Let’s Use Pasadena Church Lands to Build Affordable Housing

GUEST OPINION

New Life Holiness church (Photo – Emmanuel Kraultez)

Churches want to help solve the housing crisis: let’s allow them to fulfill their mission!

By Anthony Manousos

Pastor Othella Medlock’s church, called New Life Holiness, is located on North Fair Oaks, a blighted and neglected area that was once a thriving African American business community. Since the 1980s she has seen her African American church membership shrink from 100 to around 35-40, most of whom can no longer afford to live in Pasadena. But she hasn’t given up. Her parents started this church in the 1960s and she wants to see it fulfill its mission of spreading the love of Christ and being an asset to the community. When she learned that a housing justice nonprofit called Making Housing and Community Happen (MHCH) was helping churches find ways to build affordable housing on their excess land, she was excited.

“We have five parcels of land and we wanted to use them to benefit the community as well as our church,” she explained. She was encouraged when MHCH invited Mayor Tornek to see her property and he was favorably impressed. He told her that building affordable housing on this site would be “an enhancement to the neighborhood.”

Pastor Medlock is one of many pastors in Pasadena who would like to use their church land to build affordable housing. They cannot do so because their church property is not zoned for this use.

“Churches throughout Pasadena are eager to help address the affordable/homeless housing crisis we are currently facing,” says Dr. Jill Shook, executive director of MCHC and a long-time resident of Northwest Pasadena. “One of the biggest obstacles to building affordable housing is finding appropriate sites. Partnering with churches seemed like a match made in heaven”.

This housing justice nonprofit assembled a team of experts to advise churches that want to have affordable housing built on their underutilized land, and spent a year doing research on how to best make this happen.

“Already thirty churches are interested. We are working with seven of those churches in Pasadena.” explained Dr. Shook. “Yet, none of the churches are properly zoned.”

After pastors and community leaders met with Mayor Tornek, City officials and Council members during the course of a year, the matter was brought to the City Council on Oct. 12^th where it was unanimously agreed that the Planning Department should explore how the City could help make it possible for churches to build affordable housing on their excess land. One hundred letters and comments were submitted in support, none against.

Mayor Tornek Said:

The fact that [churches] would be willing to invest that land in providing affordable-housing sites is too attractive to pass up.

I’m strongly supportive, and delighted that Councilmember Wilson raised the issue in terms of making sure that this doesn’t get slow-walked and that it really gets the kind of attention that it deserves, because there are very few opportunities like this.

This will not only help Pasadena meet is regional allocation of affordable units, but also enable congregations to accomplish their mission to serve the community. Building affordable housing on church land is part of a state-wide movement of churches called “Yes in God’s Back Yard” (YIGBY). This inspired two state bills, SB 899 and AB 1851. AB 185199 passed, allowing churches more flexibility with their parking requirements. MHCH is now seeking to help the public understand how an overlay zone (applying only to churches interested in having affordable housing on their land), would save at least $100,000 per project and a least a year in getting the units built. But to get this passed, there must be public support. (Join a one-hour educational session by registering here).

Pastor Medlock is hopeful that building affordable housing on her church land will bring “new life” to her church and to her community, “I would hope that our church will be seen as an asset to the community, that we have compassion and care about our neighbors. We don’t have a lot of resources like big churches but we have a valuable asset, our land. In Acts 4, early Christians sold their property and provided for the poor. We want to use our land for the betterment of our community.”

Dr. Anthony Manousos is a Quaker author, blogger, peace activist, and co-founder of Making Housing and Community Happen (MHCH). He resides in Northwest Pasadena with his wife Jill Shook, the executive director of MHCH.