by Rabbi Asher Knight
Assistant Rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Dallas
(Originally published on the RACblog)

Our Jewish texts and sources say little about the Jewish responsibility to build affordable housing. We have no biblical command that mandates, "Thou shall build affordable housing for the needy in your community." Yet, we have texts that instruct us to share our bread with the hungry, to welcome the poor into our homes, and to clothe the naked (Isaiah 58:6-7). Our people and our tradition are well aware of the problems of poverty and homelessness. The challenge for us, as American and as Jews, is to broaden the scope of our thinking about housing beyond the homeless and poorest of the poor.

We must ask ourselves a few questions: How do we consider the needs of those who have housing but whose housing is insufficient? How do we advocate for those who are working one, two, or three jobs but cannot afford to live in neighborhoods that nourish their children's lives? How do we respond to the needs of the elderly - whose mobility may have decreased, whose income is fixed, and who cannot afford to sell their homes and move to corridors that have access to food, healthcare, and public transportation?

Our challenge is to think of housing more broadly than homelessness. Our challenge is to think about how our communities can be great places to live for people making all kinds of livings. The key is to understand that affordable housing doesn't just provide shelter. Affordable housing can affect our health, it can be an anchor for our children's education, it often boosts our economic position, and enhances our sense of safety and community.

In the area of affordable housing, Temple Emanu-El is engaging in both study and action.
In late March 2009 our community began building our fifth home with Habitat for Humanity. Over the next three months we will have over 200 congregants working on the house. On March 26, 2009, we also hosted an affordable housing forum titled "Chasing the American Dream-Affordable Housing and the Role of the Private Sector in the Public Good." With more than 160 people in attendance, our panel included Mary Suhm, Dallas City Manager; Brent Brown, an architect and the Founder of building community WORKSHOP; and Regina Nippert, the Executive Director of Dallas Faith Communities Coalition. These people are première experts of affordable housing issues in Dallas County. Our community is having an impact with our Habitat house and by confronting the broader, systemic, and complex issues facing housing in our city. After the forum, over 50 congregants responded and said that they were interested in working on the issue. We are now in the process of developing advocacy committees with our partners in the Dallas Faith Communities Coalition.

Our tradition tells us that for forty years our people walked from servitude to liberty. The desert experience teaches us important lessons about the inherent difficulties we can face when have no permanent homes. From our experience in the desert, we learned to have compassion for all people, to build communities that strive for excellence in education and learning, to ensure access to healthcare and doctors, to care for our elderly, and to assemble communities of faith and tradition for sacred encounter. Let us think of affordable housing in ways that will nourish the generations of our communities tomorrows. Let us actualize and realize the lessons that our people learned in the desert as we build communities that include affordable housing.

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