The Rev. Joseph K. Williams Sr. said on Tuesday that affordable housing can be solved in part by the “knowledge of faith to build community.”
Williams has over 37 years of experience as an ordained minister and currently serves Faith United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C.
He also has over 25 years of experience as a nonprofit executive, currently as senior program director for the Faith-Based Development Initiative, known as FBDI, of Enterprise Community Partners Inc.
Williams spoke about ways faith leaders can use their land and available resources to provide affordable housing to both their followers and the greater public.
“It’s about the lives who need to be touched,” he said.
Williams spoke at a luncheon of the Frederick Housing Solutions Taskforce at Trinity United Methodist Church in Frederick.
Ann Ryan, co-chair of the taskforce, said the event was held to connect people from the development, real estate and faith communities, as well as city and county government.
“The people in this room have the power to create housing that doesn’t currently exist,” Ryan said.
At the end of the event, she opened up the discussion to get ideas for next steps. Those ideas included filling out the Frederick County 10-Year Housing Study and Strategic Plan survey, which can be found on the county’s website at publicinput.com/k21887.
The Rev. Shannon Sullivan, of Trinity United Methodist Church, the host, said, “our church is very passionate about affordable housing.”
Williams said that FBDI’s main goal is to preserve and create affordable housing.
“Everything else wraps around that,” he said.
FBDI has created or preserved over 1,800 affordable homes and has generated $211 million in grants, loans and equity to faith-based development in the Mid-Atlantic region, according to Williams.
He added that houses of worship often have unused or underused land surrounding churches.
The Gilliam Place development in Arlington, Virginia, for example, was built on the site of the Arlington Presbyterian Church in one project Enterprise has contributed to.
The church continues to operate on the first floor, with 173 affordable units above in a mixed-use development near a Metro stop, according to Fairfax County records.
“How can you best use this unutilized land?” Williams said was the most important question on such projects.
Other FBDI projects have taken place in Montgomery County, Baltimore City, Washington, D.C., and Prince George’s County. Frederick County is a place Williams said he would like to expand the program to.
Enterprise offers a five-module program with 23 key topics, as well as coordinated cohorts of faith leaders interested in leaning on the experiences of each other.
Williams said the goal was to get faith leaders to “become conversant with someone that knows the game better than you.”
He added that faith leaders need to supply the vision for the projects and be comfortable with it taking around two or three years to find a development partner.
“Development is a journey, not a sprint,” Williams said. “It will wear you out if you try to complete it quickly.”
He said faith leaders who invest in learning about the process and surround themselves with legal and other key resources can leverage the expertise of developers to better serve communities.
Williams said the vast majority of houses of worship he has worked with want to be part of the final product, “but they don’t have the balance sheet to do the deal themselves.”
He added that a big part of the process is identifying public and private financial resources to use.
Additionally, professionals would be needed to work through zoning and other municipal regulations.
But, Williams said, with a smart plan and a clear understanding of why faith leaders want to do the project, it can go beyond “sticks and bricks” to improving the lives of those in a way guided by faith.
He referenced Joshua 4 and the story of the Israelites’ entry into the promised land.
“Once you get in the land, you’ve got to maintain the land,” Williams said.