Pastor Louis Rosenthal of McKinney First Baptist Church in McKinney, Texas, had thought his church was going to use its land for a new church building. However, the Texas pastor says that in the middle of moving forward with those plans, God stopped him short. Now, an affordable housing complex on that property is nearly completed.
“It’s totally a God thing,” Rosenthal told ChurchLeaders. “We are telling the story, but it’s all to God’s glory.”
The pastor referenced an interview he did with Brittany Johnson of NBC DFW on how his church is joining other churches in Texas in saying “Yes in God’s Backyard” (YIGBY), as opposed to “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY), in an effort to provide people with housing they can afford. Rosanthal said he loved the framing of “a church using this land to expand God’s backyard, because that’s exactly how we see it.”
Texas Pastor and Church Support YIGBY
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is a non-profit that aims to end the United States’ affordable housing crisis. The group says that at the present time, “Record-breaking numbers of families cannot afford a decent place to call home” and that no U.S. state has an “adequate supply” of rentals for people in the lowest income bracket.
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“The U.S. has a shortage of 7.1 million rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes—that is, incomes at or below either the federal poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater,” said the coalition. “Only 35 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. Extremely low-income renters face a shortage in every state and major metropolitan area.”
Data reported by Pew Research Center supports the idea that Americans are feeling the strain of housing costs. Using the benchmark that people who spend less than 30% of their income on housing have “affordable” housing and those who spend more than 30% of their income on housing are “cost burdened,” Pew says that “31.3% of American households were cost burdened in 2023, including 27.1% of households with a mortgage and 49.7% of households that rent.”
When evaluating renters who spent 30% or more of their income on gross rent, 51.8% of renters met that benchmark in 2023. This number was actually slightly lower than in 2011 when it was at 53.4%.
Naturally, the percentages of cost-burdened households vary by location in the United States. However, “in every state, a greater share of renting households than homeowning ones are cost burdened when it comes to their housing costs.”
Pew says that construction of new homes took a significant hit in the recession of 2008 and has not yet fully recovered. “The decline has been especially pronounced in entry-level single-family homes, defined as those smaller than 1,400 square feet,” Pew reports.
Rosenthal told ChurchLeaders that McKinney is one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas. According to U.S. News & World Report, the national average cost of a house is $281,900. In McKinney, the average cost of a house is $402,314. Median rent in McKinney is $1,982, and the average income there is $123,712.
