Here I Pod from ELCA Advocacy

Episode 1: Housing and Homelessness Trends and Policy Impacts

• ELCA Advocacy • Season 1 • Episode 1

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In the inaugural episode of Here I Pod from ELCA advocacy, host Regina Q. Banks and featured guest Andrew Fuller, ELCA Program Director for Economic Policy, discuss the pressing issues of housing and homelessness in the United States. They explore the alarming trends, the policy landscape intersecting with these trends, as well as what faith-based organizations are seeing and doing to address these challenges. The conversation emphasizes the need for community and individual advocacy action and includes ways we all can advocate for creative affordable housing solutions. The episode concludes with a reflection on the theological implications of advocacy and the call to justice and love in the Christian faith.

History Segment Host: 

Joey Chin, ELCA Hunger Advocacy Fellow

Special Guests: 

Rev. Sister Cora Lea Rose, Esq., ELCA Deacon - Legal Advocacy Ministry, Brookings, Ore.

The Rev. Matthew Best, serving in Harrisburg, Penn.



Here I Pod is a production of ELCA Advocacy.

Host: Regina Q. Banks
Production: Blake Chastain, Joey Chin, Karen Krueger
Intro/Outro Music: "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" arranged in jazz-style, by Steven Seigart

About the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:
The ELCA is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States, with 2.8 million members in more than 8,500 worshiping communities across the 50 states and in the Caribbean region. Known as the church of “God’s work. Our hands.,” the ELCA emphasizes the saving grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, unity among Christians and service in the world. The ELCA’s roots are in the writings of the German church reformer Martin Luther.

Blake Chastain (00:00)
From ELCA Advocacy, this is Here I Pod.

There's so much happening in our communities, every week and every day, that are impacted by policies at the state, local, and federal levels. Here I Pod will focus on one aspect of what's happening each episode by talking with faith-based advocates as well as showing steps that you can take in your own advocacy efforts. And if you're wondering why the ELCA is engaged in this work,

one place to start is with the ELCA's social statements, which are teaching and policy documents that provide broad frameworks to assist us in thinking about and discussing social issues in the context of faith and life. Social statements also help set policy for the ELCA and guide its advocacy and work as a publicly engaged church. They result from an extensive process of participation and deliberation and are adopted by a two-thirds vote of an ELCA churchwide assembly.

For example, the social statement for peace in God's world, ratified in 1995, states that the Church is "called to be a serving presence in society. The Church serves when it holds power accountable, advocates justice, stands with those who are poor and vulnerable, provides sanctuary, and meets human needs. In this episode, we're going to start by taking a look at what's happening with housing policy. And with that, I'll hand it over to our host, Regina Banks.

Regina Banks (01:33)
That was Blake Chastain, ELCA Advocacy Engagement Coordinator in the booth. I'm Regina Banks, Director of the Lutheran Office of Public Policy, California in the ELCA-affiliated State Public Policy Office here in Sacramento, California. I'm your host as we begin a 10-episode run of this ELCA Advocacy Podcast. Here I Pod helps us think about engaging our democracy in a spirit of robust civic duty.

For Lutherans, this responsibility is lived out as a calling from God, expressed in the discipleship described in our baptismal promises. Partisan stances are not the church's role. Our civic engagement is based on our understanding of how God governs human society.

And our housing needs in our communities are something that many of us as individuals and many congregational ministries are very aware of. Like Sister Cora Rose, a Lutheran deaconess in Oregon.

ELCA Advocacy (02:28)
Hi, I'm Sister Cora Rose, an ELCA deacon minister of word and service in Oregon. We're seeing a rise in people finding themselves unhoused for the first time. A recent example are mobile home owners who had thought they would live out their days in the home that they own, only to find that their park suddenly was sold to a corporation and that they're now facing dramatic rent increases.

This is particularly a problem for retirees and others with a fixed income who just can't absorb a massive rent increase and who can't easily just go out and sell the home.

Unlike a local human being owner who lives at the park or cooperative ownership by the residents themselves, these real estate investment corporations have a shareholder profit incentive to raise rents to the absolute maximum while doing the least amount of maintenance. And keeping the existing residents in the community just isn't a priority. Similarly, a few years ago, we saw locally owned RV parks change their rules so that instead of welcoming long-term residents,

they are for tourist or short-term use only. State and national parks also shortened the length of camping stays. So we're seeing a squeeze even in places that aren't usually thought of as part of the housing safety net, yet really are.

