Written By: Joyce Mandell
AHMA and Ben 4 Franklin members, Mark and Lee Minnichelli, wanted to design a service for their local Unitarian church focusing solely on housing justice. Centering poems, prayers and teachings about housing, they invited AHMA Regional Organizer Joyce Mandell to deliver the sermon at the First Universalist Church in Franklin on June 1, 2025.
Read the full sermon, Sacred Shelter: From Abraham’s Tents to Our Communities below.
Good morning, and thank you for the warm welcome. I’m deeply honored to be with you today. I want to extend a special thanks to Lee and Mark Minichelli for inviting me to speak—it means a lot to be part of this community, especially as someone who hasn’t given a talk in a religious service since I was 13 years old. So I ask for your patience—and maybe a little grace—as I share with you something that’s close to my heart: the need for safe, affordable, and welcoming homes for all.
I’m a community organizer with Abundant Housing Massachusetts, a statewide pro-housing nonprofit, and I spend my days helping people come together to advocate for housing in their own communities. In that work, I’ve heard story after story about how hard it has become to find—and to keep—a stable home in Massachusetts. Here are just a few of those stories –
There is Linda who rents an apartment with four others in a North Shore coastal town. She bought a car with the idea that if the rent got too high, she could move into her vehicle to survive. There is Collin who lives in a suburban home with his parents, isolated from his peers who live closer to the vibrant life of the city. He sometimes couch-surfs at homes with friends to be closer to the action, but all of them believe they will never be able to own a home or save enough money to retire. There is Frank who wanted to move back home to Franklin after college but couldn’t afford it. Even moving to Framingham became too expensive and he now lives out of state.
There is so much struggle out there just to be able to afford adequate shelter. At AHMA, we often say, the rent is too darn high. Every one of us has a housing story.
For me—my daughter moved out of state for work and because of the high cost of housing in Massachusetts. I am blessed to have a home that is paid off, but we are soon to be empty nesters. Even though I would love to move to a walkable community where I can age without having to drive, I am stuck—there are no affordable options to downsize. And decades ago, as a teenager, due to circumstances out of my control, I had to move into emergency shelters and depend on the generosity of foster parents. In those years, I was never sure where I could lay my head down for the night. Maybe that has sensitized me to the plight of people who have nowhere to go.
Nowadays, I hike in the open lands of my city and see temporary tents set up, sleeping bags half rolled or sprawled on the ground. People are living there—outside. Occasionally, the city will send police and public health workers to sweep out the camps. So mean, so cruel. Our local library is a safer haven for our unhoused residents who take shelter there during the day. They avoid the cold weather and seek company. I welcome them in that public space. And I think: there but for the grace of God, go I.
Now I ask you—doesn’t everyone deserve a safe and affordable home, a place to lay down one’s head in peace?
Let’s turn now to scripture for an answer! I invite you to study in the spirit of Shavuot, a holiday we celebrate starting tonight. Shavuot is the time when we as Jews celebrate our received teachings—Matan Torah, the 10 Commandments at Mount Sinai 3000 years ago. It is customary to stay up all night on this holiday just to study. I won’t ask you to stay up all night tonight—but let’s take a couple of minutes now!
Let’s ponder what the scripture tells us of the importance of offering respite and homes to all by focusing on the story of Abraham welcoming three strangers into his tent. In Genesis 18: 1 – 5:
יהוה appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw three figures standing near him. Perceiving this, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and, bowing to the ground, he said, “My lords! If it please you, do not go on past your servant. Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves; then go on—seeing that you have come your servant’s way.” They replied, “Do as you have said.”
In this story, Abraham fully models the religious obligation—or mitzvah—of welcoming strangers (Chanasat Orchim). He doesn’t wait for the strangers to ask him for help. He runs out of his way and proactively approaches them. He treats the strangers with humility, bowing to the ground. He offers water, shade, food, shelter. It is said in the midrash (extra teachings explaining the text) that Abraham’s tent was open to all from all four sides as a way to radically welcome all who came to his threshold.
Abraham is also teaching us another important lesson—help even when you are suffering. Right before this action of kindness, in chapter 17, Abraham cements the covenant with God by having him and all male relatives undergo circumcision. So you can imagine—recovering from this procedure, sitting at the door of his tent in the hot sun—he probably was not feeling his best. And yet, still in pain, he ran out to the strangers, bowed, and served them.
