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[ Music ] >> The National Trust for Historic Preservation's 49th National Preservation Conference presents this live presentation recorded for NTHP in Fort Worth, Texas in October of 1995. At the end of side one, please stop the tape and turn to side two for the conclusion

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held a presentation. [MUSIC PLAYING] And I wanted to say that each year, Partners has been fortunate, actually, for seven years running

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to put together a session that deals with congregations and older and historic religious properties. And this year, we're doing something new for us. We're venturing into community development.

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And we're very excited to have three excellent speakers with us today. And without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to the moderator and speaker, Mark Weinheimer.

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Thank you, Diane. There are some seats up near the front. So I would encourage the people in the back to move forward, because the bulk of our presentation

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that they are a large part of it is going to be seen on the video. And I don't know how well it will be seen in the back of the room. Some people are moving forward, I hope. Oh, well.

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We tried. The theme for the entire conference this year, for the entire preservation conference, is It's about partnerships and strategies. And certainly in many communities, the church is a major partner or potential partner in

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neighborhood revitalization and in historic preservation. Often in lower income neighborhoods, the church is the only institution with any positive value and community trust around which to build. A lot of the discussion that we're going to start off with until we get questions from

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you all is going to revolve around a program that the Lilly Endowment started in 1989 to encourage partnerships between religious institutions and community development organizations. That project funded 28 partnerships and we are fortunate to have two of the representatives of two of those groups here this afternoon to talk about their experience working both

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in the church and in the community. And I'm going to ask them when we turn to them after the video to talk to start out To introduce the subject, talking about three issues. One is how you get started working with the church.

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What roles the church plays in the community or what benefits can be derived from working with the church. And third is how you build and sustain partnerships with the religious community.

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That should give us grist for some good discussion to begin with. But to start out to give you some background, I'd love to show a brand new video that was just completed, I guess, about two weeks ago by the Lilly Endowment, taking a look at our program. It features three of the 28 projects that the endowment

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funded in 1990. And it tries to highlight that there are different roles that churches can play in the community, that there are different circumstances in which they work, different kinds of projects, different kinds of partnerships can be stirred up between churches and communities.

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So you're going to see three entirely different kinds of projects. Let me warn you, for those of you who are pure preservationists, that the projects in the video aren't pure preservation and in fact one of them is a new construction project out in rural northeastern Kentucky. But we feel that the same ideas about partnerships

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and roles of churches pertain whether we're talking about preservation or community development. So unless there's objection, let's take a look at the video. [INAUDIBLE] I can figure out how it works.

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[BLANK_AUDIO] [inaudible] [ Inaudible ] >> Modern technology.

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[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]

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[ Pause ] [Music] The church motivates people, who is preaching, who is rousing, who is doing it.

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It makes me feel very good that in the process of my learning and growing, I would think it's how other people learn and grow. I just want to give back what anything has given to me. If you do anything, I would agree, anything is going to be like that.

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Say, Walpole said, "My ex-wife, when he was pregnant, I like to have 40,000 or however much to build a home on. I try to get a life plan. We're experts in how to help people become independent.

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Being a Christian allows us to open up to people. And we ask you to help everybody. How can we build that across the streets, not in our own backyard? Are you kidding? That's where she's going.

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We're the church. It's that community. The people with our homes. I like company. [Music]

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Unfortunately, I think that America's poor people, who are the problem in greater need today than they have been ever, at least in recent times. I think these communities have largely

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been left to fend for themselves, having to prove themselves in desperate words rather than extracting the resources that they deserve. And on top of that, we've been through some crime and violence

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during the last decades, and how that has decimated communities and broken up families, and how children and seniors and people in general are afraid to sit on their porches and walk on the street.

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Our communities need hope. There's a tremendous need that's developing in the community. - I think what this has meant is the creation of a lot of really creative partnerships.

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Communities that are thriving despite tough conditions are doing so because you're attracting outsiders to come back in and invest in them in the neighborhood. Probably one of the more hopeful signs for the community development field has been the

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emergence of churches in working in partnership with local community development efforts. The church has historically done a number of things in supporting justice by providing faith. In fact, many CDCs were born out of church faiths and church offices.

