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Building in ‘God’s backyard’: Los Angeles affordable housing project could herald things to come

August 26, 2024 Catholic News Agency 0
An artist’s rendering of the affordable apartment complex soon to be built by Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance in Los Angeles. / Courtesy of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance

St. Louis, Mo., Aug 26, 2024 / 06:30 am (CNA).

Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, with an average home price almost touching a million dollars in 2024 — a landscape that crowds out not only the poor, but also young families with children. The high cost of housing is one of the primary reasons why tens of thousands of people live on the streets of LA, and most of those who are housed are “rent burdened,” which means they spend more than 30% of their income just keeping a roof over their heads. 

In the face of such challenges, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently announced it will provide land for a new housing development dedicated to serving community college students and young people exiting the foster care system.

Amy Anderson, executive director of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance and a former chief of housing for the City of Los Angeles, told EWTN News that a group of Catholic lay leaders from the business and philanthropic community reached out to the archdiocese with a vision for creating an independent, nonprofit affordable housing development organization.

“Our vision is to really collaborate with the archdiocese and [use] the resources potentially available from the archdiocese to create homes that are affordable to a wide range of populations and incomes,” Anderson told “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol. 

She said they hope to break ground on the project, known as the Willowbrook development, “about a year from now.”

“The archdiocese is a fantastic partner. They are providing the land for our first development, which is already in process, and we’re working really closely with them to identify additional opportunities.”

The proposed building, which will be located steps from Los Angeles Community College, will feature 74 affordable housing units, as well as “on-site supportive services” for young people transitioning out of foster care — a population that often ends up experiencing homelessness. 

The land, located at 4665 Willow Brook Ave just a few miles from the Hollywood Sign, currently hosts a Catholic Charities building, which will move its operations to another site to make way for the apartments. 

“Through Catholic Charities and our ministries on Skid Row [an LA street where many unhoused people live] and elsewhere, we have been working for many years to provide shelter and services for our homeless brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a statement to LAist.

“With this new initiative we see exciting possibilities to make more affordable housing available, especially for families and young people.”

Making land work for mission

The Catholic Church is often cited as the largest non-governmental owner of land in the entire world, with an estimated 177 million acres owned by Catholic entities. 

Maddy Johnson, program manager for the Church Properties Initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE), noted that the Church as a large landowner is not a new phenomenon, but there is a need today to adapt to modern challenges like regulations, zoning, and the importance of caring for the natural environment. 

Many Catholic dioceses and religious orders have properties in their possession that aren’t fulfilling their original purpose, including disused natural land and parking lots, as well as shuttered convents and schools. Sometimes, Johnson said, a diocese or religious order doesn’t even realize the full extent of what they own. 

“How can the Church make good strategic decisions, strategic and mission-aligned decisions, if it doesn’t know what properties it’s responsible for?” she said. 

The Church of St. Agatha and St. James in Philadelphia, with The Chestnut in the foreground, a housing unit developed on property ground-leased from the church. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
The Church of St. Agatha and St. James in Philadelphia, with The Chestnut in the foreground, a housing unit developed on property ground-leased from the church. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative

Since real estate management is not the Church’s core competency, FIRE aims to “provide a space for peer learning” to educate and equip Church leaders to make better use of their properties in service of the Church’s mission. 

To this end, they offer an undergraduate minor at Notre Dame that aims to teach students how to help the Church make strategic real estate decisions that align with the Church’s mission. The Institute also organizes a quarterly networking call with diocesan real estate directors, as well as an annual conference to allow Catholic leaders to convene, share best practices, and learn from each other. 

Fr. Patrick Reidy, C.S.C., a professor at Notre Dame Law School and faculty co-director of the Church Properties Initiative, conducts a workshop for diocesan leaders on Notre Dame's campus in summer 2023. Courtesy of David J. Murphy/Church Properties Initiative
Fr. Patrick Reidy, C.S.C., a professor at Notre Dame Law School and faculty co-director of the Church Properties Initiative, conducts a workshop for diocesan leaders on Notre Dame’s campus in summer 2023. Courtesy of David J. Murphy/Church Properties Initiative

In many cases, Catholic entities that have worked with FIRE have been able to repurpose properties in a way that not only provides income for the church, but also fills a need in the community. 

