At a recent University of Notre Dame reunion, Rev. Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C., ’99, reconnected with old friends and shared stories of his life today, highlighting how he builds relationships with students, both in the classroom and as a priest in residence at Stanford Hall.
“You’re living the dream,” one of his friends said.
Koeth was struck by just how true that statement was. Since he first encountered the Holy Cross community as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, Koeth has worked hard toward the life he has now.
As a priest, he’s a ministerial presence — leading Mass, hearing confessions, and being a spiritual resource for students. As an assistant professor in the Department of History, he teaches and researches urban and religious history in 20th-century America.
It’s an opportunity for Koeth to continue delving into his passions for history and his faith — using both to elevate each other.
“When I came to Notre Dame and met the Holy Cross community, it clicked that both of these things that were attractive to me — ministry and academia — weren’t opposites,” Koeth said. “I didn’t have to pick one or the other. That’s why I joined the congregation — because it proposed a life where I could be a priest-scholar.
Finding the Catholic throughline
Koeth has been a history scholar since elementary school — his first academic accolade was in fourth grade, when he won the Staten Island-wide social studies fair.
Inspired by a family vacation, his award-winning project detailed British Gen. John Burgoyne’s failed Revolutionary War campaign to capture New York City and thereby separate the northern and southern American colonies. Koeth’s parents always tried to instill in him and his brother a love of history, driving the family car to historical sites, national parks, and museums.
“History was always in my blood,” Koeth said.
During graduate school at Columbia University, Koeth took courses that helped him discover how urban history could take him as far as the road trips of his childhood — across his interests in immigration, labor, political, and religious history.
“Urban history was the perfect way for me to hold all of these historical interests together,” he said.
In his first book, Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America (University of Chicago, 2025), Koeth explored a nationwide public housing movement — specifically, how post-World War II suburbanization changed the idea of a parish, the relationship between clergy and laity, and Catholic participation in politics, which triggered a broader cultural shift in the Catholic Church.
Now, his new Poverty Initiative-supported project, tentatively titled “Unless the Lord Builds the House: A Religious History of U.S. Public and Affordable Housing,” will focus on how the Church was involved in public and affordable housing in the mid-20th century.
During the Great Depression, the federal government funded public housing for the first time, which the Church pushed for alongside housing activists. The first residents of public housing complexes were often working-class Catholics — descendants of Irish, Polish, and Italian immigrants who brought parishes with them. Priests became staunch defenders of public housing, creating a nationwide network of advocacy.
“My book can hopefully inspire religious actors to do more in the housing sector — to serve our poorest citizens.”
“You could tell that story individually through cities — Bridgeport, Denver, Chicago, San Antonio,” Koeth said. “But when you recognize they’re all connected through the Church, sharing information and tactics, there is this national housing effort on the part of the Church.”
After World War II, the GI Bill enabled most white Americans to find housing in the suburbs. But Black Americans — limited by discriminatory housing and employment practices — did not enjoy the same mobility, becoming the majority population in public housing.
Simultaneously, government funding for public housing collapsed, and complexes fell into disrepair and were rampant with poverty and crime. In this era, Koeth found, public housing was a last resort for America’s poorest citizens rather than a working-class stepping stone to self-sufficiency.
But despite the changing religious demographics of the neighborhoods, Catholic parishes and their priests remained. Koeth found in his research that their commitment to public housing communities only increased, and they sought to expand services for complexes and fund urban schools as tax revenue left the cities.
The 1970s and ’80s brought the demolition of many high-rise housing projects, as the government prioritized building new structures instead of maintaining current residences. It then became clear that low-income affordable housing would be better implemented in collaboration with the private sector, Koeth said. The Church stepped up to form public-private partnerships for building affordable housing and put public money into programs run by nonprofits like Catholic Charities.
“From the 1930s until today, the Church is this throughline, involved in housing matters all along,” Koeth said.
This national story hasn’t been told before, as the history of public housing is usually explained through a federal policy lens. Koeth argues that understanding religious involvement in public housing is crucial to understanding how the welfare state works and how it could work.
The Poverty Initiative, a key component of Notre Dame 2033: A Strategic Framework, is dedicated to learning why poverty exists and how its impact can be limited. Addressing housing scarcity and inequality is a key component of the initiative’s work, and Koeth’s research shows how the Catholic Church has previously tackled the issue.
“I’m not writing a manual about how to do it,” he said. “But my book can hopefully inspire religious actors to do more in the housing sector — to serve our poorest citizens.”
Teaching active citizenship
Koeth’s love of his research is only matched by his love for the students he serves as a priest and teacher.
“The most fun I have is in my work as priest-in-residence,” he said. “I love living with the students and getting to be a part of their day-to-day lives.”
In the classroom, Koeth teaches courses aligned with his research interests. In the course The Priest and Nun in American History and Culture, he covers the religious side: American Catholic history beginning with Europeans’ first interactions with Indigenous groups. Students examine the ministry of priests and nuns, as well as depictions of them in popular culture.
He covers urban history in a University Seminar called Cities and Suburbs, telling the story of urban development in the U.S. from World War II to today. He talks about things like mass production of suburban homes, the interstate highway system, and gentrification. The material doesn’t seem too alarming, but Koeth approaches the course with a sinister goal.
“I tell students, ‘I want to ruin the way that you look at the place where you live for the rest of your life,’” he said.
He does this by making students see the forces that have shaped the modern American metropolitan landscape. Rarely are the locations and designs of roads, factories, and housing by chance — instead, he shows how it comes from intentional decisions influenced by race, class, immigration, religion, gender, politics, and many other factors.
Koeth wants his students to always ask, “This is how it is now, but how did it get there, and why?”
He knows he’s making an impact because of emails he gets from former students with photos and stories of their cities, explaining the connections they learned in the course. As with his research, Koeth hopes those connections turn into action.
“I don’t want my students to ever be complacent, to take the places they live for granted,” he said. “We can fix some of the problems and then make better choices going forward as active citizens.”