Throughout the Oregon coast, we see construction trends that lead to most new houses being developed in our coastal destination, being constructed for the luxury market, for investment properties, for second homes, not necessarily places for local workers and school district families to live. Last year, our local food bank director reported seeing a jump in the number of families losing their housing and having to live in their car.

Just parents trying to keep the normal rhythms of work and school while managing survival and raising healthy kids in a car. Stunned that this has happened and frustrated that we have houses all around us that have been taken out of residential use and are now short-term vacation rentals. Add to that the pressure of displacement from climate disasters with hundreds of people finding themselves without housing overnight and even more thousands dropped by insurance policies, preventing their ability to take out a mortgage.

I would say that the precarity of housing and the real risk of homelessness is affecting all of our congregations and ministries on our south coast.

Regina Banks (04:39)
Those certainly sound like familiar stories that Sister Cora Rose is retelling from Oregon. They sound very familiar to us here in California as well. But to help us understand this issue more fully, I'm pleased to introduce my friend and colleague, Andrew Fuller, ELCA Program Director for Economic Policy with the ELCA Advocacy Staff in Washington, DC. Andrew, welcome to our inaugural show.

Andrew Fuller (05:04)
Yeah, thank you Regina. Happy to talk about housing. It's a chronic and terrible issue, but I love getting into the weeds of things if we can.

Regina Banks (05:13)
Well, let's get

into those weeds a little bit because for those of us who are not steeped in housing policy, watching the news can be a scary proposition these days. What can you tell us about what's going on in Washington, DC?

Andrew Fuller (05:26)
Yeah, I think it might be helpful just to set the state of where homelessness is right now and then...

sort of zoom out and center in on like some of the policies developments that have happening over last three weeks, right? So in short, what Sister Cora was saying is exactly in line with what we've been seeing at national trends. Homelessness has been increasing at rapid rates. We're currently, I think we saw an 18 % increase nationwide over the last year, which is a massive bump.

the annual HUD report that sort of tracks housing data basically saw that where last numbers I think that I'm seeing are over seven, nearly 800,000 people are experiencing homeless on a given night. Which is just to say that ever since we started tracking these data, this is the peak that we've ever experienced.

The shame is that like there's a lot of easy policy solutions that are proven to work, right? Over the pandemic, we actually saw increases to housing programs and homelessness went down. One of the only populations that is seeing a homeless decrease is veterans, and that's because we've done a really good job of highlighting housing options for them, as well as creating synchronicities with health care programs and other workable things, essentially to help those folks out.

And shockingly, some of the worst increases that we've seen are in family homelessness. The number of children experiencing homelessness is going up. Family homelessness overall is close to 40 % over the last year. And this is just to say that homelessness is no longer just like a chronic problem experienced only by a couple of people who are not employed or who have mental health conditions. It's being experienced by people who have jobs.

have families who are trying to feed people and just do not have any place to go. So yeah, that's like, I guess, a snapshot of just sort of nationwide trends that we've seen recently.

Regina Banks (07:13)
Thank you for sharing those trends. Do you notice anything about the last, you'd mentioned the last three weeks, is there something about the last three weeks that has changed your prognosis about where we're heading with housing and homelessness?

Blake Chastain (07:27)
And just one producer's note here, we are recording this on February 27th.

Andrew Fuller (07:32)
Yeah, and things might have changed since you be hearing this now. What I will say is that there's been a lot of news to be catching up on to the effect where a lot of administrators, federal staff, and members of Congress are also struggling to keep up.

with all the rapid changes that are happening, right? So what I might be communicating now might not be a complete snapshot, but it might be sort of just giving you a general idea of what we've been seeing. I would say the most alarming thing that I've been witnessing is very, very indiscriminate cuts to federal staff that work on housing and homelessness, particularly at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We've seen recent headlines and heard anecdotal stories that roughly 50 % of HUD staff are being set up to be cut. Some offices that work on say things like resiliency and disaster response are being cut by closer to 85%.

other offices that deal with public housing, you the history of stock that we have for like basically giving people temporary or permanent housing options could be like drastically shaped for the future to the effect where like we could lose that stock forever if nothing is done.

