Leadership Team
Dr. Jill Shook
Founding Director
Dr. Jill Shook, has a D-Min BGU in Transformational Leadership of the Global City and is Co-Founding Director of Making Housing and Community Happen (MHCH). She served as a campus minister with Missions Door, and coordinated teams from Berkeley and Harvard to serve in developing nations doing sustainable community development with and by the people with Food for the Hungry International. In 1991, she moved from Mexico to Pasadena to learn from Christian Community Developer Dr. John Perkins. She later worked collaboratively to a plant a Spanish-speaking church, an afterschool program (STARS) at Lake Ave Church, and a citywide gang prevention program and gun buyback. After listening to the poorest and most marginalized population, she was led to become an advocate for affordable housing as a tool to help end homelessness, break the cycle of generational poverty, transform lives, improve neighborhoods, and bring investment into cities. She is author/editor of Making Housing Happen: Faith Based Affordable Housing Models. She was a professor of Housing Justice in the APU MA Social Work Dept and other higher learning institutions and does One-Day Housing Justice Institutes around the US. Jill is married to Anthony Manousos, MHCH co-founder, and a Quaker peace activist.
Dr. Anthony Manousos
Co-founder
Dr. Anthony Manousos is Co-founder of MHCH and chair of Affordable/Supportive Housing Advocates (ASHA). A Quaker peace activist, retired college professor, and author who led AFSC youth groups on service projects in Mexico and edited the official publication of Quakers in the Western USA for eleven years. In 20ll he married Jill Shook, helped her to revise her book, and has become the co-founder of Making Housing and Community Happen. In 2018 he helped lead the successful campaign to convince the City Council to approve homeless housing at Heritage Square South. He currently chairs ASHA, whose goal is to convince the city to build enough homeless housing to reduce the homeless count by 50% in the next five years. Anthony also serves on the board of directors for several organizations, including the Friends Committee for National Legislation and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He has edited or written seven books, the most recent being "Transformative Quakers" and "Howard and Anna Brinton: Reinventors of Quakerism in the 20th century." He earned a Ph.D, in English literature from Rutgers University, a B.A. from Boston University (where he studied poetry with Anne Sexton) and taught at numerous colleges and universities, including Carleton College, Rutgers, Pepperdine, UC San Bernardino, San Bernardino Valley College, etc.
Margaret Lee
Margaret Lee, MSW, teaches courses in diversity, policy, and introduction to social work. Her professional experience is in nonprofit work, policy making and implementation, research, and cross-cultural ministry. Most recently, she worked as a macro social worker at the Department of Mental Health, helping plan and implement the Mental Health Services Act, which included empowering and organizing underrepresented ethnic communities, developing spirituality initiatives, and networking with community-based organizations. Her research interests are in mental health, nonprofit management, spirituality, and the Asian American community. Her Ph.D. in Social Welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow.
Bert Newton
Bert Newton is the Liaison and Outreach Coordinator for Making Housing and Community Happen. Newton has participated in the work of the Greater Pasadena Affordable Housing Group for 19 years, then was hired by MHCH in his current position to help build a network of congregations and other community groups and organizations to support the work.
Newton was an Associate Pastor at Pasadena Mennonite Church for seven years and continues to be recognized by that congregation as a Ministry Associate, representing the church in the community. Newton also worked for 15 years as a Housing Specialist and Case Manager in an intensive program for adults with severe mental illness who experience homelessness and incarceration. In this work, Newton has gained intimate knowledge of the barriers to housing encountered by this population, the various types of housing available them, as well as the lack of housing for them.
Stephen Berkley
Stephen Berkley is a community organizer working with the N. Fair Oaks Empowerment Initiative. He graduated from the University of Redlands with a Bachelor of Arts in Management, and Fuller Theological Seminary, where he earned a Master of Arts in Global Leadership from the School of Intercultural Studies. His experience includes ministries involving youth and young adults, music, and missions, as well as an extended career with AT&T in management working with local government. He has worked in several pastoral roles.
Besides working part-time for MHCH, he currently serves at The Message Center Church under the leadership of Sr. Pastor, Dr. Dwight Radcliff. He also serves on the Education Equity Committee of the Clergy Community Coalition of Pasadena, the Social Action Committee of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., is a mentor at Stars of Pasadena, and is the Director of Public Relations and Community Outreach of the Latter Rain Ministries, International.
It is his desire to take his passion for advocacy, social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion and make it a missional focus for affordable housing, racial justice, and a more flourishing Pasadena.
Joe Bautista
Lucero Garcia
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Joe Bautista received our Affordable Housing Rock Star award in 2023 because of his commitment to being a fair, compassionate landlord, bringing people together, and championing rent control. He and his wife Glory have both volunteered for MHCH, helping with our mailings. He also organized a "friend-raising" lunch for MHCH at his home, inviting all his neighbors.
Joe will work closely with Bert Newton on campaigns, outreach, and research. He will also work with Stephen Berkley on the N. Fair Oaks Empowerment Initiative. He will do administrative work and other tasks, as needed.
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Joe has been deeply involved with the Pasadena Mennonite Church for 17 years and has also been part of Urban Village, an intentional community in Pasadena that Bert (who is an ordained Mennonite pastor) helped to start. Urban Villagers lived on the same block in Northwest Pasadena and met on a weekly basis to live out their Christian values.
Lucero Garcia serves with our Congregational Land Committee (CLC), which advises congregations seeking to build affordable housing, and also helps with our Apprenticeship Program, which fosters teams using our same model as our local CLC that serves So CA. Our Apprenticeship teams are in Washington, Colorado, Texas, and Northern California. Lucero also will be helping us to research grants.
She comes well prepared for this work, having obtained a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning. A woman of faith, she dreamed of using her training and gifts to help congregations provide affordable housing. In fact, she was already doing this in Orange County where she was living at the time. She was concerned that Latino and immigrant families who typically earn lower wages and live in overcrowded conditions need help. When she heard about MHCH, it was exactly what she had dreamed of doing. She joined the Congregational Land Committee and has assisted in a number of ways, from organizing events like our training cohorts for interested churches that we offer twice a year to being part of our technical assistance team that supports congregations to know what is feasible on their sites. She is especially focused on researching zoning.