Key points:
- Maryland is providing crucial tax credits for Silver Spring United Methodist Church’s $88.2 million affordable-housing initiative.
- The growing, multi-ethnic church in a pricey D.C. suburb is part of the trend of congregations across the U.S. repurposing their property to address a nationwide housing crisis.
- The congregation, with roots going back 200 years, sees its effort as part of needed reparations work after benefitting for a long time from racist zoning policies.
- The pastor of a Georgia church that completed an affordable housing and arts space development emphasizes keeping faith in focus in these projects.
At a time when unease envelops the entire D.C. area, a United Methodist church near the U.S. capital city has received some unadulterated good news.
Maryland officials publicly announced Oct. 9 that the state is awarding Silver Spring United Methodist Church all the financial help the congregation sought in its efforts to transform part of its property into much-needed affordable housing.
“This is the financial linchpin for the feasibility of the entire project concept,” Alison Edwards said. She is the co-chair of the congregation’s Building Beloved Community Committee that is guiding the effort.
The church’s development was one of 13 projects awarded credits, estimated to generate a total of $160 million in tax-credit equity, in a highly competitive process made more competitive by the uncertain economic realities facing the United States.
With the tax credits, the church can now attract investors to fund the construction of affordable homes in Maryland’s expensive Montgomery County. The church and its development partners estimate the project — a mix of townhomes, duplexes and rental units — will cost $88.2 million.
“The creation of affordable housing is not just about building shelter, but about building legacy,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in announcing the awards. Moore has made affordable housing a priority of his administration and visited Silver Spring United Methodist Church in February as part of efforts to encourage houses of worship to get involved.
“These projects will make it possible for more families to stay in the communities they love, for more seniors to age with dignity, and for more people to live closer to where they work,” he said.
The Rev. Will Ed Green, the church’s senior pastor, said the growing, multi-ethnic congregation now can “take the next faithful step” in a process that began two years ago and will take years more to complete.
With state officials’ blessing, the pastor shared with his congregation at the end of Sunday worship Oct. 5 that the announcement was coming.
He spoke with faith in God’s purpose at a time when many in the church and its wider community are feeling the weight of the current federal government shutdown, mass federal layoffs earlier in the year as well as the ongoing presence of armed National Guard and masked federal agents patrolling D.C. Green assured the worshippers that even when obstacles seem insurmountable, God is present, as is God’s call to love our neighbors.
“God has been faithful to see us through thus far,” Green said. “And for that reason, we can trust that in all that is to come, the purposes for which God has planted us on this corner will come — in God’s time — to fruition.”
Part of a growing trend
Silver Spring United Methodist Church is part of a growing nationwide trend of houses of worship working to repurpose their aging buildings and underutilized property for good.
Keep focus on faith
One of the more creative projects Nadia A. Mian pointed to in her database of faith-based affordable-housing projects was led by College Park First United Methodist Church in suburban Atlanta.
In partnership with multiple groups, the church transformed an old school into the Ion College Park Arts Center, a mixed-use space where artists can live and work. The church also replaced its main parking lot with Diamond College Park, a residential building with 60 affordable apartments.
The effort began in 2019, and the new structures opened to the public last year.
The Rev. Kimberlyn Sinkfield, the church’s pastor, said her small congregation’s vision for the project was “faith, arts and community” but, too often, faith took a backseat to the other two goals.
“That’s the part that I am trying to get us back to,” said Sinkfield, who has been appointed to the church for a little over two years.
Starting this week, the church is beginning a Bible-based study and working with a consultant to discern a faithful future that involves better outreach to their neighbors.
“My hope is that we'll go through this next five weeks, and there'll be some healing; there'll be some study,” she said. “We'll figure out what the gifts of the church are.”
The Rev. Will Ed Green of Silver Spring United Methodist Church said he also hopes to keep the congregation’s focus biblically grounded throughout all the vagaries of its affordable-housing project.
He wants people to have the sustaining fuel of deep prayer and Bible study.
“So, when pastors come and go — or when administrations come and go — we will have the strength we need to continue doing what God is calling us to do.”
Saying “Yes, In My Backyard,” many congregations are trying to help solve the U.S. housing crisis, which has been intensifying since the 2008-2009 Great Recession. According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, no state has an adequate housing supply for low-income renters, leaving many working families without a roof over their heads. Private-equity firms buying up single-family homes en masse also puts home ownership out of reach for many middle-income millennial and younger adults.
Houses of worship often are well-situated to address this crisis, said urban-planning scholar Nadia A. Mian. She is the senior program director of the Ralph W. Voorhees Center for Civic Engagement at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her research focuses on faith-based property development.
“A lot of research has shown that religious institutions are in decline,” she said. “People don’t go to church as much. … So, what do you do with these large properties and these older buildings that are falling apart? This offers a way to transition property to a new use and provides almost a new life for the congregation as they move forward.”
