A church parking lot in South Los Angeles is becoming something increasingly valuable in California’s housing market: developable land with support to help drive a faster path through the entitlement process.
Logos Faith Development and St. Rest Friendship Baptist Church broke ground this week on the first phase of a 138-unit affordable housing project at 709 W. Manchester Ave., adding to a growing wave of church-owned properties across Los Angeles being repositioned into housing.
The first phase will include 62 apartments for low- and moderate-income households, backed by a roughly $15 million construction loan from Sunflower Bank.
Logos, which said it expects to open the four-story building in late 2027, has previously collaborated with other developers to convert church-owned property in South Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood into affordable housing.
Los Angeles, the country’s second most populous city, faces mounting pressure from the state of California to accelerate housing production. The city is required to plan for roughly 456,000 new units by 2029, including about 184,000 designated for lower-income households.
Los Angeles developers opened more than 11,000 new apartments over the past year, slightly above the market’s five-year average, but the pipeline is starting to thin as high interest rates, steep construction costs and a notoriously slow permitting process make new projects harder to pencil, with just 5,200 net new units expected in 2026.
Church properties — many underused and located in transit-served urban neighborhoods — are emerging as some of the few remaining sites where developers can assemble financially viable affordable housing projects inside the city.
“This project reflects our calling to serve our community in tangible ways,” Pastor Torrey N. Collins of St. Rest Friendship Baptist Church said in a statement. “We are transforming our land into a place of opportunity, dignity and hope.”
Faith-owned land gains traction
While faith-based housing projects still face many of the same challenges confronting the broader multifamily market, recent state and local policy changes have made church-owned land increasingly attractive for developers pursuing affordable projects.
California’s SB 4 law, also referred to as the state’s “Yes in God’s Backyard” legislation, took effect in 2024 and streamlined approvals for affordable housing on land owned by religious institutions. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ Executive Directive 1 has also accelerated approvals for qualifying affordable projects across the city.
The St. Rest development is part of a broader pipeline by Logos, a Los Angeles-based impact developer founded by Pastor Martin Porter in 2017 to help churches redevelop underutilized land into housing while retaining long-term ownership stakes. The firm said its current pipeline totals roughly $700 million and more than 2,000 planned affordable housing units in partnership with over 30 faith-based organizations.
The Manchester Avenue project will ultimately include 138 one- and two-bedroom apartments across two phases, with roughly 90% of the units reserved for low-income residents under Section 8 affordability standards. The second phase will also include a new worship and ministry space for the church.
The development adds to a growing list of church-linked affordable housing projects reshaping Los Angeles neighborhoods. In Culver City, Culver-Palms United Methodist Church partnered with Community Corporation of Santa Monica on the 95-unit Jubilo Village project, while the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has launched a nonprofit development arm focused on building housing on church-owned land.
Elsewhere in South Los Angeles, Bethel AME Church converted part of its property into supportive housing for formerly homeless residents through a partnership with private investors and developers.