Catholic Archdiocese Fights Project to House the Homeless in Los Angeles
By Val Wilde, July 28, 2020

The Bible — a book originally compiled by the Catholic Church and around which the Church bases its entire outlook — contains a hundred verses about helping the homeless.

For the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, acting on behalf of the parishioners of St. Mark Catholic Church in Venice, helping the homeless have homes is apparently a bridge too far.

The Archdiocese recently filed an appeal against Lincoln Apartments, a housing project previously approved by the L.A. Planning Commission to develop a 40-unit apartment building to provide housing for homeless people across the age spectrum.

The space is currently occupied by a drop-in center for young people, Safe Place for Youth (SPY). That drop-in center would remain active on the proposed building’s ground floor, providing an access point for services and a safe shelter for teens and twenty-somethings not living on the premises. St. Mark parishioners have had a working volunteer relationship with SPY for years, but that appears to have soured somewhat at the prospect of relating to the homeless as neighbors instead of charity cases.

Not everyone standing in opposition to the project is part of the St. Mark community — NIMBYism knows no creed — but parish priest Father Albert van der Woerd and St. Mark School’s Principal Teresa Harrington have actively worked to encourage resistance among parishioners. In early May they sent a joint e-mail to parents in the neighborhood, listing arguments against the project and encouraging parents to write letters of protest.