Increasing Affordable Housing On Religious Land

Affordable housing and homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

An estimated 88% of Los Angeles County households are “cost-burdened,” or spending 30-50% of income on rent or mortgage payments. Those facing housing instability, eviction, and homelessness are heavily concentrated in Black and Latino communities. The California Housing Partnership estimates that there is a shortage of roughly 500,000 affordable housing units for Los Angeles County’s 800,000 low-income residents. The shortage of housing also stems from the lack of houses being built in recent decades, and state and regional policies now require local governments to plan for 341,000 homes that are affordable to low and very low-income people by 2030. Meanwhile, congregations across the County are sitting on land that has been underutilized as membership continues to decline. Faith in Housing program staff guide congregations through the challenges of affordable housing production and supply—and are now able to capitalize on LA Voice’s advocacy work to pass new zoning legislation.

The Faith in Housing program helps congregations build affordable and permanent supportive housing on their property by identifying sites and guiding vision, site analysis and feasibility studies, and developer selection. By serving as intermediaries and advisors, LA Voice creates effective partnerships between congregations and developers, and the program has a growing list of more than 80 churches in various stages of predevelopment or discernment. Our strategy focuses primarily on the development of multifamily housing from 50-150 units. Currently, we are working with 28 congregations with a cumulative estimated housing yield of 2,298 units.
Since its launch in 2019, LA Voice’s Faith in Housing program has made a significant impact. The program has expanded the pipeline of congregations interested in building affordable housing on faith-based lands and guided numerous congregations through the discernment, feasibility, and RFP process. Throughout the vetting process, many Los Angeles County faith communities faced restrictive zoning ordinances or experienced lengthy rezoning delays. To work within existing zoning laws, and to provide options for smaller sites or those with more limited financing, we expanded project offerings to include an alternative accessory dwelling unit (ADU) option—secondary residential units that are either expansions or free-standing structures sharing lots with larger residences. We currently have ADU projects in progress for five congregations.

To help address zoning barriers at a systemic level, LA Voice organized to educate city, county, and state leaders about the benefits of establishing a religious land overlay zone. After much effort with coalition partners, SB 4, the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, went into effect in October 2023— significantly expanding the number of eligible congregations and eliminating the need for site-by-site zoning statewide. Increased attention for the program means that even more congregations are interested in exploring options for building affordable housing—and that LA Voice can re-open conversations with 35+ newly eligible churches. LA2050’s continued support will enable this increased capacity. In addition to facilitating initial predevelopment work for congregations, we also address the root causes of the affordable housing shortage—a confluence of systemic racism, lack of sufficient production, poor policy choices, and the use of real estate as a commodity vs. a basic need.

Faith in Housing has worked with 80+ congregations to date—including 28 currently in the pipeline with a cumulative estimated housing yield of 2,298 units. One congregation has moved to the stage of issuing a request for proposal (RFP) for prospective developers. The passage of SB 4 in Oct. 2023 is further evidence that experts and state officials recognize the importance of this work, and support congregations interested in building affordable housing. As a result of the “Yes In God’s Backyard” (YIGBY) bill, our program has received broad media coverage—including an article in The New York Times—increasing interest regionally and nationally. To increase capacity, we are working to replicate a technical team to guide new faith communities through this process. More than 25 congregations have participated in educational cohorts, which streamline the process through a 4-session, interactive curriculum about design, financing, and construction, while networking and addressing concerns.