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.
I’d look for the monetary motivation. You know there is one beyond altruism, it’s organized religion after all.
This seems like a good idea, but it would have to be carefully executed. I can see two outcomes:
- Works out well it’s well maintained and everyone is happy
- Nothing is maintained and turns into a shanty town with the areas downgrading fast.
- The religious assholes who own it force everyone to go to their church and support their sect.
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.
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.
Possible, but I think if they allow the buildings in the first place they might not be the assholes who have the phobias.
The Salvation Army makes you go to services if you stay at their shelters.
WHAT!?! TIL, thank you.
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.
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.
