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Why It’s So Hard to Build Affordable Housing on Church Land, and How To Do It Anyway

Churches and other mission-driven institutions that want to build affordable housing for their communities on land they own face a punitively complex and fraught development process, with an enormous learning curve. A piece by the Bay Area’s NPR affiliate, KQED, explores the efforts of San Francisco churches to create affordable housing and how LISC is helping guide the way.

The excerpt below was originally published:
California Churches Want to Build Affordable Housing on Their Land, So Why Is It So Hard?
By Adhiti Bandlamudi, KQED

Above photo credit: Beth LaBerge/KQED

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Making affordable housing work for more churches

Pastor L.J. Jennings leads the Kingdom Builders Christian Fellowship in Oakland. Born and raised in the East Bay, Jennings has seen his neighbors and family members get pushed out of the area by the rising cost of living.

“We talk about gentrification, but my word is ‘displacement,’” Jennings said. “When I look at who is being pushed out, it’s minority folks, it’s people of color. It’s changing the demographics of our city, of our communities.” 

Before becoming a pastor, Jennings worked in residential and commercial real estate and decided to put his experience and skills to use. In 2010, a year after opening the Kingdom Builders Christian Fellowship, he built a sober-living facility on land the church owned. Seven years later, he opened a hundred-bed home for formerly incarcerated individuals looking to reenter society. 

“All of [the tenants in our facilities] are classified as homeless,” said Jennings. “We knew right away early on that we needed to address the homelessness crisis, so that’s what we’ve been doing.” 

After learning the ins and outs of building subsidized housing, Jennings wanted to help other churches do the same. In 2019, he started the Kingdom Builders Project, a nonprofit with two goals: to help churches build affordable housing and to make the projects as financially sound as possible to help struggling churches stay afloat. 

The Kingdom Builders Project has been working with churches across the East Bay on housing projects: four in Oakland and one in Hayward. All the churches are Black churches. 

“We know in the Black community that Blacks are being displaced in record numbers,” Jennings said. “So as a community, we’re really trying to stem the tide of Black displacement. We’re fighting for our survival.” 

“With the affordable housing crisis, there are no silver bullets. This is just one opportunity to really get at our regional affordable housing crisis.”
— Tia Hicks, LISC Bay Area program officer

While building housing may align with a church’s mission to serve its community, it’s not always cost-effective. According to Jennings, this is because faith institutions aren’t familiar with the financing of housing developments and therefore don’t know how to negotiate with savvy housing developers. 

“We have these situations where nonprofit housing developers are getting land from the church and the church doesn’t benefit from it other than their name on the building,” Jennings said.

For example, many affordable housing developers make money through a “developer fee,” a sum of money included in the total housing development costs. Jennings argues housing developers should share that fee with churches, especially if the church is involved in that development process and owns the highly valuable land. 

There are other ways to access revenue streams, Jennings says, if only churches knew how to tap into them. Traditionally, an affordable housing developer would manage the apartment property or contract it out, but if church members learned how to manage the property, they could keep that revenue. Jennings envisions the church providing other services, too. 

“Whether it’s computer assistance, whether it’s after-school care, whatever it is — it’s for the community and the residents,” he said. “We would help them develop their services that are going to be housed inside the development so that they can create additional revenue.” 

Jennings also wants to increase the odds that churches can house their own members who are at risk of displacement. Getting a unit in an affordable housing project usually happens by lottery, to make it a fair process. Jennings says that in the time it takes to build the housing, churches can work with their members to help them qualify.

“We’re working with them on their credit, we’re working with them on their budgeting, making sure there’s job stability,” Jennings said. “We’re working with them on all the areas so that when the application opens, our people are ready to apply.” 

The four housing projects in Oakland are in the early stages and haven’t started construction yet, but Jennings says they look promising. The project in Hayward, however, is running into roadblocks from the church’s neighbors and confusing county regulations. 

The Blessings of Faith church, located a few blocks away from downtown Hayward, wants to build a 42-unit complex for seniors with low incomes in a small parking lot behind the church. Pastor Tally Knott grew up in Hayward, attended the church and witnessed the displacement of seniors and others in her community. 

“I was always around seniors, so my care for older people came about by just being around them,” said Knott. “This is my home, these are my people. I understand the community here and the needs of the people.” 

Since starting the development process, Knott says the church has gotten pushback from neighbors who fear the apartment building will be too large for the area. Others in surrounding homes fear it will bring crime and disorder to their quiet community. 

“We live in a community where people are comfortable and don’t want change, but everyone’s going to become older one day,” said Knott. “I was even thinking about putting up signs that say ‘Seniors Matter.’” 

Despite the setbacks, Knott and Jennings are resolute in their goal to build affordable housing in their communities. There’s no guarantee that these projects will work out exactly as envisioned, but it makes sense that faith organizations like the Kingdom Builders Project are giving it a try. Churches and other faith institutions have provided shelter to their communities for centuries.

“With the affordable housing crisis, there are no silver bullets,” said Tia Hicks, program officer at the Bay Area chapter of the nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). “This is just one opportunity to really get at our regional affordable housing crisis.” 

Since 2019, LISC Bay Area has worked with 20 churches in the East Bay that wanted to develop housing on their property. One church is set to start construction on their property by the end of this year while others are selecting development partners and getting started on the approval process. Hicks says faith institutions are some of the best organizations to get involved in housing because they are usually entrenched in the communities they serve and understand the specific needs. 

“It enables communities to retain ownership over what gets built,” she said. “Especially if we’re prioritizing racial equity in our work, in supporting Black congregations, there’s a lot of powerful synergy there.”

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