Editorial: If the city wants the faith community to help the homeless, it should make sure it’s not standing in the way

It makes sense that L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti would enlist religious leaders in a citywide effort to fight homelessness. At a time when officials are gearing up to build thousands of units of housing for homeless people, the city could use the moral suasion of pastors, rabbis, imams and other faith leaders in communities that might be reluctant to embrace such projects.

The mayor’s “Days of Compassion” effort suggests a number of ways that congregations can get involved, such as reserving space in their parking lots for homeless people who sleep in their vehicles overnight or for the enterprising Lava Mae mobile showers, or using spare property for housing or storage facilities. They could even just take their congregants on tours of existing permanent supportive housing developments, which can blend in with their surroundings surprisingly well.

Of course, the city should aggressively court all potential allies and influencers to help in the complicated task of housing homeless people. Faith communities, however, have a particular mandate to be compassionate. And if any group deserves compassionate outreach, it’s the city’s homeless population, which has grown 20% in the last year. There is plenty of money committed to housing and services, but there’s not enough goodwill and understanding on the part of neighborhoods that have resisted housing and storage facilities.

More than 100 religious leaders have signed a pledge to undertake some kind of project in the next four months. Garcetti should push these leaders to follow through on their commitments.

Unfortunately, the city hasn’t always made it easy for faith groups that have taken it upon themselves to do something for homeless people. Several years ago, when a temple in Bel-Air wanted to offer overnight parking to people living in their vehicles, it was stymied by a city ordinance that didn’t allow a parking lot to function essentially as a shelter. It took the city a year to craft a way around that.

When an Episcopal church in Highland Park in late 2015 allowed homeless people to sleep inside at night, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority objected that the pews were too narrow and people sleeping on them might fall off. That absurd complaint was eventually resolved and the church kept its doors open to the unsheltered.

City officials say that they’ve learned from such experiences and realize that innovative ideas — and the urgency of implementing them — need bureaucratic fixes quickly. So let’s see them do that. Officials say they will try to be more enablers than impediments, such as by linking a church interested in leasing land for permanent supportive housing with a developer and service provider. Whatever the city and religious leaders can do to facilitate housing and services for homeless people would, indeed, be a blessing.

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