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But the new role, I think, is much more exciting. The new role holds the church as investor, as a co-partner, as co-designer of many of and it's providing access not just to the church's scholars, but to the church's organizations, to the church's deaf students, and an array of other things, which has made the church now a full partner in the community development process. The church motivates people, through its preaching, its spirituality, to do what needs to be done.

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That's what allowed us to take so little and make so much out of it, because the Spirit is the key. God is the only one that can fix it. Nothing can fix it. Abyssinian Development Corporation is a non-profit, community-based development organization.

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Its mission is to improve the delivery of social services, to spur the economic revitalization of the neighborhood, as well as provide housing for a diverse income level, To effectively create a sustainable community, one has to do more than the physical housing.

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We must build homes, and homes are places where people can have support, have services, and have jobs. For the last five years, with our advocacy and development corporations, and one of the things that we've done in place, we've built nearly 500 units of housing. We purchased two major landmarks.

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We started a public school in the grades 6 through 12. We're developing even more houses. We helped to start maybe six or seven new businesses and maintain another 12 or 13 more.

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The Minden Foundation has been extremely, extremely helpful. As a result of some of their early help, we've taken a building that was once unoccupied, restored, brought people back in to live,

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And with Living Shelf now having a daycare center and nuisance, over 100 children can grab the clothes and hollies displayed in my house. I like what they call it.

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They call it Head Start, because that's what I do today. But I think that if they sat home until they were five and went into the regular school system, they would not be prepared.

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And a lot of times, they get labeled as such an edge. They're behind. The parents might not know enough to teach them little things like learning

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how to write their name, like that about getting colors. So they come here and they get socialization skills as well. They get used to being around kids, learning how to care, learning how to pay attention, things like that.

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And we get to work with the family. There are some parents who can't leave. And no one would have ever known that unless, you know, until she came to fill out,

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when she came to fill out the registration form. The idea of having a census, you know, for children in neighborhoods, that's the most important thing

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that we're thinking about as kids, we're thinking about as people. in our community sometimes what is lacking is a positive role model. And I think that it is so great to be in the law community,

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have two boys and two girls in the community, and just to have to see how their, just their positive nature helps to direct these children, not even just the boys, but the girls as well.

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It's kind of an advantage, being a man, because I usually don't have to raise my boys. You know, like some of the female people have to raise their boys. I have to raise this voice because some of the kids are a little intimidated.

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But I have to teach that to my kids. And then some of the children don't actually have fathers at home. And that makes me more like a father figure. And if you see that, maybe we can be loving and we can hug.

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We can passively, you know, we can do things like... [Children playing] You know where it goes here? It's got to go the way the law goes, right?

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Okay, can you hear that kid? [Children playing] Stop. Alright.

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Some children don't know what's going on at home. So you have to make sure that they get two big meals. You know, they have breakfast, they have lunch in the morning class, or afternoon class. They have lunch and they come in and they get snacks for the week.

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[Children talking] And you want it to be in a safe environment as possible, you know, because you don't know where they're coming from or where their background is at home. What did you tell me about the co-op, you had?

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[Children talking] I, I, what about the teachers? They care, and if you don't have people to care, your children can't care.

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We feel great having people to care. The first time I tried it, right, I mean, I almost cried. And in the end, I didn't have any money. After I saw it, I really, I was ecstatic.

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I think what you do, the development corporations do, is you succeed with certain people who want to care for more, who get the care from you, of the kind of issues they need. They bring expertise.

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They also have money because they've already invested in the community and in the other projects and have money from that to serve people to undertake new projects. It brings people to thinking about what the needs of the community are. In terms of commercial development and housing and social services, you can't rebuild a community with just one income level. It's so good. You've got to have upper income people, you've got middle income people, and you've got to have some poor people.

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That way you got an income hit. That way you can support yourself. Or people can't support themselves. They want to see more people in the province.

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They want to break the cycle of the system. They want to do for ourselves rather than having the government do for us. This church wants to be a part of the community it serves. And the institutional strength provided by a strong institution like Abby King and Gaffney Church

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And I can't say, you know, that we're going to succeed. We're succeeding already. Citizens bring several things to the process here. First of all, they have a long-term commitment to community development and to the community.