And a lot of these staff are working really, really hard jobs, right? This staffing shortage that we've had actually goes back closer to 20 years. HUD is losing staff to retirees faster than it can actually hire people. So many of folks who are distributing vouchers, who are trying to provide housing programs, who are in regional offices in different states, trying to do the best they can to sort of make sure that people who are eligible for housing assistance get it. Those staff

could be lost, could lose a lot of expertise and wisdom that has been generated over last several years. And yeah, I think my biggest concern with that is just that the federal government's ability to actually do anything to address housing crises might really be diminished over the next foreseeable future, right? At a time when the housing crisis and homelessness before this point has already been rising.

Regina Banks (09:27)
Near as you can tell, is there a plan in place to ameliorate any of the worst effects that we're going to experience by losing staff?

Andrew Fuller (09:35)
Well, normally I would tell you that it's the role of Congress to step in when an administration is sort of pushing back, but we've sort of seen a...

decline in responsibilities. I'm hopeful that there's some members who are talking quietly to the administration to basically communicate that a lot of these changes are not what is intended. And we are seeing some of that pressure sort of come into some sort of action already with some proposed hirings in certain offices being rolled back. You people who are getting fired letters are basically being asked to return to the office because they realize the role is so essential. But that isn't going to be applied everywhere. And from the, at least the Republican members

that I've been speaking to recently. They're more interested in picking specific programs rather than trying to save the whole ship, right? So there is a role for Congress to play and there is room for action, especially over the next several months during the spring, that will make a huge difference of whether or not we can protect these programs or whether they might just be disappeared and we lose a lot of legacy history for the foreseeable future.

It's also worth noting by the way that Congress is also working on their annual fiscal appropriations this year. It's trying to set together a federal budget and there's been a lot of proposed cuts to housing programs specifically, well not specifically, proposed cuts to Medicaid and other services that could have a direct impact on housing.

In recent years, Medicaid waivers have been available in states like California to sort of use that for temporary housing and food assistance for up to six months, depending on whether or how you used waivers.

And we know that even if your state doesn't choose to use that waiver for housing assistance, people who lose access to Medicaid, who lose access to essential health services and other things like that are at greater risk of experiencing homelessness or eviction or other things like this, right? Because so many people live pay to check to paycheck these days, just one small error, one small healthcare cost that's not expected could be the difference of whether someone stays stably housed or loses their home.

Regina Banks (11:30)
Andrew, are there any congressional offices that you would think are good bellwethers, an office that if that member of Congress changed their mind or had another conversation with somebody who has lived experience of housing and of homelessness might be amenable to changing their mind?

Andrew Fuller (11:49)
I would say all of them.

Everyone should be talking, really. know,

Regina Banks (11:52)
Sure.

Andrew Fuller (11:54)
oftentimes like housing gets overlooked as an issue, right? It's never on any member of Congress's top priority, even though the cost of housing and healthcare, those two things are like the biggest drivers of the cost of living that we've been seeing in recent years, right? So talking about housing, you don't even need to know the details, is huge. I often hear members who don't want to talk about it often say, well, I'm not really on that committee and that's someone else's job.

you know, whatever. If a lawmaker gets a lot of pressure and they know that it's an issue that they need to be worried about, it doesn't matter what committee they sit on. They will make it a priority, right? So really we need to build up pressure on everyone to sort of make this a top-tier emergency really. I would also say that if you really are interested in sort of the committee level things,

the Appropriations Committee would be one thing, so if you check to see if your members are on that committee in particular, that would be notably huge. But also in the Senate, there's the Senate Banking Committee, which deals with housing issues, and in the House is the Financial Services Committee. Those are the key leaders who start the processes for these things, but if your member isn't necessarily on there, you don't need to be necessarily holding back to talk about these issues.

Regina Banks (13:01)
Andrew, it sounds like there's a lot to be concerned about going on right now, but where are you seeing the gospel? Where are you seeing the good news on Capitol Hill and housing and homeless policy?