With grant funds from the Duke Endowment and Trinity Episcopal Church Wall Street, Mian and her staff are putting together a database cataloging the affordable-housing developments built on religious property that have been completed since 2015.
So far, her team has counted about 200 such projects, 10% of which are built on United Methodist property. Those United Methodist developments include, among others, a micro home village in Nashville, Tennessee, low-income housing for seniors in the Bronx and an apartment complex for LGBTQ seniors in Portland, Oregon.
However, Mian stressed, this total does not include projects like Silver Spring United Methodist Church’s that are still in the planning or construction stages. The team expects to make the database public by the end of the year and update it with more projects as they are completed.
Every development requires financing. But houses of worship often face distinctive challenges as they endeavor to repurpose property, Mian said. Those include the need to work with development partners as well as the need to persuade their communities to rezone for multi-unit residences.
Churches and other religious bodies do have one advantage when they embark on such projects, Mian added. To quote “The Blues Brothers,” they believe they’re on a mission from God.
On a mission
In the Baltimore and Washington metropolitan areas, the need for affordable housing is particularly acute.
Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling, who leads both the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware conferences, has initiated a missional action plan that at its core, she said, is about working with surrounding communities “to change lives and bring renewed hope.”
“One way our churches are meaningfully doing this is through affordable housing. The cost of living in Montgomery County is very high, creating a real challenge for families to make ends meet,” the bishop said.
“The affordable housing that Silver Spring United Methodist Church is creating will help lift families out of poverty, provide stability and restore dignity. Silver Spring and other congregations are not just praying about poverty; they are helping to eradicate it.”
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Green emphasized a sense of mission in describing Silver Spring’s discernment process.
The congregation, which voted 99% in favor of the project, also has brought along residents of its Woodside neighborhood throughout the discussions. The tax credits from the state now enable the church to go through the Montgomery County zoning process. The church hopes to get a green light from the county within the next 12 months.
Unlike some other congregations involved in this work, Silver Spring United Methodist is not facing decline and, in fact, has been growing over the past two years. The church now averages more than 300 in weekly attendance with enough kids to fill its entire chancel area during the Sunday children’s sermon. The church also supports a variety of feeding and justice ministries. Green estimates between 2,000 and 3,000 people come through the church building each month.
Nevertheless, the church still has more property than it needs, and to make the multilevel, 1964 building fully accessible would cost about $19 million. To complete the project, Silver Spring congregation plans to demolish 48% of its structures, including its education wing and an old home that periodically has served as a parsonage.
The current plan is to build a 123-unit multifamily residential rental building, six single-family townhomes and six duplexes. The properties range between 30% to 80% of the county’s $125,583 median income.
Rick Reinhard, a United Methodist long involved in economic development work, was so impressed with the project that he invited the church’s leadership to speak at an urban-planning class he teaches at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
“One of the reasons why I admire what Silver Spring UMC is doing is that they've come up with, certainly affordable housing, but also a good mix of possible uses,” he said.
Reparations
Green and other church leaders see the project as part of the church’s needed reparations work after generations of white members benefitting from racist zoning policies that shut Black people out of both housing and eventually even worshipping in the county.
The church recently learned that its roots go back 200 years and early members eventually self-segregated. The Black church they left behind became Mount Zion Methodist Church. Local leaders pushed the Mount Zion congregation to relocate to neighboring D.C., where they helped form what is now Van Buren United Methodist Church.
While public funding means that the housing must be open to everyone, Green said he and church leaders hope to work with Van Buren members interested in joining the housing lottery when it opens.
“No one can deny the role of racism and racist zoning policies in preventing individuals and families from living in our very community,” said Bill Scanlan, co-chair of the church’s building committee.
“Those restrictive laws no longer exist, but the lingering effects do. So, I view the housing project as reparations in its truest form: trying to ‘repair’ what was intentionally and maliciously wrong in historic housing laws.”
The Rev. Lucinda “Cindy” Kent is today the pastor of Van Buren United Methodist Church. She is also the Planning with Purpose coordinator for the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware conferences, helping churches rethink the use of their property. She is excited by Silver Spring’s plans and church members’ willingness to do “a lot of legwork.”
“Pastor Will Ed feels that it is necessary that there is reconciliation that happens between our communities, and I don't disagree with him,” Kent said. “I also believe that we can be a model for other churches that have the same or similar history.”
In his Oct. 5 sermon, Green reminded congregants of Joseph’s words in the Book of Genesis: “What they intended for evil, God has purposed for good.”
Today, he said, the congregation is one of the most racially, economically, politically, theologically and generationally diverse congregations in Silver Spring.
“It’s out of that diversity — not the homogeneity sought by segregationists and those who are even now actively trying to rewrite the story of our nation — that we have continued to overflow with thanksgiving … and to recognize God’s purposes, which have led us, despite the dark chapters and hidden truths, to be a beacon of hope and healing on this corner.”
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 of [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