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They have a long-term commitment to the community. They have a long-term commitment to the community. First of all, we have a long-term commitment to community development and the development of the people. Churches are in the community long after many other institutions have pulled out.

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Churches also bring a sense of value. They're not working because it's profitable or because they have a sense of need or guilt. It comes out of the spiritual value, but this is something that God wants us to do. churches provide volunteers.

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Many churches have properties in the community that need to be developed. They also bring financial resources and a network of political and business and social connections

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that can be helpful in the development process. One thing we have to realize is that it's not just the larger historic churches that have been involved in community development.

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We also see another paradigm, and that is smaller churches who have an interest and a vision, but maybe not the volunteer resources and financial resources to pull off a project by themselves are forming together in coalitions. The coalitions we see coming into formation vary.

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coming into formation varies. They may be ecumenical, representing many denominations. Sometimes they're single denomination or groups. Sometimes what we see is a mixture of both religious

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and secular groups as part of that coalition. - In many old industrial towns, where you have a diversity of both ethnic backgrounds as well as religious backgrounds,

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community development actually offers a lot of hope for bringing these diversities together because despite their religious differences, or their skill differences, or their ethnic differences,

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they all want to keep their kid behind drugs, they want jobs for their children, they want food for the kids, they want the same quality of life as you do.

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And these qualities like you do, that's really the value of bringing these diversions of people together. - A lot of these companies were born in the Valley,

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and then they got bought out by bigger companies. People started losing their jobs, companies started getting smaller, or they would move out somewhere else

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where it becomes a fun, entirely. And then the Non-Defense Daily Projects began to take a look at that in the early '80s. The Non-Defense Daily Projects is a coalition

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of churches, unions, and community organizations from small business folks that have come together to coalesce around faith, chapstain, faith in God, or just returning to the deterioration

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of the quality of life as a result of the evacuation. The churches are an incentive for the community groups to get the feeling that they really are doing something good and worthwhile in the neighborhoods and in the city.

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Medicare cooperatives started from the ground up. We were born out of need in the private sector. We were looking for some money and we came across the ruling on the house. We applied for a start license.

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One year cooperatives got state licenses made to them by home care agencies. We provide emergency services, physical therapy, occupational therapy, social work. We provide child protection on staff, home health aides, homemakers, and other compelments to patients in the Waterbury area and some of the surrounding towns.

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And then her dad's from a group that's just water rights. In my work in health care, I discovered that there was a lot of people out there who needed care that weren't getting it. There was a lot of people, especially with the elderly,

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who, there were different people coming into their homes every day and sometimes it would be frightening, and new people would have to learn their ways, and that made it hard too. We were hoping to be able to create an opportunity where people would be able to stay with their patients

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for a long period of time and build relationships which makes it easier for the patient as well as for the healthcare workers. After we did the startup, we also applied for

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training, training the workers. We went 28 hours every day. We went on less than a week. We provide services to a very, very ethnic mix of patients in a lot of different communities.

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The same mix is found in the home health aid staff. I wish you could be here when the new home homemakers who are signing get their first paycheck. These are people that are trying to get out of welfare and they get their first paycheck. And they jump up and down. Oh my God, I can't believe it. I'm paying this money. This is my money.

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I work so hard for it, and they are so excited at me. It encourages the rest of the staff to continue working very hard. Creating a business is just exhilarating.

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It's so much fun. You just face a humankind again. You could actually start a business out of people's needs. Getting women off the welfare roll,

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people are unimportant, people who usually are forgotten people. In order to empower people, it was absolutely necessary that we create a business that was viable. We have been able to do this and from the beginning we have been able, every year, to raise the salaries. This is something that comes about with the voices of the people. It's not just a job, you know. And we all come to work and it's our place of business. This is our home. We own it.

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I'm working with the Hispanic. And it makes me feel important because I'm able to help them, you know. I see dates here coming in, physical therapy coming in, raising. [Laughter]

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I went in there and I mean, that way I can mock her about it. [laughter] I enjoy working on the field, though. I enjoy doing it. Sometimes it's dreadful. I mean, I pull my hair off, but I enjoy it.

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They're out on their own now. They're supporting themselves, and they own something. Instead of somebody owning them. We sort of see this as something that we take a responsibility for perpetuating if we can. And if Gallup-Hero ever gets in trouble, I know that our 42-member organizations will

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rail around it and help it see its way through it. What's most exciting about these new partnerships and what community development groups continually need to make these projects work is diversity in funding. No one funding source funds any projects we pay.

