Where did Faith-Based Housing Go?
It was prevalent in the 1960s, and its decline should serve as a lesson
In recent years, religious institutions across the country have begun building housing on their land, supported by new legislation designed to ease the national housing crisis. This work is often framed as a bold new frontier for houses of worship and developers alike. In truth, faith-based housing in the United States is nothing new.
Dating back to the 1960s, it was common for faith-based institutions to get involved in building housing across the country. Spurred on by President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, coalitions of mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish institutions received hundreds of millions of dollars in low-interest loans to build large housing projects in cities across the country. These projects made financial sense for religious institutions and aligned with their mission to serve communities devastated by urban renewal and disinvestment. From Chicago to New York to Los Angeles, churches and synagogues were investing millions into housing projects that promised both economic and social returns.1
Yet this trend quickly declined once the political tides had turned, and by the mid-1970s congregations had lost much of their capacity for housing development.
Understanding this history is essential to informing a contemporary faith-based housing movement. Future developments need to avoid past mistakes so that we can build a sustainable and lasting movement. If we don’t, the current movement may fade like the faith-based housing projects of the 1960s.
Where did these projects go wrong?
Many faith-sponsored housing projects in the 1960s were much like other housing projects—large (often containing hundreds of units of affordable housing) and targeted towards areas that had been affected by the bulldozers of urban renewal. Though initially successful, by the early 1970s these projects were becoming increasingly problematic. Many Great Society housing developments were poorly constructed and they began deteriorating almost immediately. Worse, they failed to deliver on their utopian vision of racially and economically integrated communities, instead only concentrating poverty.
Faith-sponsored projects were not immune from the criticism of this system. One such project was Baber Village, a 200-unit garden-style apartment complex just outside Washington, DC, sponsored by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Named after AME Bishop George W. Baber, the project opened in 1969 to great excitement—but quickly became mired with mismanagement and decay.
Run by political insiders connected to Vice President Spiro Agnew, the property was immediately neglected, with trash piling up and maintenance ignored. Residents reported broken windows and unsanitary conditions, and neighbors accused the project of being a slum. Within two years, HUD took control. Just seven years after it opened, Baber Village was deemed unsafe and demolished.2 What began as a $3 million investment quickly became a cautionary tale of federal overreach and institutional overextension.
As projects like Baber Village failed, public opinion turned against large-scale affordable housing. The Nixon administration began to scale back funding, and the ambitious vision of faith-based housing faded. By the 1980s, only a few religious institutions remained active in the field—mostly those with access to external capital or the sophistication to navigate Reagan-era tax credit programs and housing subsidies.
Though there have been limited successes since the 1970s, faith-based housing hasn’t reached anywhere near the heights of its investment in the 1960s, even today.
Be Self-Reliant, Be Stronger
The most critical error of the Great Society era was an overreliance on federal funds. The entire system that enabled churches to build housing in the 60s was contingent on government approval and subsidy. When the political consensus shifted, the rug was pulled out from under them.
Today, we must build systems that are more resilient, self-sufficient, and able to survive changes in federal policy. This is especially true right now, when any federal programs are under question and live under great uncertainty. The growth of this movement needs to be steady and consistent, enabling sustainability in the long term.
That doesn’t mean rejecting public support—after all, government funds and support can often be necessary to make a project work. It does mean, though, that the models we design must be able to endure periods of political uncertainty.
If we do that, the contemporary faith-based housing movement will not flame out like it did in the 1960s.
A Diversity of Housing Types
The second big issue was the concentration of poverty. Though the Johnson administration imagined the housing projects they were sponsoring as utopic mixed-income interracial housing that would help lift people out of poverty and combat segregation, in reality they only ended up serving those with the lowest incomes. This housing was much-needed, but it concentrated poverty in a way that was both detrimental to residents and made the developments easy targets for angry neighbors and local politicians. The result was the backlash that caused housing policy to swing the other direction.
Today’s housing projects need to be both diverse in design and population.
That means including units for various income levels, family sizes, and age groups. It also means actively cultivating community interaction across those lines.
Some projects are already leading the way. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote about Sacred Settlements in St. Paul, Minnesota, which employ an “intentional neighbor” model where community members live alongside residents emerging from homelessness. By mixing incomes, they can provide support, stability, and friendship across economic lines. This model serves people with the highest needs, but what if we incorporated the idea into larger developments? Some units could be deeply affordable, while others could be aimed at young professionals, families, or elderly folks who want to downsize.
This kind of thoughtful design encourages community, not just housing—and it’s a model worth adapting more broadly.
Moving Forward
Faith-based housing has a long tradition in the United States, but it is one that has largely dropped off in recent years. The current movement promises to bring it back at a level which we haven’t seen since the 60s. If today's efforts are to succeed where earlier ones failed, they must be less dependent on unstable funding streams and more attentive to the kind of communities they create.
If we do that, we may be able to build a more sustainable, enduring movement that supports houses of worship as they provide homes for their communities.
Eli Smith is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Religion. He is the Faith-Based Housing Initiative’s Research Fellow.
Much of this piece is based on the first two chapters of Robert Wuthnow’s book Faith Communities and the Fight for Racial Justice. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in reading further on this subject.
Eugene Meyer. “Baber Village to Be Torn Down.” Washington Post, The Washington Post, 26 Jan. 1978.