Washington D.C., Apr 25, 2017 / 03:16 am (CNA).- It’s a story seen across the nation – a neighborhood formerly known for rundown houses, empty shops and limited resources now finds flocks of millennials coming to the area’s trellised cafes and bars for brunch and drinks on weekends.
What formerly made the neighborhood “sketchy” or caused outsiders to steer clear is now marketed as a selling point of its “character” to new investors and residents.
It’s a change called “development” by many of the investors seeking to move in, and called “gentrification” by some who are skeptical of the impact that the rapid inflow of money has on longtime residents of a neighborhood.
Yet, many of these conversations about the challenges – and opportunities – of gentrification have left out the institutions at the heart of many of these neighborhoods: the churches.
“It’s been a mixed blessing,” said Fr. Michael Kelley of St. Martin’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.
Established in 1901, St. Martin’s is located in the middle of the Bloomingdale neighborhood of D.C. In recent years, the predominantly African-American neighborhood has experienced rapid economic change, as investors have started paying higher prices for land in the area, and new shops, bars and other amenities have sprung up in the middle of what used to be a major drug market.
In the midst of these changes, St. Martin’s has remained committed to its mission of hospitality and outreach to the larger community – both new residents and old residents. “We work hard to be a good neighbor,” Fr. Kelley said.
Their efforts to help their neighbors have actually been a factor in making the area enticing for the investors now moving into Bloomingdale. Local Christian pastors, working together and with the city, helped to diminish the drug trade and offer aid to those with addictions, the priest explained. In a way, the churches began a process that gentrification finished.
However, new residents don’t always give credit to the vital role the parishes have historically played in the communities – and still do to this day.
“You all just really need to move your church, you’re getting in the way of what we’re doing here,” new residents have told Fr. Kelley and other Bloomingdale pastors. The priest recalled one interaction with a new homeowner who criticized the churches’ presence in the area. “I remember saying to someone, ‘How long have you been here?’”
“Oh I moved in about six months ago,” the man responded.
“I’ve been here for 24 years,” Fr. Kelley told the new resident. “I remember when people were shooting up heroin in my backyard, breaking into my house and stealing our TVs and computers. I remember when there were drive-by shootings every night and I almost got hit once. I lived here when it was a very dangerous place to be.”
“If it wasn’t for the churches being here as the anchors of the community, you wouldn’t have the community to move into that you have today.”
“Development” by any other name
Gentrification is a broad term for the movement of wealthier residents into an existing urban area, a demographic shift which changes a district’s character and culture, often affecting neighborhoods that have previously been home to ethnic minorities or immigrants.
The result: historically working-class neighborhoods are transformed into up-and-coming “hipster” or “arts” districts, and eventually, to high-demand – and usually high-rent – neighborhoods.
The gentrification process can be characterized by an increase in median income and housing prices, as well as a decrease in the neighborhood’s proportion of racial minorities. Crime rates often drop, while investments in high-end businesses and infrastructure often soar.
Sociologists argue over the root causes of this phenomenon and the ways in which it is different, historically, from other kinds of demographic changes in cities. What is undeniable, however, is that the shift from primarily minority, lower-class neighborhoods to majority white, upper-class districts brings challenges for long-term residents as well as the benefits of increased resources and new businesses.
As an integral part of many developing neighborhoods, local parishes are also feeling the strain of these changes.
New Mission Territory
Fr. Mark Doherty is an associate pastor at St. Peter’s in the Mission District, San Francisco’s oldest neighborhood, and an area of the city that has been predominantly Hispanic for decades.
He told CNA about the changes the Mission District is facing as millennial tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and programmers for startups like Dropbox and Airbnb have bought up properties in the neighborhood.
“The young tech professionals, they want to live in the city, and a certain number of them – the more hipster type – want to live in the Mission District” because of its “grungier” feel, Fr. Doherty explained.
But the stark economic divide is making life, and parish ministry, more challenging for the Latin American immigrants who have called the neighborhood home for generations.
Many members of St. Peter’s are facing housing issues due in part to the arrival of wealthy property-owners and tenants looking for luxury accommodations, Fr. Doherty explained.
