Yes, In God’s Backyard: Faith Communities’ Responses to Homelessness in Los Angeles
Jennifer Tu, UCLA Psychiatry, Los Angeles, CA
Homelessness is one of the most urgent and divisive issues in ethics, policy, and public health in many regions of the United States. While its root cause, unaffordable housing, is economic in nature, homelessness results in unspeakable trauma and suffering, presenting significant moral challenges. What do religion and faith offer in response?
Christian theological approaches to homelessness have drawn from the fields of liberation and disability theology. While some theologians’ perspectives have remained limited by stereotypes about people experiencing homelessness, others have incorporated critiques of structural causes, conceptualizing whiteness and neoliberal capitalism as idols and directly addressing them in theological terms. Comparisons of two theologians’ works, David Nixon and Susan Dunlap, highlight these differences, as well as the importance of addressing structural determinants of homelessness in practical theology.
Thus, a practical theology addressing homelessness should address structural determinants, which include exclusionary racist policies, housing unavailability, and unaffordable rents in many regions of the U.S. In addition, the criminalization of homelessness and psychiatric illness creates persistent, even lifelong barriers to housing. Evidenced-based interventions include Housing First strategies and healthcare delivery models emphasizing intensive, multidisciplinary approaches. How might religious institutions engage in these interventions in order to minister to communities experiencing homelessness and effectively relieve their suffering?
In Los Angeles, some religious institutions are taking action after the passage of the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act of 2023, also known as the “Yes, in God’s Backyard” policy. This policy renders approximately 171,000 acres of land eligible for affordable multi-family housing in California. The nonprofit LA Voice is helping faith groups across religious traditions navigate zoning laws and housing developers. However, an examination of the congregations involved in housing initiatives suggests a tendency for those with greater shared experience with the disenfranchised to contribute more to their aid, and by contrast, a marked apathy that more privileged congregations demonstrate toward their neighbors because of perceived distance. In other words, proximity humanizes, and distance dehumanizes. To counteract this, communities of faith may extend Paul Farmer’s philosophy of medicine – “the basis of our preferential option for the poor to say: I accompany them not because they are all good, or because I am all good, but because God is good.”
Christian theological approaches to homelessness have drawn from the fields of liberation and disability theology. While some theologians’ perspectives have remained limited by stereotypes about people experiencing homelessness, others have incorporated critiques of structural causes, conceptualizing whiteness and neoliberal capitalism as idols and directly addressing them in theological terms. Comparisons of two theologians’ works, David Nixon and Susan Dunlap, highlight these differences, as well as the importance of addressing structural determinants of homelessness in practical theology.
Thus, a practical theology addressing homelessness should address structural determinants, which include exclusionary racist policies, housing unavailability, and unaffordable rents in many regions of the U.S. In addition, the criminalization of homelessness and psychiatric illness creates persistent, even lifelong barriers to housing. Evidenced-based interventions include Housing First strategies and healthcare delivery models emphasizing intensive, multidisciplinary approaches. How might religious institutions engage in these interventions in order to minister to communities experiencing homelessness and effectively relieve their suffering?
In Los Angeles, some religious institutions are taking action after the passage of the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act of 2023, also known as the “Yes, in God’s Backyard” policy. This policy renders approximately 171,000 acres of land eligible for affordable multi-family housing in California. The nonprofit LA Voice is helping faith groups across religious traditions navigate zoning laws and housing developers. However, an examination of the congregations involved in housing initiatives suggests a tendency for those with greater shared experience with the disenfranchised to contribute more to their aid, and by contrast, a marked apathy that more privileged congregations demonstrate toward their neighbors because of perceived distance. In other words, proximity humanizes, and distance dehumanizes. To counteract this, communities of faith may extend Paul Farmer’s philosophy of medicine – “the basis of our preferential option for the poor to say: I accompany them not because they are all good, or because I am all good, but because God is good.”