If you recently looked for low-income housing, senior housing, or housing for the disabled…for yourself or for a loved one… you probably found very limited options. Poor-quality housing or a very (VERY!) long waiting list for something better. The affordable housing crisis has been brewing for a very long time, and has developed alongside an equally important minimum wage crisis. Is this crisis impossible to solve? Or is the solution right in front of our faces? Let’s dive right in, and see!
In the prosperous 1950s, a young family would pay a week of salary for housing. Now it’s 30% or more of household earnings. That’s bad enough. which is bad enough. Worse, we need to remember that in the 1950s it was usually just the head of the household that paid the rent. Today many households have two income earners, and often three or more… as roommates are taken on to pay the rent. The last 40 years of housing costs tell us that prices won’t fall anytime soon.
If everyone could just earn more, then low-income housing wouldn’t be needed. Unfortunately, for many Americans, the income situation is even worse. While the top 1% has done remarkably well over the past few decades, but individuals in the lower half of the economy have lost a lot of ground.
Let’s look back to the 1950s, the time that many Americans see as the peak of American prosperity. Good, well-paying jobs, with benefits and pension plans, were becoming the norm. Working-class families could afford a home in the suburbs and a second home for the summer. All from a single family member’s paycheck. How did they do it? A big part of the prosperity equation was that 35% of American jobs were unionized. The leverage of organized union representation meant regular salary increases, a 40-hour work week, benefits, and the possibility of a secure retirement.
Conservative politicians have always been opposed to unions, often seeing them as socialist or communist. But it was Ronald Regan, during the 1980s, who made it a mission to eliminate unions in America. Regan’s movement said that both the workers and the American economy would be better off. Without the inefficiencies that unions brought to the workplace, corporations would be able to pay workers more and provide better benefits. After 40 years, we can see that this is not what happened.
Today, all too many Americans feel that they are not doing as well as their parents. Statistics tell us that their complaints are justified. Just 11% of American workers in 2020 were unionized, and most of the remaining union workers are Government workers. The decline in corporate union workers has been even steeper.
As the economy evolved over the past few decades, we moved from factory jobs to a “service economy”. At the high end of the service economy… lawyers, doctors, software developers, corporate managers, real estate agents, etc. … there has been a lot of economic advancement. But the major of service jobs are low-paying… manicurist, cashier, hotel worker, phone sales operator, healthcare worker, and almost any position in fast food.
When we run the changes in housing against wages, this is what we get. In 1950 the median price of a house was $12,000. By 2022 that price rose to $250,000. That’s an increase of over 20 times. In 1950 the minimum wage was around $1.00. Today the federal minimum wage is $7.25. There is a movement to make the minimum wage $15. New York and Washington D.C. are two of the very few localities that currently meet or are moving towards $15. Yet to keep even with the increase in the cost of housing, something like $20 to $25 per hour is needed.
When we look at big cities, the picture is a bit more complicated. The US population has been moving from rural areas and small towns for the last 200 years. Aside from a few small anomalies, such as the Pandemic, the move continues. In 1860 only 20% of the US population was Urban. America’s largest city was New York, with a population of about 500,000. Today, 80-85% of the US population is Urban and there are 40 cities with a population of 500,000 or more.
In the says of fewer and smaller cities, cheap labor could be found outside of the wealthier neighborhoods, or even in nearby towns. Now the increase in urban sprawl, traffic congestion, and a lack of public transportation means that even if there are available low-cost workers a few communities away from the high-cost urban areas with minimum wage jobs, workers cannot afford to travel to the jobs. The term “Super-Communter” is used to describe workers who need to travel for 3 hours every day to get to work. Today, even super-commuters are too few to fill in the need for minimum wage employees.
The high cost of housing is driving minimum-wage workers further, and further away from where these jobs are. And regardless of how long the “remote job” revolution lasts, having a remote barista won’t get you a hot cup of coffee in the morning. And the same goes for firemen, police, teachers, etc. Even those these positions pay more than minimum wage, and they may even have benefits, they are increasingly unable to afford to live where they work.
This is a terrible and growing pattern for America in the 21st Century. Some days it seems like the only way to solve the housing crisis would be if someone gave away tens of thousands of parcels of land to the many non-profits trying to solve this problem and told them, “Please take this gift, no one is using this land and it would be a sin to let it sit unused while millions of Americans need decent housing.” **Sigh**
Wait a minute! Unused land, helping the poor and needy, failure to act would be a SIN?” An act of Christian Charity could solve homelessness in America! America’s Christian Denominations can simply give away unused churches to non-profit organizations that can use the land (and the building?) for housing!
It’s not as strange or radical a proposal as you may think. According to, “Congregations in 21st Century America” few Americas regularly worship in our 380,000 churches. The largest churches have done better in retaining their flock than the smaller churches, but many churches are empty or nearly empty. And the remaining worshipers are often in their 60s and 70s, with virtually no children to replace them.
Churches are closing at an unprecedented rate. A study by Lifeway Research did a study that covered just 60% of Protestant denominations and did not include properties held by the Catholic Church (which is likely to outnumber this entire sample). They found that 4,500 churches closed in 2019. Some were bought out by or merged with other churches, but most simply closed. As all of America ages, church closures will accelerate
Churches are being sold… usually to the highest bidder. I simply propose that churches give away their churches and church properties to whichever non-profit organizations can prove they will do the greatest good with this donation. If churches say that they can’t do this, because they may need the land in the future, the answer is simple. Let the non-profits have a 50 to 100 year lease, with the stipulation that the church can reclaim the property if they have enough worshipers to fill a church. But the demographics say that this sort of recovery is virtually impossible.
With 380,000 churches… to say nothing of seminaries, monasteries, convents, and other religious properties, 50,000 to 100,000 of these properties could be converted for housing. If the properties are handed over for free to responsible non-profits, the value of the land itself could be used for loans to fund the construction of family housing. Church coalitions could jointly manage a non-denominational office of “Property Conversion”, to ensure that the best practices are followed.
Of course, there is an argument that giving away billions of dollars of property makes no sense. Which is an excellent argument… for a real estate agent. But the use for church property should be aligned to the goals of that church. If we ask, “What Would Jesus Do”, I’m guessing that he would choose helping the poor and needy over finding teh highest bidder. As I recall, Jesus not only threw the money changers out of the temple, he was none too polite about how he did it. Jesus was very unhappy about using the house of God to make money. If Jesus was angry about making money IN the house of God, I can’t imagine he would be happy about making a profit SELLING houses of God.
What do you think? With declining worshipers, and no “next generation” to change that decline, many church properties will simply lose their purpose. And since the Pandemic, the declining attendance numbers have gone into overdrive. Should Churches sell off properties to the highest bidder, or should they find a new purpose, one that better aligns with the teachings of Jesus? We want to hear what you, our readers think!