Name: How Minnesota churches are tapping a ‘land use’ law to combat homelessness
Uploaded: 2026-02-28T11:30:04.000Z
Duration: 13 min 9 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

About a decade ago, our family moved to Minnesota for me to get a doctorate in housing.

Adverbs of degree

A few years into the program, I really sensed God was saying it was time to look at poverty in my own backyard.

Yeah, just a poverty of relationship and a loss of a family.

I moved up here from Kansas in 2015 and I met with my brother for a while.

He ended up losing the house and I ended up on the street and I was in a tent down by the rivers.

And some people from a different church came out and collected everybody they could find that was out there and put us up in a hotel.

Most people out there haven't been there that long.

Just some freak, you know, mishap or something crazy happens in their life.

Yeah, most of the homeless people out there aren't light.

I know what the preconceived notions are.

There was times when I was making really good money, had a nice house, had a nice car, everything.

The people that I've noticed are chronically homeless have that severe trauma or family breakdown and don't have those relationships to really support.

When you go through something, if you don't have someone to turn to and it's just yourself, it's a lot to depend on yourself.

I think the biggest general thing that I've heard that I definitely think isn't true is that people who are chronically homeless kind of got themselves into those situations.

Like, I'll often say people get into chronic homelessness from a catastrophic loss of community, especially from a young age.

You know, I tend to shy away from people standing on the corner, no signs and stuff, even though I knew for the most part that they weren't.

They're not all, you know, drug addicts and thieves and whatever else.

People think they're just stuck in a position that once you get there, it's really hard to get out of.

If you find a job, find, you know, here, nothing's consistent.

The healthcare system was kind of waving their white flag, saying, this is really costly.

Our neighbors are coming into the er, you know, feigning an illness essentially for a bed and a meal because we.

We lack enough support to help our neighbors.

One of those major barriers was local zoning and.

And we Discovered the Religious Land Use Act.

There was a church in St. Paul that was in a lawsuit with the city of St.

Paul in the federal courts because they had opened up a day respite center in their church basement, and

the city had put significant restrictions on them operating that day respite center for the homeless.

And ultimately they landed on the Religious Land Use Act.

They won in federal courts and saw the strength of that federal law settled.

Was working with legislators to come to this agreement legislation to be able for churches and religious institutions to be able to use their land to provide housing for the chronically homeless.

Minnesota is the first to have this legislation.

It's a religious land use that we can provide these homes for formerly chronically homeless neighbors.

And there is a description of what that is.

It's three years, I believe, you've been homeless and unstably housed.

It's a different way of living, for sure.

But we felt called to come by the Lord, so we came.

They always like to have someone in the home.

So if someone's out of town for like a week, they like to have someone in there.

So I had the opportunity to do that a few times, and I really loved it.

So our homes are sponsored and built by other faith communities that maybe aren't ready to put a sacred settlement on their land or don't have the land to do that, but

can participate in this movement by building one home and lifting one person up off the streets.

We're building homes as if we were building them for ourselves.

When you stay in a place, you build stability.

You build stability with yourself, with the neighborhood, with the relationships that you're in.

And so we want to be building something that is, yes, affordable, but

We are in such close relationship with our neighbors that we're pretty attuned to the things that go on.

We really advocate for them to connect with a therapist or a social worker, people that have the skills.

The missing piece is the relational piece.

At the end of the day, who is looking at our neighbors in the eye and saying, you're of great value.

Looking at them with awe and delight and wonder and saying, like, I'm so glad to be with you.

We're certainly not solving the problems for everybody.

I like that because friend, he always says, we throw our rock as Hard as we can, we're attempting to, you know, make a difference in people's lives, but

You don't solve everybody's problems with it.

A home doesn't solve everybody's problems, but it certainly is a good place to start.

What I realized is everything is temporary.

And we're meant to love each other and share while we're here.

And I think that being here has taught me that.

There's a ratio of how many intentional neighbors versus invited neighbors.

So that's where we fit with the kind of two to one ratio of having the invited neighbors and intentional neighbors.

Neighbors help in the neighborhood, cutting trees and doing lawn care and helping with odds and ends.

And the neighborhood comes and gardens at the Sacred Settlement and comes to the block parties and comes trick or treating throughout the tiny homes.

There is a true friendship between the neighborhood and the sacred settlement.

What is what goes into being an intentional neighbor?

I mean, is there any difference from just being and neither anywhere else?

It means, like, you're intentionally coming in to live alongside the chronically homeless.

Like we're coming in knowing that we're moving alongside our neighbors, coming out homelessness, and

we're going to be support and anything could happen, and

we're willing to walk alongside and be a friend and be a family member, whatever they need.

I'd say it's fairly similar, except the way the community is set up is that you're interacting with people a lot more.

After the first time I house sat here, I went back home and one of my neighbors was outside, and

I had this urge to go talk to them because that's what I've been doing the whole week I was here.

But part of me stopped because I'm like, that's not what I'm supposed to.