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As a result, they begin to look at unconditional pardon, they begin to look at financing, to look at other institutions that could join in to make these projects work. The technical expertise is also critical that the right person around the table who can work together and bring the necessary information for the project to be done with speed and

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with the best. Partnerships need time to grow. Too often groups come together because of because of an opportunity, and they don't take time to get to know each other, to develop trust, to come to a common working style,

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to work out issues of leadership, and what happens is that the marriage ends up in divorce very quickly. What's key is that if you're going to get the church involved,

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the pastor must sign on to the project, The tasker must be involved in the project from the beginning. What makes community development corporations probably unique is that they use market-driven solutions to problems that have always been addressed purely from a social point of view. What they do is they create the possibility of development in communities that have been muted, invested, uninvested in one of these.

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And they create a process by which the residents are in fact the designers, the implementers, and the proctors, for whatever development the business takes place. So, if we could do an aerial view of the beautiful hills and mountains and trails, and wonderful streets and highways, and you see those old mahalas,

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and beautiful homes along the way, We may or may not have a way of easing the living in here, but it is a fun way. We've decided that neighborhood for us is quite different than an urban area,

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so we've selected a part of King County. In those three counties, we have about 60% of standard housing. The income level for us is about 50-50. [inaudible]

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A lot of folks around here haven't had any opportunity to own anything other than their car. We want to be able to formalize a new working relationship that would bring together the strengths of the two organizations. Frontiers housing, delivery systems, our ability to work with all of the folks and get the financing we need to build decent housing, as well as the outreach and the types of pamphlets that the African Americans send us.

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Our programs have been going out for a little over a year and a half. And some of them have just been announced, and we have a significant amount of applications. I've worked with them to straighten out our tax credit problems. I've worked with them on budgeting, on getting some of the bills paid off before they're found to the line.

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It can be a long process to expand, although it's really rewarding when you see them come into our master plan and hear their complaints. Through this program, the homes will generally sell for the neighborhood of $40,000. It will be financed at 1% interest over 30 to 33 years.

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And most of the houses we build are around $1,000 a year. You can prove that it's size of the box, well-equipped, easy to maintain. I think the only thing that's got to be maintained on the exterior of the house is the front of that building. I'm 19 years old. I've just been married a year and a half.

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And so walking through my house and saying that I'd like to have $40,000 or however much is to yield a home, it's kind of a disaster. What I've been trying to do is to develop a helpful relationship with the family so that they can come to me and call on me if they have any issues. We want them to know from the beginning that we are going to be there to support them. Also, we want them to know that there are requirements that they have to do.

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We're not going to be there as a support system and holding them down. We want the families to become self-sufficient and independent. The first thing we were able to realize was that we did it, was not the husband going through with the kids,

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but the wife going through with the kids. We as a family get through, and they take their time. And we'll just let you know that there's somebody to care. The key concept is the outreach, where that worker actually

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goes to the family and talks to them about what the program is all about, and kind of in layman's terms, what the farmer's home is about or what the native home's mortgage loans are about, and this type of thing. Whereas in the past, if you wanted a loan for a house, you had to go sit down to the savings loan and talk, you know, burn it all before you could talk.

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Prior to this program coming along, we were unable to obtain underwriting from the different insurance companies for mortgage home loans. This program is going to scare a lot of people. The lowest income they'll qualify is $56,000. The loans that you all are helping us make

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are loans that would not be made and could not be made because of the criteria that it takes to get a loan in advance. Banks and lenders only look at these as the income history,

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community development takes time and money and lots of relationships where everyone is committed to working together. It's very tough to take people who have been untraditional partners and have them overcome the obstacles of search and jealousy and other things that keep them apart by working together and recognizing that each other is a resource as well as the

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large missions of saving the community and revitalizing the families. Community development But it's the long-term commitment that's key. And as long as we keep that as our focus, and we all share the same goal, and that is to develop safe,

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habitable communities for people to create economic opportunities that address long-term solutions and not short-term problems, I believe the work in community development will be accomplished. When you look at the stratus communities, there are only two institutions that have been there over the long term,

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like the liquor store and the church. I don't know about you, but I think I'd rather rely on the church. [music] [Music]

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What we tried to do, what the Lilly Endowment tried to do with this video is try to portray a sampling of the 28 projects that we got involved with over the last five years. As I said earlier, the projects vary in the kinds of activities they engaged in, the locations, the roles of the church.

