This is Steve Ozark’s dream, at least for now.

Six or seven Lawrence faith organizations each would sign on to support one mentally disabled person. The money would go to pay for housing for them.

“Because we learn there’s a greater cause than our own family and our own self,” Ozark says, “we try to reach out and help other people.”

Ozark is coordinator of the Lawrence Community InterFaith Initiative, a loose group of 20 to 30 people who have been gathering monthly since January 2005. They’re working on a variety of issues, recently focusing mostly on affordable housing.

In doing so, the organization has joined a national trend of faith-based organizations who are reaching out to poor and disabled to help them find long-term housing.

A recent Harvard University study found that one in seven households pays more than half its income on rent or mortgage payments, and the number is growing. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers housing affordable when it costs 30 percent or less of a household’s income, but about 25 percent of people pay more than that.

This growing need comes at a time when federal housing assistance is at its lowest point in decades.

Starting goal

Ozark says the InterFaith Initiative’s first couple of years have been spent trying to build a lot of bridges among faith communities.

But he realizes it’s action that keeps people involved.

“Going to meetings is a drag unless something gets done,” he says. “We want everybody to come out of it with something we’ve tangibly accomplished.”

Lately, that’s work on a project the group is calling Home-Makers, which would provide the ongoing support for those with mental disabilities.

“We dove into the deep end and said, ‘Let’s help people who need help the rest of their lives,'” Ozark says. “Of course, that’s a long-term commitment.”

Those involved in the InterFaith Initiative are hoping recruit faith organizations for a pilot project to get the program off the ground.

“We’ve studied other programs that work,” Ozark says, “and permanent support for housing has been shown to be the most effective care for people in need.”

But he says faith leaders he’s talked with estimate only 25 percent of Lawrence residents are involved in a house of worship. So he’s concerned that city leaders might put too much pressure on faith groups to try to solve the issue on their own.

“That leaves out three-fourths of the people,” he says. “We don’t think it’s fair to put it all on the faith community.”

‘Don’t be dissuaded’

If Frank Alexander has a message, though, it’s not to look at anything – including a limited number of people – as an obstacle.

Alexander has been working on affordable-housing issues for more than 25 years, and he currently serves as director of the Affordable Housing and Community Development project at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta.

“Most of the things they will encounter have been encountered before, and they can be overcome,” he says. “Don’t be dissuaded by the barriers.”

He specializes in helping nonprofit groups gain control of vacant properties to turn them into affordable housing projects. But he’s seen many models that work.

Alexander says faith communities have been at the “leading edge” of affordable housing issues for decades, but many specialized in providing housing for the elderly. Now, he says, some are expanding their definition to including low-income housing.

“The strength of faith-based community affordable housing work is it tends to bring long-term stability, whereas a secular organization may develop it and disappear,” Alexander says. “Also, it commonly will provide an understanding of broad-based social services that are needed.”

But he notes that most faith organizations aren’t equipped to handle real estate development, large financial transactions or property management. That’s why, he says, it’s critical for churches or other groups to hire professionals to help them begin their housing new projects.

It’s also important, he says, for faith organizations to establish a nonprofit corporation to protect themselves financially as they enter the affordable-housing venture.

Alexander doesn’t think churches will have to go it alone in the future – but he does think they and other nonprofit groups will have to partner with the federal government, which has moved away from a model of providing its own affordable housing.

“I think we’re at the end of a pendulum swing,” he says. “Over the past 25 years, the federal government has cut back on housing programs and housing projects. There are fewer government-supported housing projects today than we’ve had in the past 25 years, and the number is declining every day. And the housing needs of those who are low-income will only be increasing.”

The models

Jill Suzanne Shook, an affordable-housing activist from Pasadena, Calif., thinks many of her fellow housing workers are driven by faith.

“People are motivated to do the right thing,” she says, “whether they understand the biblical basis or not.”

Based on her experiences working with low-income teens in Pasadena, Shook got interested in models for affordable housing and wrote a book, “Making Housing Happen: Faith-Based Affordable Housing Models.” Among the success stories she tells:

¢ Messiah Housing in Detroit, a cooperative organized by an Episcopal church.

¢ Community Bible Church in Pasadena, a church of about 100 members that has helped secure more than 500 units of affordable housing there through tax credits.

¢ A Lutheran church in Chicago that put its building up as collateral to purchase five affordable-housing complexes.

In addition to starting actual projects, Shook says faith communities are becoming more active in lobbying for government assistance. That includes a push for “inclusionary housing ordinances,” which require that a certain percentage of new development or converted condominiums to meet affordable-housing standards.

In most cases, she says, most of these projects start with someone with a vision that is dismissed by others early on.

“Oftentimes, you take that step of faith and start, and even if you don’t get it done yourself, someone will step up to help you,” she says. “It’s very much faith-based.”

Ozark, who is involved with the Lawrence effort, says he’s hoping that’s the case here, too. Once some groups make their commitments, he says, others are likely to follow.

“We’re all feeling separate, where really all the faith organizations I’ve ever come into contact with have the same heart,” he says. “They want to do something to help out, to reach out to our brother and sister in need.”