Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his last speech on April 3, 1968, just before being
assassinated the next morning. By the end of his life, King was no longer speaking only
in the language of aspiration. He was speaking in the language of economics. He was
organizing the Poor People’s Campaign. He was standing with sanitation workers in
Memphis.
The Fair Housing Act was signed into law by President Johnson one week after Dr.
King’s assassination, on April 11, 1968 — 58 years ago today. As April is now
recognized as Fair Housing Month, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on King’s
economic and housing equity vision, the steps that have been made and the work that
still needs to be done.
King understood that if you want to know how a society really works, you look at who
controls land, money, housing and access. Housing is expensive because scarcity has
been protected. That did not happen by accident. It happened through policy. It
happened through zoning. It happened through local rules that decided what could be
built, where it could be built and who would be kept out. You do not need explicit
language to produce an exclusionary result. All you have to do is control access to land
and limit the supply of homes.
That is why the Yes In God’s Backyard bill, Senate Bill S1836, authored by State Sen.
Troy Singleton, matters. It allows religious institutions to obtain automatic approval on
certain aspects of affordable housing development on faith-owned land.
This is not just another housing proposal. It is an attempt to disrupt a pattern that has
made it too easy for municipalities to block homes and too hard for local institutions to
respond to real need. At a time when working families are being priced out, young
adults cannot afford to stay in the communities that formed them, and seniors are
running out of stable options, it makes no sense to leave faith land unusable because
zoning rules make action nearly impossible.
Faith institutions own land. They own buildings, parking lots, and parcels that often sit
underused while the need around them keeps growing. In many cases, that land is one of the few real assets a congregation still controls. The question is whether those assets
will remain frozen or whether they will be used to meet one of the most urgent needs in
this country.
For too long, congregations with vision have had to beg for permission. They can have
land, support, mission and a serious plan, and still get trapped in delay, obstruction and
procedural gamesmanship. That is by design. Systems tend to produce exactly what
they were built to protect.
And what our zoning systems have too often protected is scarcity.
When housing supply is restricted, prices rise. When prices rise, working people are
pushed farther out. When workers live farther from jobs, schools, transportation, and
health care, the effects spread everywhere. Employers struggle to keep a stable
workforce. Families lose stability. Traffic gets worse. Public systems absorb more strain.
Homelessness rises. Communities fray. This is not just a moral problem. It is a practical
and economic one.
That is why S1836 makes sense even if moral arguments do not move you. More
housing means a healthier market. More flexibility for faith institutions means more
productive use of land that already exists. That is not radical. It is practical.
Opponents will talk about process, local control, and preserving neighborhood
character. But beneath all that is a simpler truth: people protect what serves them. They
protect scarcity when scarcity protects property values. They protect exclusion when
exclusion preserves access. That is how self-interest works.
The answer is not to shame people for acting in their own interest. The answer is to
build policy that serves the broader public interest. That is what this bill begins to do. It
recognizes that faith institutions already hold land, already have roots in their
communities, and already have a stake in whether people can afford to live with dignity.
If the church can help build housing on land it already owns, that is not mission drift.
That is mission in concrete form.
James Baldwin said, “Nothing can be changed until it is faced.” So let us face it. The
housing shortage is not just a market problem. It is the result of choices. And if it is the
result of choices, then different choices can be made.
That is the lesson I take from the later works of Dr. King. He understood that the
struggle was not just about formal rights. It was about the material conditions of a decent life: a paycheck, a home, stability, and the ability to remain in a community
without being crushed by its costs.
We do not honor King by quoting him selectively. We honor him by seeing what he saw:
that justice without material change is too thin to hold.
The need is urgent. The land is already there. The law should stop standing in the way.
Rev. Eric Dobson is a faith leader, political strategist, housing advocate and Executive
Director of the United Black Agenda. He writes and consults on issues at the
intersection of policy, race and economic development in New Jersey.