Just as important as what Abraham does is what he does NOT do.
Abraham does not ask the strangers for an ID. He doesn’t ask for proof of health insurance. He doesn’t ask for the strangers’ credit scores or check if they have credit cards. He doesn’t even ask for names. No—he just welcomes and serves. He doesn’t at that point know that the strangers are really three angels—Michael, Gavriel, and Rafael—there to deliver some important news. And this is a key teaching too—the stranger in need, the refugee in search of safety, the person who is forced to live in a car… each one of them is holiness, divinity disguised. We all are angels wrapped up in human bodies.
What Abraham is showing us is RADICAL HOSPITALITY!
Last year, my friend Jenny in Western Mass met someone in a Nextdoor exchange. She was getting kicked out of her home and had no options. Jenny invited her to stay in her house until she could make her next plan. My friend John in Jamaica Plain is also considering opening his home to a refugee family who needs temporary shelter in this unsafe climate. His UU church is working with a refugee aid organization and several congregants are hosting families. In Worcester, Claire and Scott Schaefer Duffy turned their personal home—when they were raising their children—into the St. Therese Catholic Worker House, offering shelter to homeless men and women in the community. The house is in a disinvested neighborhood experiencing challenges with addiction, prostitution, and crime. Yet, Claire and Scott literally never lock the door of their house.
And this is radical hospitality TODAY. Many of us may not be ready to take people into our own personal homes—but I ask you:
Can we be ready to take people into our communities—the towns or cities where we live? Are we ready to open up our towns and cities to house more people?
We are in the midst of a housing crisis in Massachusetts. The state needs 220,000 new homes by 2035 to meet the demand. In short, we are simply not building enough homes. Housing scarcity inflates rents and home prices—this is the law of supply and demand. According to Zillow this past week, the average home price in Franklin is currently $701,803. No wonder Frank, whose story I mentioned in my introduction, couldn’t find a place he could afford to move back home!
We are talking today about opening our tents and welcoming others. And yet, the history of predominantly white suburbs is a lesson in how to exclude people from our communities—by design.
From the 1920s until 1948, racially restrictive covenants were used regularly across the country. These covenants built directly into the deed restricted the sale or rent to non-white people in white neighborhoods. So if you were Black or Mexican, Chinese or another “other,” it was expressly forbidden that you could live in certain neighborhoods. My next-door neighbor tells me the story of how they wanted to live in the exclusive Westwood Hills in our city, but when they were looking for a house 50 years ago, there was a restrictive covenant that would not allow the homes in Westwood Hills to be sold to Jews.
In his book The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein argues that racial housing segregation was not a matter of choice or habit but was, in fact, de jure—the result of actual government policy, especially government lending practices. World War II vets returned home to a decade of opportunity—getting a college education through the GI Bill, moving to a new home with a picket fence in a growing suburb, driving down highways subsidized and built with federal funds. But here’s the catch: the government loans for housing through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration upheld racial discrimination. The FHA would not give you mortgage insurance if you were Black.
In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled racially restrictive covenants illegal. You couldn’t outright discriminate like that anymore!
And that’s when zoning became a key tool to keep certain people out of our towns—and a way to continue to segregate our communities by class and race. Zoning provides the rules of what you can and can’t do with a property—what you can and can’t build in a specific place.
Researcher Amy Dain poured over historical zoning laws of many metropolitan Boston suburbs and found what she called the Big Downzone in Massachusetts from 1968 to 1975. Remember, this was a time of the promise for civil rights, school desegregation in Boston, and the hope of racial equality in education, housing, politics. It was at this time that predominantly white suburbs made systematic changes to their zoning codes—many towns limiting the building of apartments and other multi-family housing options. Limiting housing, limiting smaller and more affordable types of homes, was a backhanded way to keep the tent doors closed and locked to those wanting to move there. These suburbs continued to zone for predominantly more expensive single family homes.
The state has at times pushed back on towns: you can’t use exclusionary zoning to keep people out.
In 1969, Massachusetts passed the 40B statute to allow developers to bypass local zoning laws to build deed-restricted affordable housing if the town does not have 10% of their housing stock affordable. We also refer to 40B as the “anti-snob zoning act.”
