The purpose of Harvard Street Presbyterian Church has always extended beyond its pews.
“Partly because we are such an immigrant-based congregation, there’s been a strong emphasis on caring for our neighbors and people in need,” said Bryan Takasaki, a ruling elder at the church.
The Natick property is home to a community garden and food bank. At one point, the church’s Sunday school rooms were even transformed into bedrooms that migrant families called home.
“During that summer, the summer of 2023, we probably hosted about 16 or 17 families for short periods of time,” Takasaki said.
The weeks turned into months for some families. The church installed a portable shower, enhanced their kitchen and lined the empty rooms with bunk beds.
“We helped them to find apartments, we helped them to find jobs, things like that. One of the things that became really apparent was that finding housing was a really major, major problem,” Takasaki explained.
He said that the experience opened the church’s eyes to just how severe the housing crisis had become in the state.
It’s a problem that Harvard Street Presbyterian wants to help fix. For the past 40 years, the church has tried to build affordable housing on its five acres of land.
“It is difficult for a small congregation to stick with it,” Takasaki explained. “Any kind of resistance from neighbors who think it’s a great idea but not here, all those kind of things makes it very challenging.”
The congregation has even had development plans drawn up that revealed there was space for up to 30 units.
However, Takasaki said those plans never came to life due to various obstacles over the years.
Harvard Street Presbyterian is just one of the congregations that has resources that could aid in Massachusetts’ housing crisis.
“We are seeing lots of vacant properties. We are seeing religious communities that are not growing as they used to,” said Katie Everett, the executive director of the Lynch…