California lawmakers vote to fast-track low-income housing on churches’ lands
Religious institutions and nonprofit colleges in California could soon turn their parking lots and other properties into low-income housing to help combat the ongoing homeless crisis, lawmakers voted on Thursday.
The legislation would rezone land owned by nonprofit colleges and religious institutions, such as churches, mosques, and synagogues, to allow for affordable housing. They would be able to bypass most local permitting and environmental review rules that can be costly and lengthy.
California is home to 171,000 homeless people — about 30% of all homeless people in the U.S. The crisis has sparked a movement among religious institutions, dubbed “yes in God’s backyard,” or “YIGBY,” in cities across the state, with a number of projects already in the works.
ngl, but if the evangelical Christian folks can actually get a YIGBY movement going, they could really do some great work in the world.
For all our strengths on the secular side of things, we never could beat NIMBY problems. They're just very difficult to overcome using our methods, and help derail things like nuclear energy.
I think Jesus would have actually agreed that YIMBY is a genuinely valid and wholesome idea, and that it even harnesses some of the good traits of Christianity. If this actually works, you can color me impressed.
Church housing used to be a part of the service that "missing middle" represents. Not literally stuff in the middle, but housing products that are largely not allowed anymore. They used to supply at the lower end that we now have to rely on extremely inefficient institutions like shelters to do.
All housing that gets built is good for the housing crisis. But what's particularly good is building housing at Market slices where there is currently nothing.
Churches were the safety net. They took care of the poor and provided mental support for all. In that capacity giving 10% makes sense. They no longer serve that role, at least not not a large scale.
Absolutely. And if the state were offering that safety net earnestly there would be no need for anyone like the church to offer it today. But when the church stopped being the public safety net, the bottom end of housing significantly just dropped out.
We had the idiotic belief that everyone would be living in the suburbs with a two-car garage so we built our society around the idea that very little else needed to exist other than detached single-family homes in the suburbs with a two-car garage.
I'd much rather see serious pushes towards legitimate public/social housing rather than empowering third parties with their own goals and motivations to supply the thing we need. But at the moment I'll take whatever we can get.
The housing crisis didn't happen by accident, it's because of greed and policy.
Homeowners voting down missing middle ventures ensures that their home values go up. Municipalities are happily complicent because, one, they also own homes, and two, higher home values = higher property tax.
The housing crisis is that Reaganist attitude, 'i-got-mine-fuck-you' come manifest.
If churches are willing to help fill the unprofitable void left by neoliberalism and greed of human need, then I welcome it.
The state can follow suit by buying old motels, putting a social worker in the lobby and housing the unhoused, preference to families (cuz that'd be multiple unhoused per unit then...).
Another great idea is cutting down on jail sentences for drug charges and all other nonviolent blue collar crime (you embezzle 50 pensions, you should get the chair imo). Then retrofitting half the, now empty and unneeded, prisons into social housing, for anyone who wants it. If you don't want to work and want to write a novel for 3 years, that's fine by me, but youre sharing your 8x10 room with Cisco and all that guy does is talk about plants. Get violent and you go to the real prison, real fast. Chows at 7(am) and 7(pm). Your call.
Never underestimate how much of the current crisis is caused by people who think or thought they were doing good. Prejudiced idiots with good intentions is the chorus in the song of history and something we must always be cautious not to fall into ourselves.
A lot of the people responsible for driving the "suburban experiment" in the 50s/60s would've self-identified as science-minded progressive urbanists in their day. They weren't, but they probably genuinely thought they were. It was easy enough to not realize how awful their "science" was, how brutally regressive the policies were (especially for how they affected poor and vulnerable populations). They didn't understand the environmental catastrophe it represented or the financial timebomb it set ticking. They thought they were building better cities for a brighter tomorrow that would benefit everyone.
Just because the effect was "I got mine, fuck you" does not mean that was the goal. A lot of these people didn't even consider the downsides of these policies because there were vanishingly few major voices challenging them. Yeah, there was also a lot of capital interest involved and undeniably a lot of legitimate conspiracy (especially re: trolleycar destruction), along with a VERY stateist postwar news media that give us a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but the reality is that the zeitgeist was pretty seriously bought in.
That's a big reason organizations like Strong Towns push so hard to try and upend the current development pattern -- return cities to slower, organic, community-driven growth instead of large top-down projects. It's because we often have terrible missteps when we jump in and start wildly building all the new hotnesses.
I'm a big fan of Strong Towns. I hope to never live in a city again, but I like what they're doing and think it's a step in the right direction. They certainly picked a giant hill to climb and glory to the brave!
If they actually get some change occuring they should pivot all their clout into outlawing realtors.
There's no reason we necessitate, and then legislate, a need for a middle man.
An app and some transparency and all's good. AI could erase that entire profession before dinner.