“You have a fair number of first-generation arrivals who are having to move because property owners are either selling the buildings or redesigning them to make them more appealing to the younger set of professionals that are coming in.”
Parish ministry has also been impacted as the changing neighborhood demographics have, in a sense, turned St. Peter’s back into mission territory.
Most of the parishioners at St. Peter’s are Mexican-American and speak Spanish as their first language. “Our time is mostly dedicated to meeting the sacramental needs of theses first-generation immigrants who live in the neighborhood,” Fr. Doherty said, citing Masses, weddings, baptisms, quinceaneras and funerals as among the focuses of parish resources.
“That means that the other folks who are moving in – the young tech professionals who now make a substantial part of the neighborhood – it means we don’t have nearly the kind of time available or the resources at hand to try to engage that population.”
“These young professionals who have moved into the neighborhood generally have no connection to the Church whatsoever, and more generally seem to have none or very little religious experience or background to speak of,” Fr. Doherty continued. “It means that engaging them is very, very challenging and it comes down to one-on-one encounters more than anything else.”
While these personal encounters “have the opportunity to become significant and deep,” the priest said, they take a significant amount of time and effort – a difficulty in a large parish with an already-established community and many sacramental needs.
This place would be a very different community if it wasn’t for the churches. -Fr. Michael Kelley
One parish that has seen some degree of success at merging different communities is St. Dominic’s in the Highland neighborhood of Denver, Colorado.
The old Victorian houses in the area had long been home to a large Vietnamese and Hispanic population, many of whom were parishioners at St. Dominic’s. But as housing prices have risen with the influx of technology companies, startups and other incoming industries, some long-time residents have had to move to other neighborhoods while a new young adult population moves in.
“The families who have been pushed out – they come back,” said Fr. Luke Barder O.P., parochial vicar for St. Dominic’s. He told CNA that some parishioners will “drive 30-40 mins to come to Mass.”
Since many of the longtime parishioners have remained engaged in the parish despite moving to new neighborhoods, St. Dominic’s has refocused its efforts on integrating and welcoming new residents into its existing parish ministries.
To refocus on its changing role in community, the parish has updated its mission statement, Fr. Barder said, and started targeting some ministries to the young adults in the area, including an Octoberfest beer festival and the Frassati Society, a group for fellowship and prayer.
“Families and homes go together”
The limited availability of affordable housing is an issue that the U.S. bishops have aimed to address for decades, said Dr. Jonathan Reyes, executive director of the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development for U.S. bishops’ conference.
Reyes told CNA that within the Catholic Church, “for the last 10 years, housing has actually been one of the top three issues for community concerns and engagement, from the neighborhoods themselves.”
“The way the Church has always framed it is that families have the right to decent housing,” he continued. This drive to protect families – and to defend parishes as spaces in a community – has led the bishops’ conference to be explicitly involved in affordable housing initiatives since 1975.
In the document “The Right to a Decent Home,” the U.S. bishops lay out guidelines for Catholics on how to think about the need to ensure affordable housing. This concept was reinforced this past year in Pope Francis’ letter, “Amoris Laetitia,” in which the Pope asserted that “Families and homes go together,” and warned that housing difficulties may lead couples to delay starting a family.
Reyes pointed to efforts by the U.S. bishops’ conference to help ensure fair rents, promote the building of good housing and prevent homelessness.
In particular, he highlighted several initiatives by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, an anti-poverty program of the bishops’ conference which has set up land trusts enabling local communities to own and control land in their neighborhood to keep it affordable for future generations.
Helping people – old and new
In Washington, D.C., St. Martin’s parish is still working hard to meet the needs of the predominantly African American community and its “very clear Black Catholic identity,” while also reaching out to the influx of white young adults.
“Our philosophy is: everyone is welcome; all gifts are needed; everyone can help build up the Church,” Fr. Kelley explained.
All parishioners are welcomed and encouraged to serve in all areas of parish life, from the gospel choir to the parish council. St. Martin’s is also looking at expanding childcare services and other ministries to accommodate the increasing population of young families.
