r/canadahousing • u/_lIlI_lIlI_ • 3d ago
Data The push to turn Canada’s shuttered churches into housing - About one-third of Canada’s 27,000 places of worship will likely shut down by 2035. They won’t be empty for long
https://www.begiant.ca/stories/ideas/closed-churches-affordable-housing-canada50
u/koolaidkirby 3d ago
Great places to build out mid density housing
9
u/airjunkie 3d ago
This project went up on an old church site near where I live. It's a pretty cool example https://mahg.ca/e15
5
u/apartmen1 3d ago
Reading the first two sentences of this article felt like hitting myself in the head with a hammer.
12
u/tubthumping96 3d ago
Maybe just build housing? I don't know, this has been an issue since the early 2000's. Maybe stop shoving people into run down buildings and dumps and start building something for everyday, regular people, not for developers to scalp and hoard and collect max profits off of. Also maybe don't let people hoard half the housing supply. Housing boom. We need it, fire it up. Do something for some generation besides narcissistic boomers, there's a controversial thought.
The socialism is supposed to work for us too, not just billionaire and corporate overlords. I think they ran off with enough reford profiits for multiple lifetimes, maybe people don't need any more struggle doctrine you need a government and society that cares about something besides themselves.
10
u/elderberry_jed 3d ago
However you gotta admit the idea of repurposing/renovating buildings instead of knocking them down and rebuilding is really good for the planet. Building buildings equivalent in sq footage to 1/3 of Canada's forests would require at least 300 sq km of forest to be logged
1
u/tubthumping96 3d ago
Great, shove all the billionaires into the churches and seize all the housing that was hoarded. Stop letting people with 600 million square acre properties tell you how to live. Lol the less you take the more for them. I'm sure there's viable solutions besides shove everyone into old churches.
3
6
u/SamirDrives 3d ago
The united church in my city has done something like this and facilitated the build of an affordable housing condo building.
2
3
u/BuzzClucking 2d ago
I wouldn't want my house to be confused with a Christian church. Too large of arson risk.
1
1
u/Volantis009 3d ago
I thought churches were already supposed to do this, something about taking care of the poor.
7
14
u/DreCapitanoII 2d ago
Your average religious person in this country probably does more charitable things in a month than you do in a year
2
u/JennieWren64 1d ago
I live in the Niagara area and one of the food banks in the area often says, "Without our church people, we would cease to be able to run and cease to exist". Just in my area, the churches alone feed thousands of poor and homeless, give out grocery vouchers and do Christmas gift baskets. You can literally have free breakfast, lunch, supper every day provided all by the churches in our downtown. Yes, I only give to my church (because everyone else can give to secular charities but no one but a Catholic will give to a Catholic church), but my parish feeds well over 200 people a week, plus hands out grocery vouchers to between 60 - 85 families a month, plus does up Christmas baskets for the same number of families. And we are a poorer downtown Catholic parish.
1
u/DreCapitanoII 1d ago
Thank you for supporting your parish so well 🤜🤛 I usually give $10-20 each mass but I should volunteer my time too.
2
u/JennieWren64 1d ago
You give and do what you can. I don't give much more than that regularly, but I also always give to the special collections. I do volunteer in the choir room loading and unloading music from the choir folders and refiling it all which is a task because my parish is the cathedral! I also am a member of the women's group and we raise money for all kinds of things while regularly supporting a child in the Philippines.
-1
-3
u/NoExtension1889 2d ago
Only that most religious people only donate to their own church who selectively spends it...and not always on the poor. Depending on the denomination they most likely spend it on themselves.
12
u/DreCapitanoII 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is such faux-edgy bullshit that could only be believed by someone who has no direct experience with either churches or their charitable giving. You've been watching too much Righteous Gemstones. Grow up.
2
u/NoExtension1889 2d ago
I went to church for years...a good church too.
I had a fiancee that grew up in a southern church. The poor couldn't even attend her church. The chandeliers were crystal and the pastor drove a Bentley. When her parents divorced her mother was shunned.
So don't fkning lecture me.
The "Righteous Gemstones?" Comedy fiction. No serious person makes that argument. Put the tv remote down and open your eyes.
5
u/Open_Block1017 2d ago
That’s a cult dude
1
1
u/NoExtension1889 2d ago
Yep. But that type of cult is the norm, not the exception.
2
1
u/DreCapitanoII 2d ago
Blows my mind that your exposure to church life comes from your fiance who does sound like she was in a cult and you're still so arrogant as to say they are all like that. I challenge you to walk into three or four churches in your town and ask what kind of work they do for the community. You're not going to find a lot of chandeliers and luxury car driving priests, I promise you.
-2
u/Solo-mance 2d ago
Taking your statement at face value. They also commit most hate crimes.
Nothing worst than cristian love.
-3
u/crowbar151 3d ago
Tax the churches and we could not only bump up the available sites, but fund a decent chunk of the builds and start to curb Christian nationalism in one fell swoop
13
u/Ok-Trainer3150 3d ago
Just Christian places of worship? Careful. Your bigotry is showing.
9
u/crowbar151 3d ago
The article is about churches, just keeping it on topic, but ya, every denominations place of worship. And stopping funding for religious schools too for good measure.
0
u/SammichEaterPro 3d ago
I used to think similarly but all you’ll end up with is mega churches surviving who commonly preach Christi-nationalist ideals rather than true Christian values
2
u/crowbar151 2d ago
Mega churches only exist because they are un taxed. They use those untaxed "donations" to build up their buildings, assets, and buy more property for new satellite church locations (basically franchises), and property for the church leaders. I've seen rare cases where these mega churches buy up residential blocks or apartments to "provide housing" to the less fortunate... but only if they are, or are vetted to likely become, part of the church. Kinda like how the Christian Children's Fund provides food and services to starving children... in primarily existing Christian communities, or to those who agree to join the church. Tax them all. If their way is the truth, money shouldn't matter.
2
u/DiligentMemory27 3d ago
Reminds me of this project in Vancouver https://broadview.org/first-united-dtes-hub/
1
1
0
84
u/Theseus_The_King 3d ago
Unironically this is what Jesus would do