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But what we saw some common elements. First of all, let me say there are 28 projects. we saw 16 different denominations, 16 different Christian denominations involved in our projects as well as in some cases some Jewish organizations. Most of the partnerships that we saw were

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multi-denominational. Most of them, as in the case of Naugatuck Valley Project, involved churches from various faith groups working together to solve common issues. We saw or we saw reinforced a notion that we had when the program began in 1989 that community development is a local activity and in fact we received something like 300

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applications for this program and by and large the participants were local churches or local partnerships of churches or coalitions of churches. Only about 25% of the projects that we worked with during the five years had support from the judicatory or the national level.

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That was a major disappointment we had with the program, but one that we're still working with is we're trying to work with some of the national denominational groups on community development issues. We saw, not surprisingly, that these kinds of activities

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generated a lot of interest within the churches that participated. And something like 2,000 volunteers were logged in over the course of the projects in 28 locations. Let me reiterate just a couple of lessons that were sort of touched on in the video.

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Partnerships take time to mature. We saw this over and over again. That even though, as Dr. Bird said at the end, the church is probably the only positive institution

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left in most neighborhoods, certainly the liquor store isn't a very positive institution, and the church often has the interests

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of the community at heart, it still takes time for partnerships between churches and communities to gel. one of the things that we saw as evidence of that was a different language that got

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played out during some of these partnerships. One of my favorite stories in Cincinnati, a partnership between a local church coalition and a community development corporation were getting together to build some senior housing, 20 units of senior housing, and it was to be owned in common.

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Well, you know, you ask different people what ownership meant and the CDC thought ownership of housing is fee simple ownership. My name is on the deed, their name is on the deed, and that's what we mean by ownership. And yet what the church coalition meant by ownership is that we will have a sense of

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ownership and we'll work with the people that are resident in the housing. And we didn't want the legal responsibility of ownership of the housing. So there are language differences that have to be worked, that had to be worked out among churches and secular organizations.

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Timing issues. Churches, we like to joke during the program, think in millennia while those of us that work in the community work from grant cycle to grant cycle and we have to show results each year otherwise our funding dissipates.

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We also saw in many of these partnerships the need for technical assistance, ongoing technical assistance. Community development, historic preservation, we know are very complex, complicated businesses. You can't do it on the back of an envelope or on the seat of your pants.

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It often takes dedicated staff working on the project and it often takes outside technical assistance working with the groups and knowing what they need. What I'd like to do is turn to our speakers. Reverend Marvin Griffin is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, one of the

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28 groups that received money for a project. Well I'll let him explain what they did, but Reverend Griffin has been with the church 26 years, which actually is one of the other lessons that we learned. If you're going to work with a church, find a church that has stability within the community,

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has stable leadership within the church, so that you know who's in charge. Griffin? Ours is an inner-city church located about ten blocks from the heart of town. Historic church of 120 years of age. The area I think is a prime example of a neighborhood in need of revitalization. It is a high crime area

00:36:43.180 - 00:37:14.960

with pupils with low scores in the schools and the highest unemployment in the city. We sort of got into this uniting the churches around the crime situation and we had a mass meeting which was held at our church with about 500 people in attendance. This issue was that of prostitution and and dope

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traffic that was happening right behind our church. As a result of that the property owner decided to sell the land. We ended up buying that land which was just about a block so our church was on a block and we bought the block behind us. We were successful in getting a feasibility grant from the Lilly

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Endowment and about the same time a private developer who intended to build a mall across the street from the church began to help us and over a period of years about five years has given us about a hundred thousand dollars which made it possible for me to hire a permanent director of economic development.

