Every Friday, Bricks and Mortals will release a news and media round-up highlighting articles, videos, and other content relevant to houses of worship and their real estate questions.
Houses of Worship and Real Estate
On New York City's Upper West Side, St. Paul and St. Andrew will soon be home to the New Plaza Cinema on weekends. The Cinema formed after the closure of the Lincoln Plaza cinemas across from Lincoln Center in 2018, and will show a slate of recent award-nominated films.
In Pembroke Pines, Florida, the Trinity Lutheran Church will soon share its lot with a Wawa gas station. The gas station will take the place of the existing church structure, and the church will erect a new building on another, unused part of their 5-acre lot.
In Buffalo's Masten District, the Madina Islamic Center of Buffalo is constructing a new mosque inside of a two-story Victorian house. The city's planning board approved plans on Monday for the mosque, which will offer space for prayer from 6am until 9pm.
In the Finger Lakes region, a developer hopes to transform the Trinity Episcopal Church into an inn and events space, and has requested significant tax abatements in order to bring new jobs and amenities to the wider community.
In Old Brooklyn, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, the former site of St. Luke's Church may soon become apartments funded in part by Ohio affordable housing tax credits.
In Chicago, the Catholic Archdiocese announced that they will close 123 parishes by July 1. Many Chicagoans feel upset and concerned about the closures -- especially the potential loss of the vital services that churches provide to the wider community.
Affordable Housing
The long-lasting impacts of racist housing policies continue to impact cities and communities in the present day. Over 50 years after the Federal Housing Act, 20% of the nation's top 100 metro areas have an "extreme dissimilarity index," meaning that they remain highly racially segregated. The commodification of the housing market encourages many homeowners to advocate for policies that further solidify and entrench segregation -- a new PBS documentary, "Owned: A Tale of Two Americas," tackles this topic in great detail. In addition to policies like redlining, which codified segregation and prevented people of color from accessing federally backed mortgages, Black neighborhoods were often targeted for urban renewal. Planners would place highways through Black and working class neighborhoods, substantially troubling the social fabric. Recently, some cities have sought to redress some of the harms caused by urban renewal; a recent Washington Post article highlighted efforts in Evanston, Illinois, and South Minneapolis, among others.
This week, two stories about NIMBYist opposition to affordable housing development grabbed headlines. In Yellow Springs, Ohio, comedian Dave Chapelle torpedoed efforts to build affordable housing by threatening to no longer build the restaurant and comedy club in the town, where Chapelle lives. In Woodside, California, a suburb of San Francisco, city officials sent a notice to residents announcing that the entire municipality was a cougar sanctuary and therefore unable to upzone and create new housing under SB9.
But, as a recent report by the Brookings Institute notes, "diverse neighborhoods are made of diverse housing": if we want equitable neighborhoods and cities, we must embrace housing models beyond single-family homes. In Colorado, a bi-partisan bill is gaining steam that would push back against local NIMBY ordinances by banning municipal slow growth policies which curb new housing development.
When we discuss the "housing crisis," people often mean very different things, as noted by Noah Y. Kim in Mother Jones. In some sections of the country, the cost to purchase a home has ballooned well past what an average person can afford. (For example, in ProPublica this week, reporter Heather Vogell detailed the rise of private equity investment in real estate. Large firms buy up apartment buildings and subsequently slash costs or hike rents in order to turn a large profit, often displacing tenants, before selling the building again to a higher bidder. In Palm Beach County, Florida, nearly 18% of available homes were purchased by investment firms, and this phenomenon extends nationwide.) But in addition to the homebuying crisis in hot American markets, as Kim notes, there is also an affordability crisis nationwide, as working-class people struggle to find homes to rent or own within their budgets. (As eviction moratoriums end, this affordability crisis will persist and grow. While NYCHA has pledged to avoid evictions, many tenants with rent in arrears are anxious. In Slate, Henry Grabar proposed that New Yorkers look to New Jersey for legislation and policies that go beyond eviction laws alone to help people remain in their homes.)
Of course, affordable housing is being built in the US, though not at the rate that can fully ameliorate the "crisis," however problematic that term. In Oahu, a new affordable housing development for farmworkers has embraced multi-generational community building. In San Francisco, the Small Sites Program has helped non-profits smaller buildings where residents were in danger of being displaced. In the Bronx, New York Times architecture critic profiled two affordable housing buildings that offer sleek apartments to working class residents.
A dire report in The Guardian showed increasing deaths among the unhoused -- 77% more unhoused people died in 2020 than in 2016. The US federal government keeps no centralized records on these deaths; The Guardian relied on non-profit sources like The Homeless Death Count.
While we know that homelessness is increasingly deadly, bureaucratic hurdles remain that prevent many from accessing the housing they need. Rules about energy and heating bills are currently slowing FHEPS voucher holders in finding adequate housing. A report out of Comptroller Lander's office found that families were being turned away from shelters unfairly, without a proper review from staff.
Religious Communities and Mission Work
In the face of our many related present-day crises -- the pandemic, the housing crisis, and economic uncertainty -- communities of faith continue to provide much needed support to their communities.
Food justice work has long been an important missional program for faith communities. This week, the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service profiled a partnership between Ascension Wisconsin and Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church to create an urban farming program that provides education, jobs, and healthy vegetables to a community that faces food insecurity.
Congregations also do other important work. In the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago, the First Church of Deliverance has been providing COVID-19 vaccinations to its community. And nationwide, as some workplaces seek to unionize, clergy have been stepping up to help these efforts.
Some religious communities also have a long history of work for racial and economic justice. An article in Religion News highlighted an 18th-century Quaker sugar boycott to protest slavery. And Relevant Magazine published an article about how churches may "actually fight for racial reconciliation." However, as congregations pursue broad racial justice work, many clergy do not feel well equipped to help their Black and Latino parishioners who approach them for spiritual guidance with mental health issues.
Congregations may also use their property in creative ways to provide spaces of respite for their communities -- an article in Religion News highlighted rain gardens erected by faith-based organizations, which provide contemplative outdoor spaces for communities while also mitigating flooding.
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This news round-up will come out weekly on Fridays on Bricks and Mortals's blog. We'll also post to our social media each week.