Johnson said the Church is called to respond to the modern problems society faces — one of which is a lack of housing options, especially for the poor. 

“Throughout its history, there have been so many different iterations of how the Church expresses its mission…through education, healthcare — those are the ones that we’ve gotten really used to,” Johnson said.  

“In our day and age, could it be the need for affordable housing?…that’s a charitable human need in the area that’s not being met.”

Unlocking potential in California

Queen of Angels Housing’s first development, which has been in the works for several years, is being made possible now by a newly-passed state law in California that aims to make it easier for churches to repurpose their land into housing. 

California’s SB 4, the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, was signed into law in October 2023. It streamlines some of the trickiest parts of the process of turning church-owned land into housing — the parts most people don’t really think about. These can include permitting and zoning restrictions, which restrict the types of buildings that can be built in a given area and can be difficult and time-consuming to overcome. SB 4 even includes a provision allowing for denser housing on church-owned property than the zoning ordinances would normally allow. 

Yes in God’s Backyard

The law coming to fruition in California is part of a larger movement informally dubbed “Yes in God’s Backyard,” or YIGBY — a riff on the term “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY), a phenomenon whereby neighbors take issue with and oppose new developments. 

Proponents of the YIGBY movement, which include the co-director of the Fitzgerald Institute at Notre Dame, Father Patrick Reidy, believe the government should make it easier for churches of all denominations to create housing for those who need it. 

Several Catholic real estate professionals with ties to California expressed excitement about the possibilities that SB 4 has created in the Golden State. 

Steve Cameron, a Catholic real estate developer in Orange County, told CNA that he is currently working with the Diocese of Orange, which abuts the LA archdiocese, to inventory properties that could be repurposed for residential use. 

He said their focus is on building apartment buildings and townhomes, primarily for rental rather than for sale, in an attempt to address the severe housing shortage and high costs in Southern California.

Unlike some dioceses, the Orange diocese has an electronic GIS (geographic information system) database showing all the properties it owns. Prepared by a civil engineering firm, the database includes details such as parcel numbers, acreage, title information, and demographic reports, which facilitate the planning and development process.

“Strategically, what we’re doing is we’re inventorying all of the property that the diocese and the parishes own, and trying to understand where there might be underutilized property that would make sense to develop some residential use,” Cameron said. 

Cameron said he can’t yet share details about the housing projects they’re working on, but said they are looking to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Queen of Angels housing project as a model for how to take advantage of the new incentives created by SB 4. 

“I think it’s great, and it’s exciting that they’re taking the lead and that they are able to find an opportunistic way to repurpose an underutilized property to meet the housing shortage in California,” he said. 

“[We] look at them as a role model for what we’re trying to accomplish here in the Diocese of Orange.”

Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago with One Chicago Square in the background, a residential tower constructed on the former cathedral parking lot, which was sold in 2019. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago with One Chicago Square in the background, a residential tower constructed on the former cathedral parking lot, which was sold in 2019. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative

John Meyer, a former president of the California-based Napa Institute who now works in real estate with J2 Development, emphasized the importance of viewing the Church’s vast real estate holdings as an asset rather than a liability. 

Meyer said he is currently working with two Catholic entities on the East Coast on ground lease projects, one of which will fund the construction of a new Catholic Student Center at a university. He told CNA he often advises Catholic entities to lease the land they own rather than selling it, allowing the church to maintain ownership of the property while generating income. 

Naturally, he noted, any real estate project the Church undertakes ought to align with the Church’s mission of spreading the Gospel, and not merely be a means of making money. 

“Any time we look at the Church’s real estate decisions, it’s got to be intertwined with mission and values,” he said.

“We’re not just developing for the sake of developing. What we want to do is we want to create value for the Church, and we also want to create value for the community. So working closely with the municipality to make sure that needs are met, and to be a good neighbor, is important.”

