Articles

The morality of housing affordability

Making the Case for Housing Choices and Complete Communities: The Next Generation

Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership Inc.
October 21, 2007, posted by FATC

(FATC Editor’s Note: Doug Gatlin of Faith And The City was interviewed for ANDP’s 2007 edition of Making the Case. That interview is reprinted here. See the link below to view the entire ANDP report online.)

Q. Why is housing affordability and location important to people of faith?

It’s important to everybody. People of faith are interested, that being the case, because of the need for “the least of these” to be taken care of. All faith traditions call on people to care for those who have need: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, shelter for those without it.

It’s a question of fairness. For people to work, sometimes full time, and still not be able to afford a place to live, there is something wrong with the system, if you look at it through a moral lens. To us, it’s not just about being able to live close to your job, though that would be a good thing. You often can’t afford to live anywhere that’s affordable where you can even get to work. You can’t expect someone who’s making minimum wage, or even twice that, to live 40 miles away. Transportation becomes more of a cost than is affordable.

Q. Why is there this problem?

If there is enough demand for high-priced housing, you’ll get high-priced housing. That crowds out affordable housing, and no one corrects that with a moral or fairness perspective. Conscience needs to be part of the equation as well as just the brute factors of the marketplace. Too often in America today, the question of morality, the notion of what is right or what we ought to do, versus what we can do, is ignored. Unless people such as pastors, rabbis, and imams preach for us to do something about it, it will continue to be based on what the market will bear. Generally, in the last 30 years, religious leaders in the Atlanta region have sort of either drifted away or been pushed away from the table when these sort of civic issues are discussed.

Exclusionary zoning becomes a moral issue when it’s applied to too large a portion of the town, city, or metro area. It’s OK to have neighborhoods that are mostly large houses, but they can’t all be. People need to see each other. Part of the problem is this separation among different income levels. One reason there is not awareness is that it’s out of sight, out of mind.

Q. What can people of conscience do?

The first is to become aware of the situation. A lot of people are not aware of how much of an issue this has become, how high rents and prices are, and the discrepancy with the wages many people earn. I think people believe the “minimum” is enough, because why would the government set a minimum wage that wasn’t? People of conscience can express their opinion to their elected representatives, whether state or local. Making sure that governments zone to include all people. Fairness has to be brought into it or it won’t be fixed.

People’s hearts are good, if they’re aware of a problem. Whatever we can do, in the faith community or through our government, we will do once we understand the needs. People want to do the right thing, if for no other reason than, in the long run, it comes back to haunt you if you ignore it.

To view the entire ANDP report online in pdf format, click here.

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