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Opportunity Housing
“The poor shall always be among you.” This quotation from scripture is often misunderstood, to mean that poverty is an inevitable feature of any society and therefore efforts to eradicate it are doomed to failure. At a deeper level, this precept means that segregating the poor so that they are isolated from the rest of society is wrong. Any society that is based on dividing, segmenting, segregating whole communities of people, based on racial and economic stratification is profoundly immoral and unacceptable. It is wrong not only because it is the first step toward denying the humanity of whole communities, based on superficial differences of race, class, gender, ethnicity. It is wrong because isolating the poor exiles them from relationships and institutions that open the way to a good education, a good job, a stable family, a life of productivity and contribution. Instead the segregated poor are channeled in the direction of diminished expectations, despair, and mental, physical, and financial exhaustion.
The Shame of the Nation, in the words of Jonathan Kozol, is the near-total victory of school segregation in the half-century since Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, and Dr King and SCLC breached the walls of school segregation in Brown v Board, and dismantled Jim Crow in public accommodations and elections. We know that school segregation is based on housing segregation. And in this last ½ century the United States has erected the most elaborate and complicated system of race and class segregation the nation, and perhaps the world, has ever seen. Metropolitan areas are economically stratified and racially segregated with ring after ring of suburbs, where income gradations of $10,000 separate one community of houses from the next. And in those regions with the most elaborate system of finely graded economic enclaves and gated communities, exist the largest ghettoes of concentrated poverty.*
In the 12th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus stops in Bethany on his way to Jerusalem where he is about to be crucified, and he encounters Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And Mary washes his feet, dries them with her hair, and puts Spikenard ointment on His feet. When Lazurus says, it would have been better to give that ointment to the poor, Jesus says, the poor will always be among you, meaning that we may have an opportunity to treat the poor with kindness. Clearly removing them from our midst by segregating them in communities of concentrated poverty is exactly the opposite of what Jesus had in mind for the poor.
Equitable & Inclusionary Housing Opportunities for All
It is so that we as people of God can relate to, and not separate from, the poor -- as we are called by our faith to do, that we must challenge the elaborate, entrenched system of separatism in America.
Gamaliel affirms the principle of fair share housing: namely that all communities within a metropolitan area shall include their fair share of the region’s low income housing and affordable housing, and no communities shall be targeted for massive amounts of low income and affordable housing that exceed their fair share of low income housing.
The “opportunity
principle” that lies behind fair share housing is that every family
deserves to live in an “opportunity community,” defined as a community
that includes both good jobs and good schools. Gamaliel opposes segregation of housing by class and race. Gamaliel opposes policies by local governments to establish barriers to low income and affordable housing. [Barriers such as zoning restrictions and requirements for extra large lots, that drive up the cost of housing and make it difficult or impossible to develop low income and affordable housing in that municipality.]
Gamaliel therefore also opposes locating housing for low income people and low income people of color in poor communities and segregated communities of color.
Gamaliel opposes fiscal incentives from state and federal government—for example Low Income Housing Tax Credits—that are restricted to development of low income housing in poor communities and segregated communities of color.
Victories
Empower Hampton Roads (EHR) won non mandatory “opportunity housing” or “inclusionary housing” policy in Virginia Beach. They also won a state bill improving previous policy giving permission for local inclusionary housing ordinances. The new Bill, passed in 2007, protects and expands the right of communities to pass “opportunity housing” / workforce housing.
BRIDGE won a Baltimore City inclusionary housing ordinance that expands opportunity housing in more affluent areas of the city.
New Jersey Regional Coalition (NJRC) is leading the fight in the state of New Jersey to outlaw RCA’s-- “Regional Cooperation Agreements” RCA’s are a loophole in the state’s fair share housing policy created by the legislature, in response to the State Supreme Court decision in the Mount Laurel case, which established that locating public housing in poor racially segregated communities was unconstitutional, and required that each community to accept its “fair share” of public housing. The RCA loophole has allowed wealthy communities to pay poor communities to take their fair share of low income housing. NJRC has waged a powerful campaign, and generated support from an alliance of mayors of stressed older, built out suburbs that already have their fair share of low income housing. NJRC is on the verge of winning the abolition of RCA’s.
Metropolitan Congregations United (MCU) has waged a successful multi year campaign to protect and strengthen the state of Missouri’s policy which awards credits on the state income tax to families and developers who invest in renovation or construction of new housing in the city of St Louis. The result of this policy is the construction of thousands of housing units in St Louis, which has in turn resulted in the cities first population increase and tax base increase in four decades.
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