Call and schedule a cleaner and handyman. Get tax, land, and financial records. Print. Done.
I couldn't live in the country. Too inconvenient with too few upsides. I've spent years in New Hampshire 35 minutes on the highway from everything (meaning a kmart and a massive Hannaford store and nearly zero locally run businesses) and it was awful. I hate every single trip needing to be a planned special occasion.
My city is an under 3 story mix of single and multifamily homes with a loose grid and a lot to do. A handful of medium sized buildings in a walkable downtown. Dead silent at night, busy in the dayz always somewhere open to grab something when late at night. That's my view of a proper place to live. But property values are going insane and the exurbs are growing fast and bringing with them traffic congestion and stupid politics, so I know I'll need to fight to keep it a great place in the future.
Homelessness is not a certainty in society.
The idiotic thing here is that most evangelicals vote in favor of a party and a system of government that facilities homelessness.
I would respect these efforts a lot more if evangelicals would simultaneously support a system of government that would render these initiatives unnecessary in the long term. Take aim at the root cause. Look to the Nordic countries where homelessness is now, more or less, a matter choice.
While it might feel good to judge religious people because you feel they are less generous to the poor in the way they vote, it is worth considering three things:
First, the religious easily out donate the rest of us both in percentage of donators and amount donated, whether it is to religious or secular causes.
Second, it is a lot easier to give away someone else's money than our own.
Third, most of them see a difference between donating, out of their excess, to a local organization that handles the money in a way they agree with, versus having their money taken by force, even if money is tight, by an organization (government) that handles the money in a way they don't agree with.
If someone likes donating to the Salvation Army and finds out that they are using 80% of their funds to pay for staff, then maybe they will stop supporting them and support Habitat For Humanity or a local food pantry instead. Whereas when the government takes their money and does what they want with it, they have little recourse when it is mismanaged.
I don't doubt that religious people donate a lot to the things they agree with. But voting for selfish policies in order to serve your own conscience, needs, and wants goes directly against the altruistism of scripture. Government doesn't get a pass on doing good.
I'd look for the monetary motivation. You know there is one beyond altruism, it's organized religion after all.
For all the failures of my state (see 30% of all unhoused in the US without tearing our teeth out to solve it (that's a movie reference)), this is about as anti-Florida as one could get. I'm proud of this.
This seems like a good idea, but it would have to be carefully executed. I can see two outcomes:
That was my initial thought. In general, churches are seeing loss of participation across the board NPR. It would really easy to funnel the homeless into church if they're literally living feet away from the narthex.
And what happens to those who refuse to come and worship? Are they booted out?
There's definitely a problem with homelessness, but I don't want to see these people be coerced into anything.
Having been homeless myself, I have a hard time believing they can coerced of anything they don't want to be.
Being homeless makes you shrewd, as a matter of survival. You're average Joe doesn't stand a chance.
Christians who actual act like Jesus told them to act become the most persuasive missionaries, by accident.
If every Christian was as accepting, offered physical, real help while teaching future solutions, and treated everyone egalitarian, or the same, no matter their job, past, finances, race, etc* as Christ was then fuck, Id be a Christian too.
"I like your Christ, but not your Christianity." - Gandhi
I thought about using that at the end, ty for adding it.
While I agree this could be particularly harmful for the more extreme cults, I do see where it could be a safety net of safety nets.
I am not religious, I am an atheist. But I wouldn't have a problem returning to the church I grew up in if that was the housing I could afford for my family. The ELCA, at least from what I took away from it, largely helped me form my values I have today. Interestingly, it also helped me leave the church too, so not everyone's experience.
Most likely outcome. These are the people famous for holding bologna sandwiches hostage from starving people until they agree to hear indoctrination pitches under duress.
Possible, but I think if they allow the buildings in the first place they might not be the assholes who have the phobias. And if they’re on non profit land, they wouldn’t be religious assholes either.
But there’s always the possibility.
The Salvation Army makes you go to services if you stay at their shelters.
WHAT!?! TIL, thank you.
yigby is a pretty funny play on the whole thing.
mmmm. While I like the idea of dismantling any barrier to building more-affordable housing, I really don't like putting churches in the position of having the homeless be beholden to them. Part of the reason so many churches object to public anti-poverty/anti-homeless policy is that they're angling for the bar to be lower so they can leverage people's desperation into the opportunity to proselytize to them and convert them to their faith.
I am reminded that Jesus didn't command his followers to keep people hungry and poor in order to make them into believers of Jesus, he said that helping the poor and downtrodden is the way to come to know Him.
Keep the church out of the poverty business, thanks. Also while we're at it, never ever forget that it costs the public more in taxpayer money and resources to keep homeless people homeless than it does to put them in an apartment and give them some time with a social worker.