LA Churches Want To Build Housing That Ends Homelessness. What’s Stopping Them?

A large white cross fixed to the roof of Crossroads United Methodist Church rises above the church’s property along Wilmington Avenue in Compton.

On most days, the cross overlooks a nearly empty 1-acre parking lot. Even on Sundays, it sees a lot of bare asphalt. At most 50 parishioners show up each Sunday.

But for the Rev. Adrienne Zackery, the warm and enthusiastic pastor at Crossroads, ministry means more than packing the pews for Sunday service.

“Preaching and singing and worship is very important,” Zackery said. But with membership declining, she said, the church’s mission has grown to include community programs for job seekers, families separated by the child welfare system and people returning from prison.

“The world is our parish,” Zackery said. “That is the outlook and the vision that we have for ministry here.”

Soon, Zackery hopes, the church will further its work by building 65 apartments for families struggling with homelessness. The project, still in early stages, aims to replace a parking lot and existing church structures with a new multipurpose building. Lower levels would include worship and community spaces, with four more stories of affordable housing rising above.

But Zackery, like many religious leaders across Southern California, faces local limits on what her church can build. She’s hoping policy makers will ease those restrictions, because she feels a spiritual responsibility to help people experiencing homelessness.

“When the Lord's Prayer says, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth,’ it is the responsibility of the church to meet the needs of the community, which include housing,” she said.

Most of the pews at Crossroads are empty on Sundays, but the Rev. Adrienne Zackery hopes to revitalize the church by building housing on its land.

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L.A. churches have land for thousands of new homes

Half a million low-income households in L.A. County don’t have affordable housing, according to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership. And more than 69,000 people across L.A. County are unhoused on any given night, according to the region’s latest homeless count.

Many churches in L.A. want to help address that housing shortage. Some have dwindling congregations, but plenty of land. They have the will to develop housing, but lack the permission they need from cities to build.

Unless state or local lawmakers act, to satisfy local zoning rules, Crossroads will have to build about 20 fewer apartments, which likely wouldn’t provide enough financial return to get developers interested in pursuing the project.

John Oh is a community organizer with the multi-faith social justice group L.A. Voice. Previously a Methodist pastor in Glendale, Oh currently shepherds L.A. County churches through the daunting process of developing affordable housing. He said he’s in touch with about 20 congregations interested in building a total of 2,000 apartments, but their plans are often blocked by local restrictions.

“Roughly two-thirds of the congregations that have reached out to us can't do anything in terms of development because of poor zoning,” Oh said. If churches can’t count on permission to develop more homes on their land, “It’s really in many cases impossible to build.”

‘Yes in God’s backyard’

Some state lawmakers now hope to bypass local zoning roadblocks through Senate Bill 4, a proposal to allow religious organizations and higher education institutions to build affordable housing without asking cities for special approval. SB 4 has already passed the state Senate, and is coming up for a vote in the Assembly’s housing committee on Wednesday.

Proponents say SB 4 would overcome NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) sentiment by eliminating requirements for lengthy city planning reviews and contentious public meetings. Instead, the bill would streamline affordable housing proposals on religious lands under state rules. It would give religious organizations the ability to build such projects “by right,” allowing them to say “yes in God’s backyard,” or YIGBY for short.

In a 2020 study, researchers from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that California has about 38,800 acres of religious land suitable for housing development.

The parking lot at East Whittier United Methodist Church, where parishioners want to build 60 units of affordable housing, sits empty most of the week.

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“That's about the size of the city of Stockton,” said David Garcia, the Terner Center’s policy director. In L.A. County, more than 2,000 acres of religious land suitable for housing are located in wealthy, high-resource neighborhoods. “These places are really well situated in communities that have access to greater economic and educational amenities,” Garcia said.

But with that potential, the Terner study also found barriers. City zoning maps dominated by suburban development can restrict church housing plans. In the city of L.A., more than 42% of religious land suitable for affordable apartments is zoned for single-family homes — not apartments.

Garcia said that’s a deterrent for religious leaders who want to help bring down the region’s large homeless numbers.

“Going through the city process to obtain a variance to be allowed to build a handful of homes in a surplus parking lot can actually end up being more trouble than it's worth for these organizations,” Garcia said.

Churches hope to help the unhoused — and themselves

East Whittier United Methodist Church sits on a peaceful 4-acre campus featuring well-tended rose bushes and a lively day care center. But the sprawling church property lacks the large congregation it once had when it was built in the 1950s.

Paul Gardiner is one of about 20 active parishioners. He said, “At 84, I’m one of the younger members of the group.”

Paul Gardiner stands in the driveway of East Whittier United Methodist Church.

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Lately, Gardiner has been helping with the church’s effort to develop affordable housing for seniors on the back half of its property. Gazing over the church’s extensive parking lot, Gardiner said, “Basically, it's unused land that needs to be used for good purposes, like housing. As good Christians, we need to be helping our fellow human beings while we're helping ourselves.”