He said Church leaders should strongly consider taking advantage of incentives in various states such as California for projects like affordable housing, which align with the Church’s mission and provide both social and financial benefits. 

“Priests and bishops aren’t ordained to do these things, and sometimes they have people in their diocese that have these abilities, and sometimes they don’t,” Meyer said. 

“This [new law] in California has created an incentive that we can take advantage of, so we need to take advantage of that incentive…it’s allowing us to unlock potential value in land while at the same time serving a social good that’s part of the mission of the Church.”

[…]

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Thousands march in prayer procession protesting Dodgers honoring anti-Catholic drag group

June 19, 2023 Catholic News Agency 3
Thousands protest outside Dodgers Stadium June 16, 2023, while the Dodgers’ honored the controversial group the “Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence.” / Photo courtesy of CatholicVote

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 19, 2023 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

Thousands of Catholics and other Christians marched in a prayerful procession Friday protesting the Los Angeles Dodgers honoring an anti-Catholic drag group called the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.”

As thousands marched outside of Dodger Stadium, inside the stadium the Dodgers honored the drag group with a “Community Hero Award.”

The recognition ceremony took place 40 minutes before the game and was sparsely attended, with Dodger Stadium largely empty when the Sisters received their award, according to Savanah Hernandez, a reporter for Turning Point USA.

Video taken by Hernandez shows the Dodgers announcer recognizing two of the Sisters to scattered applause and a couple of people booing inside the stadium.

Outside thousands prayed the rosary, chanted, and sang hymns in reparation and protest for offenses against Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Controversy over the group erupted in May after the Dodgers announced they would be honoring them.

The Sisters are known for using Catholic religious imagery and themes in sexualized performances. The performers call themselves nuns and regularly use the likenesses of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and women religious in ways that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has called “blasphemous.”

Protestors pray outside Dodger Stadium in California on June 16, 2023, while the Dodgers honored two members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with award. Photo courtesy of CatholicVote
Protestors pray outside Dodger Stadium in California on June 16, 2023, while the Dodgers honored two members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with award. Photo courtesy of CatholicVote

Prominent Catholics and other Christian leaders across the country criticized the Dodgers’ decision to honor the Sisters, including Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, who called the Sisters “a group that insults Jesus and mocks Catholic believers.”

Gomez celebrated a special Mass on the day of the game in reparation for the group’s performances.  

“Religious freedom and the respect for the beliefs of others are hallmarks of our nation,” Gomez said during the Mass. “When God is insulted, when the beliefs of any of our neighbors are ridiculed, it diminishes all of us.” 

Tommy Valentine, a spokesman for the Catholic advocacy group CatholicVote who attended and spoke at the prayer protest, told CNA that the Mass was “simply beautiful.”

“The environment was truly one of love, prayer, and reparation,” Valentine said, adding that he estimated “at least” 5,000 people participated.

“Many people brought religious art and family heirlooms and rosaries — the traditions and symbols which are so important to us which are mocked by this hate group,” Valentine explained. “It made quite a contrast between the huge prayerful crowd inside compared to the two bigots being honored inside a nearly empty stadium.” 

Knights of Columbus join protestors to pray outside Dodger Stadium on June 16, 2023. Photo courtesy of CatholicVote
Knights of Columbus join protestors to pray outside Dodger Stadium on June 16, 2023. Photo courtesy of CatholicVote

Shortly after the Dodgers announced they would honor the Sisters, CatholicVote revealed it would be raising $1 million for an ad campaign to boycott the team.

According to Valentine, CatholicVote’s boycott campaign is “just getting started.” 

“We smashed our million-dollar fundraising goal and put some of the money aside to keep running,” Valentine said, adding that “people are still donating.” 

Valentine said that the ad campaign has thus far garnered nearly 10 million views and listens on TV and radio. 

The campaign has faced some opposition as well, according to Valentine. 

