Housing is the new challenge. . .

There has been a sea change in the time I have been a pastor.  It was normal for a pastor to live in church owned housing 45 or 50 years ago.  Then things changed.  It became normal for churches to get out of the real estate business and for pastors to get in.  I began in a parsonage (or rectory as I prefer to call it) and now live in my own home.  Perhaps in that way I am typical for folks around my age or either north or south of it.  It was the thing to do.  Equity, the American dream of home ownership, preparing for the inevitable day when you would retire or serve only part-time, and such all contributed to the switch.  Chief among them was cheap housing.  The world is different now.

Real estate is now beyond the reach of many (dare I say most) pastors living in urban or suburban areas across the Synod.  After Covid, not only interest rates went up but the cost of housing also skyrocketed.  How do you come up with a down payment of $45-100,000 to get in on the bottom of some neighborhoods and $150-300,000 to get into others?  How do you afford the carrying costs of mortgage, PMI, taxes, maintenance, and such?  Congregations might think that their pastors or prospective ones are simply being greedy but others in the pews know the score.  It is a different world than it was even a decade ago.  In many cases, the ability of a congregation to call a pastor or other church worker hinges less on salary than it does the cost of housing in that area.  We all know that.

Congregations sold their real estate in part because their pastors wanted the opportunity to purchase their own homes but also because they were never great as landlords.  The congregations also saw an income opportunity to cash in on the equity of older properties in an age when land is more valuable than the building on it.  They may have provided an ace in the hole on the income side of the equation but may have shot themselves in the foot on the ability to call a pastor on the other.  We are having to invent some creative ways to subsidize housing so that pastors can come to these urban and suburban places but even then it is not a slam dunk.  Everything from shared ownership to the congregation becoming a banker to help out the pastor sinking in school and other debt is being tried.  It is not a universal resolution to what is a rather universal problem.  Don't bank on LCEF to solve it -- they have their own needs and issues and can help those who already have some money better than those who do not -- plus their cost of funds is less than some other financing options but not free either.

Pastors can sometimes ill afford to move because of housing.  On one hand, they may not be able to find housing as cost-effective as the one they are currently in and on the other they may be enticed by the ballooning equity in some areas to move out of those areas because the housing market has made them asset rich.   This may contribute to fewer pastors accepting calls and especially fewer pastors (and other church workers, of course) moving to some high housing cost areas.  We all know this.  It is not rocket science.  It is what it is.

Parsonages may not be passe anymore.  Indeed, they may be the only way that we can get pastors to serve in such high cost of living areas.  I would caution any congregation from selling a parsonage because they want to cash in.  Instead, they may want to keep this asset in order to get another even greater asset -- a pastor to preach and teach among them!  Anyway, housing is as much of a challenge and perhaps even more than the high cost of health insurance, retirement plans, etc...   It is a conundrum, to say the least.  Far from giving the pastor an often overrated sweet deal on housing, it may become the only way to get a pastor at all.