At the same time, the parish has been careful not to stall its current ministries, particularly its role as the D.C. meeting location for Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. In addition to hosting the meetings, St. Martin’s also subsidizes the cost of utilities and operations.
“Even though the neighborhood is changing, people are coming from all over to come to the meetings,” Fr. Kelley said, emphasizing their importance both as a ministry and as a catalyst for change in Bloomingdale.
The influx of new residents has brought some benefits to the community. With the help of new parishioners, the parish been able to help secure housing protections for current residents against rapidly skyrocketing rental and property prices. In the 1990s, Fr. Kelley recalled, a row house in Bloomingdale could be bought for less than 10,000 dollars. Today, the same house could go for nearly 1 million dollars.
New residents in the neighborhood have also helped to attract attention to Bloomingdale’s longstanding issue with sewage flooding during heavy rains.
“For a long time, no one responded to the problem and plight of poor black folks complaining that we’re getting sewage in our basement when it rains,” Fr. Kelley said. New residents, though, had the resources and know-how to place enough political pressure on the city to jump-start repairs on the aging sewer and waste system in the neighborhood.
Still, challenges do remain for the community, with some new residents failing to understand the history of the area, and some older residents feeling like they are not respected and do not have a voice in the neighborhood as it evolves.
In the midst of these continuing tensions, Fr. Kelley said the parish must resist the narrative of “us against them.”
“I want us as a Church to continue to be involved, to share the Good News of Jesus, to continue to welcome everyone who comes and to try to meet people’s needs as best we can with our resources,” he said. “Our basic principles are hospitality, generosity, using God’s abundance to make a difference in the neighborhood locally and in the larger community.”
“It’s not like I’m trying to keep anyone out,” Fr. Kelley said of St. Martin’s role among the neighborhood’s many changes. “If anything, I’m trying to connect people more.”
This article was originally published July 13, 2016.
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I’m tired of listening to fraudulent science whether it has to do with vaccines, the beginning of human life, or the natural law as it pertains to males and females, etc. Besides using a bit of common sense, let’s stop perverting science for political ends.
Amen!
If it’s growing – it’s alive.
What is difficult about that?
As a scientist I will reemphasize what every honest scientist or even an enthusiast of science knows, that science, by its very nature, has absolutely nothing and can not possibly have anything to do with value judgments under any circumstances at all. Anyone who invokes “science” to support a value judgment, knows nothing about science, nothing at all.
Having said that I need to add that noting what science does not preclude in negative value judgments is worth noting for its objective facts of physical realities that correspond to authentic metaphysical and social values, and God given endowments.
Einstein spoke against bracket creep, whether by the churches or by scientists. Science is not geared to define values and ends. He wrote:
“This is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. On the other hand, representatives of science have often made an attempt to arrive at fundamental judgments with respect to values and ends on the basis of the scientific method, and in this way have set themselves in opposition to religion. These conflicts have all sprung from fatal errors” (Albert Einstein, “Science and Religion” (1939), in Out of My Later Years, Philosophical Library, 1950).
I heard a scientist on the radio quite recently stating that man-made wombs will come into existence within the next ten years. One of the questions asked by the interviewer was at what point will you decide when a new life has come into existence?
Response; at Conception.
kevin your brother
In Christ
God bless Lila Rose. She is fearless. Her grasp of the scientific facts and her composure in the face of manipulative emotionalism and irrationalism are impressive, to put it mildly.
I haven’t watched Dr. Phil since he began making the claim that “there is no objective reality, only perception.” He is a fraud as a psychologist and looks only for ratings in his program. Contrary to “Dr.” Phil’s assertion that there is disagreement on when life begins, biology and common sense both reveal that life begins at conception. Dr. Phil may want to “perceive” differently than reality reveals, but that doesn’t make it so. There truly is objective reality, even if Phil denies it. Lila Rose is a true heroine of the ProLife movement, and I applaud her statement that abortion kills a baby, because that truly is objective reality.
“At this point Dr. Phil turned his attention from Rose to his live audience, encouraging them to “fact check” him.”