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We organized the East Austin Economic Development Corporation, which grew out of our church, and we were successful in getting a grant from the city. had the endowment and we had the city a grant of $400,000 we had to involve the church and members of the community and politicking using the process because

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the city was going to take the $400,000 and divide it between the Hispanics and the African-Americans we didn't think that was fair and we succeeded so that they gave all of it to us and then went back and found more money for the Hispanic community we focused on daycare because that's one of

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the primary needs our church has about 500 families and not a large number of children so most of the children that coming to our daycare are not members of our congregation so it's really a mission of the church in seeking to provide that we succeeded in getting not only the private developer the city but

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we received assistance from the banks we received assistance from the church the church put a million dollars into what has become a 3.5 million dollar project but we put a million dollars cash into that and of course it takes time to accumulate that kind of money so and having the vision that the pastor needs

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to have that vision and stay with the vision so and get people to buy into that vision we have succeeded in getting a grant from the state to provide 12 units of housing for the elderly on property we own across the street we currently have underway in new construction a daycare facility which

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will be new to provide for 170 kids and on the second floor we will have facilities for senior citizens so the we have 12,500 feet on each floor and we're going to pair these two groups in the ministry which we will carry on there The church has really been excited about this.

00:40:44.560 - 00:41:08.080

I was almost, well no question about almost, I had reached a point of retirement when all of this came up and these have been some of the most exciting years of my ministry. We have worked with our own congregation as well as those of the city, in the city, and are looking forward now to moving into housing because our denomination has

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really in it recently entered into a situation where we are hoping to build 50,000 new homes African-American Baptists in this country so the design that we have for the future has to do with meeting the needs of people seeking to improve the quality of life and this is what the church is all about you know

00:41:34.080 - 00:41:56.840

as we found common concern and common ground and work together in a way that we will improve the quality of life for people providing job opportunities because these things will provide job opportunities for many people and as one other project which I didn't mention which has to do with the office building

00:41:56.840 - 00:42:13.840

We are building an office building that has already been leased. Two-fifths of it was leased by the city of Austin for five years, and we have others that have taken up the space. So we hope to open up in January with that field,

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and we'll possibly finish the other facility in March. and then the housing will possibly be started in the next month or so. So it seems to me that we have in the church one of the best untapped resources available and the church, particularly the African-American church, is one of

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the strongest institutions in the community and I want to challenge the trust you know to establish some relationships with you know the churches because I think most of our churches aren't aware that the trust exists so becoming known and entering into relationships and if you really need a

00:43:03.400 - 00:43:29.480

church nearby I offer Austin's but we have we've come a long way but we have a long way yet to go so much to do so little done yesterday I saw the Sun sink beamless or the vaulted gray the ghastly ghost of yesterday so little done so much to do each morning breaks on conflicts new but eager brave let us

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join the fray and fight the battle of today Reverend Griffin, thank you. One of the other things that we learned is, as Reverend Griffin pointed out, that churches get involved when the human interest is dealt with. It's not just a physical thing for most churches, it's

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dealing with people. And I want to ask Karen Phillips, who we saw on the video, to talk a little bit about how partnerships get built and what we can look for from the church as a partner in these kinds of activities. Karen has been with the Abyssinian Development Corporation for six years. She started back in '89, having come

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from the state government as I remember, and before that had been a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Grew up in the south, in a small town in south Georgia, and moved to the big city I guess for the excitement and glamour of working in church land. Thank you Mark as you saw in the video a lot of the footage of

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Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City in the heart of Harlem and when he mentions that I'm from a small town there are more members in the church than there are in my hometown so I just created my own little world in all of New York City but Harlem was at one time the cultural center of African

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Americans all over the world now the word Harlem is synonymous with ghetto slum low-income people the church that you saw was built there in the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance the heyday of Harlem but the church had been around in New York City since 1808 and was first built down near Wall Street but

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the social activism of the people who founded it is apparent even today. They refused to sit in the slave lofts of the First Baptist Church and developed their own church and named it after the ancient name for Ethiopia, making the connection to Africa, being a proud people. That activism as you can hear

00:45:53.200 - 00:46:13.900

from Reverend Butts puts us at the forefront of many political battles but again of taking a stand in terms of redeveloping this wonderful neighborhood that for you preservationists will see that it is a gold mine for of gems of historic buildings and structures that were not

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destroyed primarily because they were occupied by poor people and people of color so therefore the market did not tear them down and build up the high rises [BLANK_AUDIO]