In 2021, former Republican Governor Charlie Baker signed the MBTA Communities Law—or 3A—that requires 177 Massachusetts communities on or near transit to carve out a small zone that will allow multi-family housing to be built by right. Multifamily housing—duplexes, triple-deckers, small apartment buildings—can provide more affordable housing choices instead of larger single-family homes, the kind of housing that Frank might be able to afford.
So far, 119 out of 177 towns and cities have passed zoning in compliance with the law and said: Yes, we will open our tents and allow the possibility of more housing to be built here in our town. But the fights have been very hard and constant—and sometimes vicious.
And the people who say no? We hear the arguments about lack of parking, more traffic, more kids in the schools. And underneath these arguments, you hear a subtle call for exclusion—the fear of others who are poor or of a different racial or ethnic background. You’ll hear comments like: “We want to keep our neighborhood character. Our property values will plunge. We don’t want our town to become like [name a big city].”
For the past 2 ½ years, I have had the pleasure to work with people living in towns who say yes—yes to more abundant housing, yes to more neighbors and friends. These advocates know that our towns are better when we open them up to newcomers. More importantly, housing scarcity ultimately hurts all of us—when our kids can’t move back home, when we are lucky enough to have homes but have no affordable options to downsize in town, when teachers, firefighters, police, and other civil servants can’t even afford to live in the places where they serve.
In August 2023, I carted a box of my son’s Legos to the Franklin United Methodist Church so that 24 Franklin residents could dream, play, and build their ideal town. Each person used Legos and found objects to share a personal memory of home—and then collectively, groups pondered and built the Franklin of their dreams. They imagined more housing, especially near the downtown train. They imagined more types of housing beyond single-family homes—duplexes turned into triplexes, accessory apartments, small apartment buildings. They wanted vibrant small locally owned businesses in the core, bike lanes, sidewalks, open space, and ways to get around town without a car. So excited about the collective vision, the group decided to continue to gather—and in the next room at this church, after several meetings of the hive mind, they came up with their name: Building Equitable Neighborhoods for Franklin, or BEN for Franklin. In their work since 2023, they are opening up the tents of Franklin, advocating to welcome more homes and more neighbors. It has been an honor to accompany them!
As Unitarians who recognize the worth and dignity of each and every person—are you ready to open your tents?
As a call to action, I offer up three suggestions for potential next steps:
- At coffee hour today, consider sharing your own housing story with another—maybe even someone you don’t know very well. Telling and listening to our stories enables us to understand our shared need for the peace of shelter.
- Consider joining a group that addresses the issue of housing—perhaps a group that is working to protect refugees and undocumented people, or a group that provides shelter and food to the unhoused. Or, if you are from Franklin, consider joining BEN. BEN needs brave people who can speak up and say yes to new housing projects being debated at planning board and town council. There are so many NOs. Be a voice that says yes—right here.
- Study and learn. It is simple to know that we need more housing. It is complex to understand the root causes of housing scarcity and instability. I’m happy to provide a group—maybe a social action committee—with suggestions of books, articles, and movies to spark discussion and deepen understanding of the root causes of this housing crisis.
In these challenging times of instability, political division, and misinformation, I like to get back to the real basics. What thoughts and feelings am I housing? Am I feeding fears, anger, hopelessness? Or am I focusing on blessing and gratitude, love, hope? And then I look outside myself to my family. Am I creating a welcoming, resilient family? And then—what about my neighborhood, my town? Can I make sure that it is the most welcoming place, that I can live in a place that reflects these deepest values?
I have a passion for Improv. In Improv, we are taught to keep the action going by always saying: Yes, and…
In the spirit of Improv, let us close with this final prayer:
Let us say YES and
Yes to more homes and
Yes to more neighbors with sugar to share and
Yes to more windows and
Yes to more doors that open and
Yes to duplexes, triple-deckers, small buildings and
Yes to shared gardens, bike lanes, and coffee shops to gather and
Yes to kindness and
Yes to radical hospitality and
Yes to open tents and Abraham welcoming the three angels disguised as strangers and
Yes—we only have to say yes, and—
Ken yehi ratzon. May this be true.