Making Housing Happen: Faith-based Affordable Housing Models

With the acute need for affordable housing—a national crisis—we need workable solutions. In the U.S. there are an estimated 3.5 million homeless men, women and children each year. One in four U.S. households reported spending more on their housing than is considered affordable (30 percent of household income according to the federal government). This crisis affects very low- to middle-income households and companies unable to pay salaries that adequately cover housing costs—and therefore cannot recruit and retain their brightest and best employees.

Churches are effectively addressing the housing crisis from Washington State—where the largest apple producer has built 150 single-family homes for their employees— to New York City—where an alliance of 60 churches has now built 4,000 homes. In New York, the investment of low-income homeowners has transformed Brooklyn and South Bronx, dramatically decreasing crime, recreating the kind community pride that continues to infuse health and vitality to all sectors of those communities—public schools, local businesses, and thriving congregations.

The national affordable housing crisis is something congregations and faith-based groups often want to address, yet feel powerless to do so in the face of this daunting and confusing problem. Making Housing Happen provides workable solutions illustrated by true stories that inspire as well as provide a theological basis for a housing ministry. Each story features a different model of how affordability was achieved, a different denomination, and different geographic locations that span the United States. This book is about vision and faith—trusting God to do more than any church imagined in meeting the needs of homeless families, the working poor, and even middle-income earners such as teachers and police officers, who cannot afford to live in the city they serve. Its three parts, "The Foundation," "The Tangible Structures," and "The Intangible Structures" motivate the reader to action.

Jill Suzanne Shook is a doctoral candidate in "Transformational Leadership for the Global City," Bakke Graduate School. Among her extensive and devoted work in support of the underserved, Shook designed a program for Food for the Hungry International, an effort utilizing work-teams from Berkeley to Harvard to serve developing nations and she is now engaged in community organizing.