Bishop George Matthews, head of East Oakland, California’s Genesis Worship Center, has long appreciated the idea of home as instrumental to his spiritual mission.
He mortgaged his own home twice to afford his congregation’s current home, a complex that included a parking lot, sanctuary and classroom, all to support its various ministries and community efforts.
But soon, home will take on a different meaning at Genesis, when the first residents of a new 12-unit apartment complex recently constructed on the site move in.
Matthews’s successful effort to build affordable housing on church grounds is an early example of a wave of similar projects breaking ground at faith-based institutions across the country.
These efforts are being aided by a growing number of supportive institutions, which serve to guide churches through the complex process of creating affordable housing.
In Genesis’s case, the $2.5 million complex – a joint project with developers and an organization trying to address California’s historic housing shortage – not only provides the church with another way of serving the community, but it also helps support the ministry during a trying time for urban churches.
For years, cities across the nation have been gripped with an affordable housing crisis, exacerbated by the nation’s inability to build affordable units where they’re needed most.
While Bishop Matthews is the first to admit his 12 units are just a drop in a very large bucket, it’s also true that churches are uniquely positioned to help solve the affordable housing crisis. Their land is owned and controlled by them outright, often located in the middle of residential areas – free of investor concerns – and can be used to advance a core part of their faith and mission statement.
A 2020 report by Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found roughly 38,800 acres of developable land in California owned by religious institutions, with 45 percent located in the state’s highest resource area (neighborhoods with lower poverty rates and greater economic and educational amenities) and 256 acres located near public transit.
Because not every faith leader has a background in business management, a constellation of programs has taken shape to help other church leaders do what Matthews did, teaching them the ins and outs of development timelines, construction and housing regulations.
The Bay Area chapter of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution, runs a program that is investing $1 million to train religious leaders, connect them to developers and provide small grants to get them started. (Genesis received $10,000 in support).
Right now, the first cohort of church groups involved in the Bay Area program has roughly 300 units of housing in the pipeline, in various stages of design and construction.
And other chapters of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation are launching programs in other cities, including including San Antonio, which partnered with the city to help local churches build.
Patrick Sisson writes for Reasons to be Cheerful, a non-profit editorial project that strive to be a tonic for tumultuous times. This story is part of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. It originally appeared here.
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