After purchasing airtime for an ad on Spectrum SportsNet LA, the channel then rescinded its agreement with CatholicVote and refused to run the ad. Spectrum SportsNet LA is partially owned by the Dodgers. 

Thousands raise their arms in prayer to protest the Dodgers' event honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on June 16, 2023. Photo courtesy of CatholicVote
Thousands raise their arms in prayer to protest the Dodgers’ event honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on June 16, 2023. Photo courtesy of CatholicVote

Valentine said that Lamar, Clear Channel, and Outfront also refused to rent out any billboards for the boycott campaign. 

“We asked them what specifically they objected to and how we could revise the wording. They ignored us,” Valentine said. “So, we got mobile billboard trucks to circle Dodger Stadium before, during, and after all games.” 

CatholicVote also had billboard trucks circulate outside Dodgers’ co-owner Mark Walter’s Malibu house as well as in Manhattan for the MLB owners’ meetings last week, according to Valentine.

Valentine also said that though plans for additional ads are still in the works, he could not disclose any more details.

[…]

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Housekeeper’s husband pleads not guilty to murder of Bishop David O’Connell

March 24, 2023 Catholic News Agency 0
A memorial Mass for the late Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell was held at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Hacienda Heights, California, on March 1, 2023. / Credit: YouTube/St. John Vianney Hacienda Heights

Boston, Mass., Mar 24, 2023 / 12:00 pm (CNA).

Carlos Medina, the man charged with murdering Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell in February, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in court Wednesday.

News of O’Connell’s Feb. 18 murder shocked the nation after it was reported that he died after suffering multiple gunshot wounds at his Hacienda Heights home. The local and wider Catholic community mourned O’Connell, who was remembered as a man of peace dedicated to serving the poor and immigrants.

Medina, 61, is the husband of O’Connell’s housekeeper, and it remains unclear what the motive for the murder might have been. He is being held on more than $2 million bail and will have his next court hearing May 17.

Before his not guilty plea, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón said in a Feb. 22 press conference that Medina admitted to the murder.

“He admitted that he had done the killing and we believe we recovered the weapon that they were using, and we have other evidence from the bed, certain things that indicate that they were in the place where the killing occurred,” Gascón said in Spanish, translated here by CNA.

Following the revelation of the alleged admission, a current and former colleague of Gascón criticized him for breaking the L.A. District Attorney’s Office’s own policy of forbidding the disclosure of a defendant’s admission in an open criminal case.

John Lewin, a former deputy district attorney for Los Angeles, told Fox News Digital that the statement could affect the outcome of the trial.

“It cannot be more simply stated, George Gascón is a DA who either doesn’t know the basic ethical rules that govern the agency he leads or doesn’t care to follow them,” he said.

“What if a court decides that the confession will not be admitted to trial? You can’t put that genie back into the bottle,” he added.

John McKinney, a current LA deputy district attorney, told Fox News Digital that the disclosure was contrary to police department rules. 

“By disclosing a defendant’s confession in an open criminal case, George Gascón has not only committed a blatant violation of LADA policy but has also potentially violated the due process rights of the accused.” 

Obtained by CNA, the District Attorney’s Legal Policy Manual states that “at the time of arrest, the issuance of an arrest warrant, the filing of a complaint, or the public revelation of an indictment,” information about a confession, admission, or statement given by the accused shall not be released.

Marc Debbaudt, a former career deputy district attorney for Los Angeles, told CNA Feb. 27 that he didn’t think Gascón’s announcement of the admission could cause the case to be thrown out but said that “it could result in motions to change jurisdiction.”

“It’s just embarrassingly unprofessional,” he said.

Three days of memorial services were held for O’Connell, 69, in early March. O’Connell’s funeral was attended by thousands as Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez called him an intercessor for souls.

Speaking briefly at the conclusion of the funeral liturgy, Gomez said “Bishop Dave,” as O’Connell was affectionately known, would be sorely missed, but “we know that he’s in heaven.” 

“From there he’s going to continue to intercede for us,” Gomez said, “as he has done his whole life.”

[…]