In solidarity with those who struggle.
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YIGBY! Yes In God’s Back Yard: What’s next for Affordable Housing on Faith Lands?
CLUE-VC held six Housing Justice gatherings in 2023 to explore the many aspects of the housing crisis and ways we – people of faith and goodwill – could be involved in addressing it. In August we honed in on the issue of encouraging congregations to build affordable housing on their vacant land – a process made simpler by a new law that takes effect Jan. 1st. SB 4, “Affordable Housing on Faith Lands,” is a bill we’ve long advocated for.
Local nonprofit housing developers have called the new law a game-changer. It stream-lines the approval process for building affordable housing by requiring cities and counties to expedite qualified projects with no requirements for rezoning or additional hold-ups or permits. The law thus greatly reduces the time and cost to build – key factors that have played a part in preventing or delaying new housing.
Ventura County’s religious community can have a significant impact. According to the Terner Center at UC Berkeley, in August 2023 religious organizations and nonprofit colleges (both covered in the new law) had 172,000 acres of buildable land. More than 3,200 acres were in Ventura County! That’s a huge amount of acreage for a suburban county like ours – and almost as much as what is available in Los Angeles County and Santa Barbara County combined! (No, this does NOT include our SOAR land!)
If YOU are part of a Ventura County congregation that might have unused land or buildings, please contact us for more information! And if you want to be a part of CLUE-VC’s work to address this issue, please let us know!
California has a deficit of millions of homes. SB 4 presents opportunities to address the housing crisis and alleviate the suffering of individuals and families who struggle with finding safe and affordable homes. It is clearly within the mission of all our religions to care for our neighbors and to work for social justice and racial equity.
We are blessed to have trusted and reliable partners among Ventura County’s nonprofit affordable housing developers, who are ready to assist in determining if a site is feasible and how the housing might be configured.
What’s Next: We are in the process of outreaching congregations about this new opportunity to build affordable housing on their unused land, which includes financial benefit to the church, mosque, temple or synagogue. Our hope is to identify congregations with available land and enlist them in the process of building housing.
Some questions for those of us who are homeowners:
What do social justice and the tenets of our faiths mean to us if we cannot make a place in our communities for people who do not have safe and affordable housing?
Are we willing to have our communities change to accommodate the needed housing?
Could we be NIMBYs? (Not In My Back Yard anti-growth people who are against new housing) – when we are facing change?
Swap Meet Justice – bigger and better than ever!
Swap Meet Justice volunteers with the five county Supervisors and CEO, following the young people’s presentations and the Board’s unanimous vote to support SMJ with a significant 3-year grant.
Swap Meet Justice – the monthly Citizenship and Family Resource Fair – has now expanded into a complete social justice fair with more than 30 organizations participating! A regular presence at the Oxnard College swap meet, Swap Meet Justice (SMJ) is unique in California with its consistency and scope, always on a Sunday and in the same well-known place.
In 2023 we were blessed to receive major grants from the Weingart Foundation and the County of Ventura. Together these two grants underwrite the substantial basic costs of the monthly event, which include physical set-up, feeding the volunteers, and Mixteco-Spanish interpretation. Smaller grants have been sought for special projects. (If you have a link to a community-centered grant, please let us know!)
Come and check out Swap Meet Justice! We’re in front of the Gym at Oxnard College. Our first date in 2024 is January 28th. We’re there 9am-3pm.
More than 30 organizations – public and private –offer free help onsite with services like these:
- Assistance with applications for Citizenship, USCIS fee waiver, DACA renewal, and more. Applicants leave with a complete application, reviewed by an expert and ready to mail!
- Lawyers consulting on immigration, employment, and family law;
- Services specific to farm workers and their families;
- Health care organizations delivering vaccinations and health screenings onsite and linking people to low-cost care – services that normally operate only during the work week;
- A wide range of social services for families, seniors, children, and people with disabilities; and
- Environmental and social justice organizations that engage people around how they can work together to improve their community.
CLUE-VC is fiscal sponsor for Swap Meet Justice (at no cost to the project) and is an active participant; and we recruit volunteers and assist in organizing the monthly events.
Typical scene at the SMJ Citizenship booth – volunteers interviewing applicants and preparing applications.
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