedral in Evansville, organized by Congregations Acting for Justice and Empowerment — CAJE. Hussain is the lead organizer at CAJE, which has an office in the Family Life Center at St. Anthony Church in Evansville.
Father Stephen Lintzenich, pastor of St. Mary Church in Evansville, and Rev. Larry Rascoe, pastor of Nazarene Missionary Baptist Church in Evansville, are the co-chairs of the organization with a wide range of congregational membership.
People from over 17 local congregations are expected at the April 22 meeting, representing Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish and Muslim faith traditions, of diverse racial and socio-economic background, from Evansville and Newburgh.
The Affordable Housing Trust Fund will benefit renters who earn less than half of the area median income, according to CAJE. Some families in these circumstances pay more than half of their income for rent, leaving little for food and transportation, and even less for health care. The City of Evansville already has an Affordable Housing Trust Fund. It needs to be funded.
The second CAJE position is that expanded public transportation will benefit qualified workers — and the employers who would hire them if they had a reliable way to get to work — along the northern highway corridors of Vanderburgh County, U.S. Highway 41 and Indiana 57.
Expanded public transportation will also benefit Evansville residents who need to get to jobs and health services in Warrick County, and Warrick County residents who need transportation to Evansville.
Vanderburgh County commissioners, representatives from Newburgh and Warrick county, and from the City of Evansville have been invited to respond to the requests from CAJE. Details of both issues will be presented at the Nehemiah Action Assembly, along with the extensive research supporting this call for justice for area residents.
The Nehemiah Action Assembly takes its name from the Book of Nehemiah, a Jewish leader who called “a Great Assembly” to confront community leaders. Hussain said that in the presence of the biblical Great Assembly, the leaders did what was just and right, and that is what CAJE asks of city and county leaders in southwestern Indiana.