Wrong House

WRONG HOUSE… In Squid’s lair, it’s hard to believe in anything other than the food chain – no amount of prayer can save a careless Squid from becoming calamari. Squid’s personal beliefs aside, Squid believes in human Americans’ First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Some Salinas residents have taken those freedoms inside Salinas City Hall, specifically Kimberly Bryant, who has regularly – for over a year – used time at the microphone during the public comment period to offer a Christian prayer during meetings of Salinas City Council, seeming to ignore that whole separation of church and state thing.

Another resident, Peter Szalai, has had enough. On May 6, he spoke after Bryant to say: “This is a podium, not a pulpit.” He added, “There are over 300 houses of worship in Monterey County. If everybody sends someone from their particular church to offer religious observation we would never get any city business done.”

The issue of timing matters, given that Mayor Dennis Donohue – in the interest of getting city business done – has taken to limiting the duration of public comment periods. Squid will pray to Poseidon to help these people settle their differences peacefully, and efficiently.

HOUSE RULES… As far as sports analogies go, Squid has a soft spot for “shifting the goalposts,” three words that capture an essential truth about humanity’s struggle to adapt in an ever-changing world.

So Squid was amused when perusing a report from the City of Monterey about documents the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires in order to show compliance with the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which the city must do to receive money from HUD.

In 2015, HUD instituted a rule – Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing – that required municipalities to start producing an “Assessment of Fair Housing” (AFH) report, replacing the previously required “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” (AFI). In 2018, however, HUD submitted a new rule that said, forget about that whole AFH thing, just submit an AFI next time, like you used to.

But then in 2025, as federal agencies are being upended by sweeping cuts to funding, HUD changed the rules again, only this time, the agency isn’t requiring municipalities to submit any reports at all, just an assurance that they are “affirmatively furthering fair housing.”

It’s quite a change for the federal government to have so much trust in other agencies without even checking to see if they’ve done their homework, but if Squid had to guess, there’s probably no one left to do the checking.