Why would he do that? Methinks it was because he knew he was losing the argument big time and he needed to get attention away from that.
If life does NOT begin at conception, then WHEN does it begin?
If it’s growing it’s alive – is it that simple?
Yes.
They forgot to debate how many angels dance on the head of a pin. The abortion promoters always use the most extreme situation to justify their evil.
Without a revealed knowledge of God, through doctrine, prayer, grace, the sacraments particularly the Holy Eucharist, persons whether or not Christian will not possess a true understanding of the sacred value of human life. And with comprehension the right to life. That there is a nexus of the infant in the womb and its Creator.
Lila Rose is what a Catholic is ordained to be. A true heroine of the faith and defender of life.
The premise of the pro-abortion argument is that the end of the life of the conceptus is the purpose of ending the pregnancy. Now, sometimes the argument is about the means by which to end the pregnancy and when you encounter that attempted dodge you find that the means, ending the life of the human being, is in service of some other end. Pregnancy, in the course of things, can end with birth. That is a termination of pregnancy that kills neither the mother nor her child. When the argument shifts to the end of NOT carrying the burden of raising the born child, and anticipating hardship for the mother, then, the trade-off is openly conceded: the life of her child in exchange for fulfilled desire of the mother to not raise her child. Sometimes this is narrowed to the end, supposedly, of the mother not living through the pregnancy itself. Again, the trade-off is conceded openly: the means, pregnancy, to the end, the birth of her child is subordinated to the means, killing the child, to the end, avoiding a perceived, or actual, burden of carrying her own child. The contrast then is between life and desire; and between a child doing as a child does, living and growing (as do we all older human beings also do by just being alive) versus the mother doing as we all do by just being alive. The unequal treatment is then brought to the foreground where the means, pregnancy, of caring for the youngest in society is contrasted with the end, birth, which is a milestone of that very means and is not in itself an end. Life begins before birth, quite obviously, and pregnancy is the early part of the means used by humankind to care for and to protect and encourage the flourishing of human beings. This is all directly supported by scientific evidence that is rock solid.
The topic of women impregnated through rape, if put aside, does not end the pro-abortion argument, does it? Tell the pro-abortion advocate that, for the sake of discussion, we can agree that rape is the exception and that choice may be reserved for such an extreme situtation. The advocate will circle-back and not accept an easy win for their argument. Instead, that exception will be treated as the general rule.
However, the mistaken premise of the rape exception is that the child is not the mother’s child but the rapist’s means of continuing the rape of the mother. Clearly, this treats the child as a violater of the mother but essentially concedes, openly, that the relationship of the two is one of mother and child. The mistaken premise confuses cause and effect. The life of the child does not cause the apprehended harm that the mother is said to experience; and that experience is real but is it caused by the child, in actuality? No, the child is innocent and while the child was NOT present nor part of the rape, the false premise that the chid continues the rape is clearly false. That the mother might experience the rape and the pregnancy as a whole, and find it difficult, tragically, to separate one from the other, the pro-abortion argument exploits the emotions, not the facts, felt both by the mother (rape vicitim) and by the individual who, humanely, empathizes with the rape victim as victim. The mother is not victimized a second time. But the feelings can be exploited to make it seem that the way to resolve the rape victim’s suffering, and to stop the effect of the rape, is to end the life of the child. This, too, is a false line of reasoning. The rapist is not the child nor is the child lan accomplice of the rapist; the emotional manipulation is really meant to treat the defender of the child’s life as an accomplice to the rape. And that line of reasoning, too, is provoundly mistaken. To stop that argument in its tracks simply point out that the pro-abortion advocate is more close to being an accomplice to the killing of the child than the pro-life advocate is to being an accomplice to the rape of the mother. While the latter harbours no ill-will and advocates no crime, no harm, the former promotes the choice to destroy an innocent human being. This openly concedes the child would be a victim of violence and the motivation is what is really the crux of the matter. If one is motivated to alleviate the suffering of the mother, then, killing the child clearly can not undo the rape nor can it perpetuate the rape.
Each pro-abortion argument eventually relies on the contrast in treatment of two human beings, mother and child.