The church would be helping itself, Gardiner said, because leasing the land to a nonprofit developer could generate new income for the congregation. Keeping the church from shutting down would also help the on-site day care center, the Boy Scout troop and Alcoholics Anonymous groups that use church facilities and programs that provide homeless shelter during cold winter months.

For Gardiner, the need for this kind of housing is obvious. He’s seen homelessness become much more visible on Whittier’s streets and in local parks. Some of the church’s winter shelter residents, he said, were employed in food service jobs, but still couldn’t afford housing.

“If I was out on the street, I'd want people to help me get back off the street,” Gardiner said. “I don't want million dollar homes or $3,000 apartments in this area. I think we need to be a little more conscious of the needs of some of our community members.”

Cities fear pushback from homeowners

But East Whittier United Methodist Church faces one big problem: They’re right in the middle of a suburban neighborhood full of detached homes. And one city official told LAist that Whittier will not support changing the church’s zoning to permit an apartment building.

“It is completely surrounded by single-family residential,” said Brian Saeki, Whittier’s city manager. “Having a multistory, much more dense development there is an incompatible land use for that area.”

Saeki said allowing a tall building on the church’s parking lot could result in apartments looking down into the back yards of nearby single-family homes.

The city of Whittier reserves 86% of its residential land for single-family homes, according to a recent UC Berkeley study on zoning patterns in Southern California.

Whittier officials have approved housing on other religious properties, including a project to build 25 detached condominiums on land owned by Trinity Lutheran Church of Whittier. That site is not surrounded by single-family homes. If the East Whittier church’s proposal ever went to a public hearing, Saeki said, “I would think that there would be significant opposition.”

Elected officials in cities such as Los Angeles and Santa Monica have expressed support for SB 4’s goal of removing local barriers to affordable housing on religious land. But other elected leaders from cities such as Beverly Hills and Brentwood oppose the bill over what they see as a loss of community input and local control.

The bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, said SB 4’s streamlining would not remove all restrictions, but would give religious organizations more certainty around what they’re allowed to build.

“California’s housing shortage is driving an affordability crisis that is crushing working families, and many in the faith community want to help,” Weiner said in an emailed statement. “SB 4 gives them the tools to build critical housing while respecting the density requirements set by residential communities.”

Cars speed by the La Cienega Inn in Pico-Robertson, a motel recently purchased by a Jewish congregation that plans to repurpose the site for permanent supportive housing.

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Even with dense zoning, funding is hard to come by

Many churches in L.A. are waiting for a final vote on SB 4 before getting their housing hopes up. But other religious groups are closer to breaking ground.

The non-denominational L.A. Jewish congregation Ikar has seen its membership expand to more than 1,200 households in recent years. To accommodate that growth, Ikar plans to build a new headquarters along a stretch of La Cienega Boulevard in L.A.’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

The site currently houses Ikar’s offices, a community gathering space and a run-down motel scheduled to close at the end of the year. Three years ago, Ikar began developing plans to demolish the existing buildings and construct a new worship space, community center, cafe, offices and 60 units of permanent supportive housing for formerly unhoused seniors who would receive on-site services provided by the homelessness nonprofit The People Concern.

Brooke Wirtschafter, Ikar’s director of community organizing, said adding a few stories of affordable housing on top of the project makes sense because the city of L.A. encourages this kind of development through an incentive program called Transit Oriented Communities.

“We're in a transit corridor,” Wirtschafter said. “We should be fully able to build the building that we want to build without having to ask for any special exemptions.”

Earlier this month, Ikar submitted its development application to the city. They’re hoping to receive swift approval under Mayor Karen Bass’ executive directive requiring city departments to review and approve affordable housing plans within 60 days.

Even with better zoning and speedy review periods, the Ikar project is not a done deal. Their nonprofit developer partner, Community Corporation of Santa Monica, is still seeking the public funding it needs to build from various local, state and federal sources.

“Not just one source gives you the entire pot [of money] to build,” said Jesús Hernández, Community Corporation’s housing director. “We're talking five or six sources on this particular development, with each source having their own set of requirements, timing and metrics.”

On top of government bureaucracy and time-consuming application processes, Hernández said the Ikar project is challenging because it seeks to build affordable housing in L.A.’s high-cost Westside.

“Land values are just much higher as you move west,” he said, and public agencies are under pressure to bring down the price tag of affordable housing development. Some projects in the city of L.A. have ended up costing more than $700,000 per unit.

Brooke Wirtschafter stands in the hallway of Ikar’s offices on La Cienega Boulevard.

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Building on L.A.’s Westside may be expensive, but Wirtschafter said it’s the right thing to do.

“If we want to use housing to help desegregate our cities, we're going to need to build affordable housing in high-cost neighborhoods,” she said.

Wirtschafter hopes Ikar will break ground next year, with residents moving in three years from now. Housing development isn’t easy, she said, but she hopes changes in California law will help religious groups live out their faiths in more concrete ways.

“In the Torah, there's one commandment that appears more than any other, and it's the commandment to love the stranger as yourself,” Wirtschafter said. “People who are unhoused in Los Angeles are people who we have othered. We have made them other and strange. It's our obligation as people of faith to see the dignity in each one of those people and to bring them inside.”