Homes Founded in Faith
On a busy corner of Western Avenue in Los Angeles, workers are busily renovating three ramshackle sites into gleaming new homes. Credit the First African Methodist Episcopal Church for the vision--and the $6 million it will take to revamp the sites into 38 new units for AIDS sufferers.
In Compton, an abandoned home once disfigured with graffiti now boasts new carpets, shiny tiles and freshly planted hibiscus--and will soon be sold to a low-income family. Credit My Friend’s House, a Whittier congregation, for the handiwork.
Construction? Contractors? What does any of this have to do with religion?
The Rev. Cecil L. Murray of the First AME Church offers a succinct response: “Word must become flesh,” he said.
However the reason is expressed, a growing number of churches, synagogues, mosques and other faith-based organizations are moving into the cause of affordable housing--considered by many to be one of the most acute crises facing their communities. From actual builders, such as First AME, to interfaith advocacy groups in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, religious organizations are mobilizing to proclaim affordable housing a “sacred right” and to urge more government action.
And, in a striking alliance between church and state, federal housing authorities are supporting those efforts with new funds, a special liaison to the faith community and conferences with religious leaders around the country. In June, federal housing officials announced that money provided to faith-based organizations would increase 25% to reach $1 billion a year.
The federal outreach will extend to Southern California next week, when U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo is scheduled to headline a two-day conference with faith leaders beginning Monday at the Los Angeles Airport Marriot Hotel. The conference, “Closing the Economic Gap: Investing in America’s Communities,” is aimed at encouraging more faith-based organizations to tackle housing, job creation and community development.
“What we feel this conference will do is open up the portholes that lead to prosperity,” said the Rev. Mark Whitlock, president of Churches United for Economic Development, a coalition of about 30 faith groups in Southern California and a conference co-sponsor.
“We think faith communities have been good at giving people fish, and the Bible teaches us that we must also teach people how to fish so they can eat on their own,” added Whitlock, who also heads FAME Renaissance, the First AME Church’s economic development nonprofit corporation. “With HUD, we now realize we can own the pond, with access to money that has historically been denied to our faith communities because of the separation of church and state.”
In 1997, Cuomo established the federal government’s first office specifically designed to reach out to faith-based communities, appointing Father Joseph Hacala, a Jesuit priest, as director. Although major faith-based organizations such as Catholic Charities, the Jewish Federation and Lutheran Social Services have long worked with HUD on housing issues, Hacala said, the conference Monday was aimed at encouraging more smaller organizations to step forward as partners.
“Faith-based organizations have a presence in the community, and bring both credibility and a strong moral value system” to the table, said Hacala, director of HUD’s Center for Community and Interfaith Partnerships.
Although HUD has primarily worked with Christian and Jewish organizations, some Muslim leaders expect to attend the conference. Among them are Imam Saadiq Saafir of Masjid Ibaadillah in Los Angeles, who plans to begin housing rehabilitation and economic development under a new nonprofit organization. He says African American Muslims have long worked to lift up their communities economically but so far have been left out of the government largess.
An Affordable-Housing Crunch
By virtually all measures, California faces the worst housing crisis in the nation. According to Housing America, a San-Francisco-based nonprofit advocacy group, California has only six affordable units for every 10 low-income families--compared with 12 units for every 10 families nationwide. It takes a job paying $14.90 an hour to afford a typical two-bedroom unit in California, but an estimated 750,000 people earn only the $5.75 minimum wage. And the nation’s six worst metropolitan areas for affordable housing are all in California.
Class, Race Issues Arise
The crisis has prompted a flurry of faith-based action in such places as Santa Barbara. There, the Rev. Richard Ramos has mobilized the Faith Initiative, a group of about 20 core faith leaders who earlier this year successfully pushed a ballot measure to build more affordable housing. The group is now working to quell the resistance of Santa Barbara homeowners to low-income housing through a series of neighborhood outreach meetings and a slide show meant to quash what Ramos calls the myths of affordable housing: that it will bring crime, drugs and lower property values.
Ramos said the sensitive issue is fraught with both class and racial tensions between Santa Barbara’s largely white, middle-class homeowners and its largely Latino, lower-income service workers. With average home prices at $585,000 and average two-bedroom apartments renting for $1,500 and above, the minimum-wage workers are forced to squeeze multiple families into one unit, he said.
“I’ve seen four, five families in a one- or two-bedroom apartment,” Ramos said. “You can’t use the restroom because someone is sleeping in there.”
In the Bay Area, 20 or so members of Peninsula Interfaith Action have developed a “housing platform” of concrete suggestions to policymakers, such as creating “affordable housing belts” similar to greenbelts.
In the Los Angeles region, African American churches have pioneered programs for economic development in their community, a historical role dating back more than a century and designed to fill needs left unmet by the white establishment.
In 1985, First AME launched its nonprofit housing corporation, initially to provide housing for seniors and for people with disabilities. To date, it has put up 278 units of affordable housing with a $31-million market value, said Peggy Hill, director of FAME Housing Corp.
Few churches have First AME’s deep pockets--the church boasts 18,300 members, a $3.1-million operating budget and 17 affiliated nonprofit organizations. Murray and others have developed political alliances with such figures as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to help the church acquire federal funds.
But Hill and Hacala stressed that smaller faith organizations can and should enter the field, although the extensive regulations surrounding federally funded programs can be difficult for smaller organizations to comply with.
The Rev. Jim Ortiz of My Friend’s House is an example, both of the promise and the possible pitfalls for smaller churches. Ortiz leads a congregation of 400 people. So far his church affiliate has renovated six homes under a special HUD program that sells federally owned holdings to nonprofit groups at a 30% discount. It has also been embroiled in a struggle to recertify itself as a HUD-approved project participant.
“HUD is inviting us to the table, but they’re making it awfully difficult to stay there,” he said.
Still, Ortiz said he plans to hang tough. It’s all part of his vision to bring people both shelter and marketable job skills: He and his Christian contractor, Jerry Morgan, are aiming to train recovering addicts and alcoholics as workers.
“I really feel this is a call to mobilize my congregation in a much larger vision than the four walls of my church,” Ortiz said.
As a construction employee works to restore an old mansion on Crenshaw Boulevard into low-income housing for AIDS sufferers, First AME Church officials descend stairs during a tour of the building.
