51 Houses of Worship Crowd Out Businesses in Houston Suburb
By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 19, 2006
STAFFORD, Tex. -- To say this Houston suburb's got religion is hardly an exaggeration. It's more like an understatement.
In one short stretch, there are the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple, made of 3,836 tons of hand-carved Italian marble and Turkish limestone; the simple yet welcoming Family Worship Center ("A Good Place to Call Home," declares the sign); St. Johns' Knanaya Syrian Orthodox Church; and the future home of the Henry David Thoreau Unitarian Universalist Congregation ("Room for Different Beliefs . . . Yours," says its sign).
Next door is the unadorned Islamic Society mosque; across the street is the West Side Baptist Church with its "Prayer; Wireless Access to God; No Roaming Charge" sign; and on the corner, next to an auto-parts store, stands the Jesus House Texas with its big pink cross and "Reigning in Victory" sign. And that is just one street.
Welcome to the city where, one church sign announces, "Worship Is Not Just on Sunday but Everyday." Make that everywhere, too.
Fifty-one churches and religious institutions sit inside this seven-square-mile city of 20,000 people, and a handful of others in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction are asking to be annexed.
Neighboring Houston may boast the nation's largest and fastest-growing megachurch today -- Joel Osteen's 30,000-member Lakewood Church. But Stafford is home to almost every other kind and size of religious institution -- the El Shaddai Dios Todopoderoso Ministry, the Philippine Trinity Baptist Church, the International Buddhist Progress Society's Chung Mei Temple. Is this too much of a good thing? Concerned city officials are trying to answer that question.
The problem: Thousands of acres owned by religious and affiliated institutions are exempt from the property tax rolls, and with only 300 acres of undeveloped land left, Stafford is looking for a legal way to say "enough."
"Our goal is to find a reasonable way to say to them [churches] that we've done our part in Stafford," said City Council member Cecil Willis Jr. " Please consider somewhere else."
Mayor Leonard Scarcella and other city officials say this is not about being anti-religious. Like other cities that have tried to control the growth of churches and other tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, Stafford is trying to find a way to preserve space for revenue-producing businesses.
"We have to be very, very careful that we maintain the viability of the city," Scarcella said. Churches "receive the full benefits of the police department, the fire department, the building department. Whatever they need, they have it. They pay a building permit fee, and that's the extent of what they pay" to the city.
City officials say most people who attend these facilities, which cater to a variety of ethnic and racial groups, are not Stafford residents but Houstonians or residents of nearby suburbs.
"They come in, practice their religion, leave and leave us with the bill," Willis said. "There's got to be some other place outside this city to practice your religion and to let us develop our remaining property."
Governing what Stafford can do is the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, intended to stop government from imposing land-use regulations that cause a "substantial burden" on religious exercise without a compelling state reason.
The nationwide battle between communities and churches has focused on zoning ordinances. Several South Florida communities have passed laws aimed at discouraging tax-exempt organizations from taking over commercially zoned property and edging out businesses.
To keep more churches from opening in strip malls, one Miami suburb passed an ordinance requiring houses of worship to establish freestanding buildings on at least three acres of land. Other suburbs passed laws restricting where storefront ministries can operate and the number of parking spaces they need and prohibiting religious institutions from major commercial corridors.
Monitoring such laws and taking communities to court over violations of the federal act is the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. "A city that thinks it's going to solve its tax-base problem by excluding churches had better think twice," said Kevin J. Seamus Hasson, president of the group. "By taking a heavy-handed, clumsy approach, they might open themselves up to an expensive lawsuit."
Churches, Hasson said, generate their own economy by bringing people together who are likely to spend money wherever they assemble. "It's pretty shortsighted and dimwitted to think that a church is a net loss," he said.
As one of only three municipalities in Texas that have no city property tax, Stafford depends largely on sales tax revenue. Homeowners and businesses also pay taxes to support schools, the community college district, the hospital district and the water district. Churches do not. In addition, businesses pay a franchise tax -- and generate sales taxes.
Two years ago, when Stafford issued a building permit to its 45th church, city officials took up the issue of regulating religious institutions and large assembly halls. The new ordinance prohibited building such facilities in single-family residential areas but allowed them elsewhere in the city with a special-use permit that -- unlike before -- would require a review process and city council approval. Six churches later, city officials have asked the zoning commission and the city attorney to look at tightening the ordinance even more.
"At some point, it becomes a disproportionate thing," said Gene Bane, director of building permits, whose map of Stafford is filled with yellow stickers denoting every religious institution. "What if we had 51 bowling alleys? Fifty-one of anything is probably not a good thing."
The only religious facilities Stafford is missing are a Roman Catholic church, a synagogue, a Methodist church and a "hard-shell" Southern Baptist church, as Willis, the council member, described the church he grew up in. Willis has made it his business the past two years to ask the representatives of each new religious facility the big question: Why Stafford?
To a one, each said the congregation talked, visited and prayed about the decision. Their answer was, in essence, what Damián Tavarez, a member of the board of trustees of Iglesia Rios de Agua Viva, said in an interview: "We just feel that God directed us here."
"What argument," Willis said, "can I put up against that?"
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