Andrew Fuller (13:12)
You know, one good light actually is the action that faith-based groups and churches are doing across the country, right? Like, I've increasingly seen churches who have a lot of extra property, they're not necessarily always income-rich, but they're property-rich, right? Are trying to build affordable housing as a form of ministry. Lawmakers love visiting those sites too and are interested in helping that process along. You know, I think churches are being leaders and sort of recognizing that these are what our communities need and it's a new innovative highlight.

for people to be advancing further. I was talking to a member, this was last year, but he basically came up with a stat that roughly 10 % of otherwise taxable land in the United States is owned by faith-based groups. That's a massive opportunity to help start addressing the affordable housing crisis. On top of that, when you hear figures like an 8 % decrease in veteran homelessness over the last year, at a time when it's an 18 % increase across the board,

that means that programs can work. This isn't a dead solution that there is no hope, you know. We just need the political will and the right synchronicity and the right collaboration to make this thing work. And finally, I would say, you know, the margins in the House and Senate are very, very narrow. And that means that moving any, just a few members can make the difference of whether a good policy or bad policy passes.

The real activity is are constituents paying attention? Are they taking action? And so getting as many people on board in this moment could mean the difference between a good thing or a bad thing happening.

Regina Banks (14:40)
Thank you, Andrew. Andrew Fuller, ELCA Program Director for Economic Policy with the ELCA Advocacy Team in Washington, DC.

Andrew Fuller (14:49)
Thank you, Regina.

Regina Banks (14:49)
So now as we take a quick break with Pastor Matthew Best from Pennsylvania, who is going to give us a moment of faith and

Pastor Matthew Best (14:57)
This is Matthew Best, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and co-founder of the Memorial Blanket Project. In Luke chapter seven, verses 36 to 50, we hear the story of Jesus at a dinner party being hosted by Simon the Pharisee. In comes a woman, an unnamed woman, who is known in the community as a sinner. She has this label. It's been thrust upon her.

It's also a reason why the people at the dinner party don't have to see her. A way of labeling is a way of dehumanizing so that we don't have to encounter that which we don't want to. Who is she? In our society, she could be any number of people. She might as well be the unhoused person holding a sign on the side of the road, or maybe the undocumented person in our communities, or maybe the one with mental illness.

or someone who's unemployed-- regardless, she's labeled. She's not a person, she's a label. But Jesus does something that is very different than his host and those around the table and what so much in society do. He performs miracles that follow the same pattern over and over again. And he does it in this story as well.

These five things happen almost every time. He sees the person beyond their circumstances, seeing their worth and value outside of the label that has been thrust on them. He hears the person, their pain, suffering, sorrow, frustration, plea, helplessness, hopelessness, their mourning, both the things that are said and unsaid. He reminds them that they're not alone. By truly seeing and hearing a person, they know they're not alone.

He gives them hope. Hope doesn't sugarcoat reality. It's not just positive thinking. It sees reality for what it is. And it invites people into a new way forward, a path that God is already laying out and is taking us on. And he sends them out in peace, restored, renewed with a fresh start to go and to do these steps with others. I see you. I hear you. We're not alone.

Regina Banks (16:59)
Thank you, Pastor Best. So as we begin to think about housing policy and impacts in our own communities, what can we do to help move the needle? I'd like to introduce you to Joey Chin, ELCA Hunger Advocacy Fellow. Hi, Joey.

Joey Chin (17:13)
Hi Regina, good to be with you.

Regina Banks (17:15)
So as we watch the news and we listen to perhaps some scary things from our colleagues in Washington DC and in our local contexts around the nation, what are some things that we can do?

Joey Chin (17:27)
Well, Andrew had already mentioned a few different things. I want to highlight that the ELCA Advocacy has an Action Alert Center where people can learn about different things that they can contact their members of Congress about. And currently there's an action alert urging Congress to pass a budget which would support housing programs in fiscal year 2025 as well as 2026. And Andrew had also mentioned that some of the

funding freezes that we have seen recently have made it really difficult to continue to implement housing programs that are really important and really valuable. I personally am a former teacher and first got into teaching because after I finished my freshman year in college, I didn't have any plans for the summer and I kept getting a bunch of job rejections and actually someone from my church

told me about an organization that was looking for people to help at some of their youth camps. And I only knew them because I knew that they ran a few homeless shelters in the city that I grew up in. And so I never worked directly in those shelters, but I had worked with many of the kids that stayed and lived in those shelters and interacted with their families. And it's those programs that are run by faith-based organizations and churches that are going to be impacted.

