Kevin Jones
The Neighborhood Economics model of bringing a national focus to local issues was in high focus in Jackson, Mississippi at our April conference. I want to tell you about one of the most exciting things that came out of our conference.
Because of white flight and the city’s problems, developers had stopped building or renovating houses in South Jackson. Black churches stepped into the gap. Rosemont Missionary Baptist Church, under the direction of pastor Pastor Jimmy Edwards, purchased 118 lots, cleaned out abandoned lots, and built a nature trail along a creek with some government help.
Ronnie Crudup, Jr., a state legislator and son of Bishop Ronnie Crudup, Sr., of New Horizons Church in Jackson, leads his father’s housing ministry, having secured a revolving, zero interest loan from a donor that he recycled into renovations and home purchases that were affordable for the low income community.
The local AME Bishop and a group of a few churches were doing the same. But all of these initiatives were grass roots, most fueled by Jacksonians who’d moved away and done well or from local individual contributions, along with some funding from the Kellogg Foundation.
Since Neighborhood Economics is a national convening with a local focus, we were able to bring in four institutional investment funds focused on churches; these funds help take such work to scale.
Working with Dr. Shonda Allen Hill, a regional organizer for Working Together Mississippi, the churches involved in the work created a map of their assets: the square footage, their deferred maintenance costs, their mortgage and other debt obligations, and plans to use some of their space for a needed community center. Because of the depressed economy, many of the churches were in abandoned strip malls or big box retailer sites, so there was plenty of room available to fill the need and no zoning problems
Neighborhood Economics brought in many of the catalytic foundations investing in economic justice along with Kellogg, such as MacArthur, Heron, Surdna, and Irvine to witness the ongoing work.
Even more important were the four faith-based funds with representatives at our convening: Trinity Church Wall Street, the largest, invests in the other funds; Crossing Capital, led by Rev. Dr. Sidney Williams, an AME pastor and former investment banker; the United Church of Christ’s building and loan fund, led by Rev. Dr. Patrick Duggan; and the Cornerstone Fund, led by Scott Hackenburg.
These funds used to be called church building funds, but with between 50,000 and 100,000 churches set to close nationally in the next five years, they are becoming neighborhood revitalization funds that can help preserve a worship space along with shared and mixed community use space.
Williams, using his Fishing Differently curriculum, https://www.amazon.com/Fishing-Differently-Ministry-Formation-Marketplace-ebook/dp/B07CSVY42N, helped church leaders, lay, and clergy to understand themselves as worthy of being asset owners and how to strike a good deal for their property.
There were several working sessions during the conference, then on the last day a group of more than 40 people toured the ongoing grassroots work to solve the housing problem by churches in Jackson. The participants saw vividly how these churches have stepped in to solve these serious housing issues when the market and local and state government had been absent.
A working group has been formed to assess which projects to do first, with Duggan funding the pre-development finance necessary to decide on feasibility and on the path forward. Duggan and his fund https://cblfund.org/about are leading the ongoing work from the national side, and Allen Hill is coordinating the connections to local initiatives.
Bringing a national focus to the work of local grassroots initiatives and bringing in national catalytic funders into the room who can help take those projects to scale is the heart of what makes Neighborhood Economics a different event, an event unlike any other.