negatively by some of these funding cuts, and

I think when I think about those kids and families that I worked with, that's, you I really keep them at the forefront of my mind as I sort of think about things related to budget and making sure these programs continue to be funded. So if any of you are interested in reading more about that or contacting

your member of Congress, you can visit the ELCA Action Alert Center as well as sign up for a network that we have which will give you opportunities for connections and to find out more about opportunities for advocacy and that's at elca.org / advocacy / sign up.

Regina Banks (19:24)
Thank you, Joey. What is an action alert?

Joey Chin (19:26)
An action alert is something that goes out on our website but is also sent via email, which we send out to our network so that we can raise awareness about a particular issue that we would like people in our network to take action on. And so if you sign up for our network, you'll know whenever there is a new action alert up. We also try to post these on our social media platform.

What it does is it'll take you to webpage where you can really easily enter in your own information and it'll take you to sort of a draft of a letter that you can modify to send to your member. So even if you're not sure who your member of Congress is, if you sign up and input your information, it'll take you right there.

Regina Banks (20:03)
Great. And I feel like this is an opportunity to plug the ELCA State Public Policy Officers Network. Several states in the union have state public policy offices. And if you are one of those states, there's somebody already designated to help you.

address advocacy in your state context. So for example, in California, you can go to loppca.org and you can participate with us and get our action alerts and participate with us in our advocacy efforts as we help to move the needle in Sacramento. And there are others around the country. So you can go to ELCA advocacy to look to see if you have a state public policy office near you.

Blake Chastain (20:42)
That's correct. And just to chime in, Regina, you can find that at elca.org slash advocacy. And you can find a list of all the different state-based offices that are operating across the United States.

ELCA Advocacy (20:52)
Finally, we're going to close out this episode with a little bit of history, and in particular, Lutheran history, and how it connects to the name of the show, Here I Pod. With that, I'll turn it over to

Joey Chin (21:02)
I have my notes here, but I wanted to make the point that like the, title of the podcast, Here I Pod, like is a riff on Martin Luther's Here I Stand, which he get, he said the phrase in a speech at the Diet of Worms, which was an assembly convened by Charles the Fifth who was the Holy Roman emperor at the time. And Luther gets asked the question.

are these your writings? So he's read his writings aloud and he answers yes. And then he has asked the same, the question, will you recant your writings? And he's already been excommunicated at this time, but he would be labeled and deemed a heretic if he does not renounce his writings. And this held a lot of weight because there were reformers before Luther who had articulated similar ideas to him. But Luther's ideas really took off because of his incredible

rhetorical skills and his use of the printing press, but those previous reformers were killed or burned at the stake. So when Luther is asked, will you recant, he asks for a day to think about it. So he takes a day, the assembly adjourns and they reconvene the next day. And it is the next day when Luther acknowledges that the tone of some of his writings might've been a little harsh, but he ultimately refuses to disavow his writings and...

In his speech, he says, "I neither can nor will retract anything for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me." And I think that speech is incredibly profound because by articulating this, Luther is engaging in an act of resistance in the face of injustice and is also making a defense for one's

individual conscience. And by saying, "Here I stand," I think that he conveys a particular rootedness from which the Reformation would then blossom. And I think that the voices that we want to feature and highlight here are continuing to enter into the call of justice, mercy, and love while remaining in that same rootedness and thinking about what it looks like to live out our faith at this.

particular time in this particular place. And so through this podcast, I hope that it would be an avenue in which we can continue to ask ourselves the question, what does it mean to be Lutherans or Christians or people of faith at this particular time in the service of justice and love?

Regina Banks (23:20)
Thank you for joining us on our first podcast of this new adventure that we're taking together. In coming episodes, we hope to have a conversation about the effects of the funding freeze on foreign assistance, immigration, and so much more that are affecting our federal, state, and local advocacy work and the ministries that we do together as Lutherans in the world.

If you have comments that you'd like to share with us, you can send those to our email address, ELCAadvocacypodcast at ELCA.org. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Regina Banks. Thank you.