the underview.
The underview is an exploration of the shaping of our place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.
The underview is a series of discussions within and about the community of Northwest Arkansas. The underview explores our collective understanding and beliefs about the place we live.
These discussions will include topics that are foundational to the identity of our region, the history of our communities, the truth of conflict with the land and its people, and the current challenges and opportunities for our community.
the underview.
the faithful foundations with Candi Adams (ep 2b, 46).
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In a region where home prices have jumped 70.9% in five years and median rent has increased by double digits across every major city, affordable housing solutions can feel elusive. But the Faithful Foundations program, created by the Urban Land Institute of Northwest Arkansas, offers a different approach: what if churches could use land they already own to help address the crisis?
Candi Adams, Director of Signature Programs for ULI Northwest Arkansas, joins the conversation to discuss how this pilot program brought together six congregations from across the region to learn the fundamentals of real estate development. ULI's research revealed over 1,600 parcels covering 7 square miles owned by more than 650 faith organizations in Benton and Washington counties alone. Adams shares her journey from architect to nonprofit leader, the unlikely partnerships forming between faith communities and real estate professionals, and why hope remains the essential ingredient in this work. From Historic St. James Missionary Baptist Church's vision for HUD housing with hydroponic gardens to Trinity United Methodist's plans for housing the unhoused, these congregations are asking a profound question: how do we use what we have to care for who needs it most?
About the underview:
The underview is an exploration of the development of our Communal Theology of Place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.
Website: theunderview.com
Follow us on Instagram: @underviewthe
Host: @mikerusch
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theunderview/message
Housing as we talk about it in society is very. Quantitative, right? We talk about homelessness and statistics and numbers and how many people, live here and how much it costs. But home is, personal to everyone. whatever that means And so I think, you know there's a of understanding from a lot of what the churches are providing in their missions. they see the humanity in what they're doing. And I think that is really, really important because it's not about statistics or numbers or how many families they feed per week. It's how many people can we help?
mike.:Well, you're listening to the underview and Exploration and the shaping of our place. My name is Mike Rusch and today we're gonna talk about something that we've talked a lot about affordable housing. But wait, hold on. Don't go anywhere just yet because I wanna have an honest moment. We've talked a lot about this like a lot, and I've struggled probably like most to really find places where we're making progress, where solutions can scale and where people and not profit are the focus. We've seen Movement Forward like with the Excellerate Foundation's, Bentonville School's teacher housing initiative. But that in and of itself won't solve the problem alone. Here in northwest Arkansas, home prices have jumped over 70% in the last five years, and the median rent has increased 38% in Bentonville, 30% in Rogers, 27% in Fayetteville. And honestly, it's easy to feel like we're just documenting a crisis without really finding any pathways forward, but that's when I learned about the Faithful Foundation's program. It's a program created by the Urban Land Institute of Northwest Arkansas. this program brings together faith communities and real estate professionals to address affordable housing in a way that I've not seen before. The simple idea is this could faith communities and churches that have land that they already own, could they use that to help address the affordable housing issue? ULI did their search and they mapped it out and they found that there's over 1600 parcels of land that cover almost seven square miles owned by more than 650 faith organizations right here in Benton and Washington counties alone land that's sitting there underutilized in locations that are wholly appropriate for affordable housing development, land that churches already own, which completely changes the equation when land costs have become the primary barrier to building homes that people can afford. So ULI created an educational group and invited a pilot cohort of churches if they would be interested. Six churches accepted that first invite and formed the first cohort historic St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Trinity United Methodist, Christ and Neighbor Church in Rogers. First Christian Church in Rogers, first United Methodist in Bentonville and the Arkansas JRD Marshallese United Church of Christ in Springdale. Six congregations representing different traditions, different communities, different neighborhoods, all asking the same question. How do we use what we have to care for those who need it most? Today I am sitting down with Candy Adams, the director of Signature programs for ULI Northwest Arkansas, who led this program from grant proposal to the final pitch event. And what you're about to hear is more than just a housing program, it's the story about unlikely partnerships, about translating mission into real estate, about hope as a practical tool and about what becomes possible when people make space at the table for everybody. Alright, we've got a whole lot to work through today. Let's get into it.
mike rusch.:Well, I have the privilege today of sharing a table with Candi Adams who's the director of Signature Programs for ULI here in Northwest Arkansas Candi, welcome to the conversation. I'm really glad to be able to sit with you today.
candi adams.:Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
mike rusch.:And I'm excited too because I feel like I've been following from behind the scenes and I'm really excited to, to hear this directly from you and this work that you're doing because this program, the Faithful Foundations program that you've been leading is really unique in my opinion, and sounds like a really promising way that we can practically address the housing issues that we're having here in northwest Arkansas. Tell me a little bit about your background and who you are and and then we'll move into how you got connected to this.
candi adams.:Sure. So I guess as a background, I would first just say Arkansas is home. I have lived and worked in every region of the state. grew up in Jonesboro and went to college here and always said if I had an opportunity to move back that I would lived in South Arkansas. In the Timberlands Delta area for 15 years and that also became home and moved back here. I had an opportunity to teach at the university, which I absolutely loved and made some really great connections and also just really good experience and education. But I left there a couple of years ago and had, a mentor of mine who is a former professor. Her name is Jamie Radzinski, just precious woman, but she connected me to Wes. I told her, I was like, I'm, I wanna stay in education to some level, but I know I don't wanna be necessarily in traditional practice. I'm an architect by trade. I don't think I said that, but I'm an architect by trade. And I was looking for some sort of opportunity in a nonprofit that number one, have impact but also work in an educational aspect of design. And she connected me to Wes Craiglow. And I came online a little over a year ago, just in time to help dot some i's and cross some t's for the grant proposal to Walton Family Foundation on the Faithful Foundations program. And we hit the ground running as soon as we had been approved.
mike rusch.:I'm sure that's a very humble, shortened version of your background So I'm sure we're gonna get into this a little bit more. But maybe for those who have not heard about this, give me an idea of ULI's mission here in Northwest Arkansas for those that may not have heard, and then maybe how this Faithful Foundations program fits within the work that you're doing today.
candi adams.:Absolutely. ULI, of course is a global organization. And the broader mission is," achieving transformative impact in communities worldwide." And that is primarily through educational programming. A lot of networking and discussions about ethical and responsible land use planning and how to be sustainable in that both economically and environmentally. But understanding how that impacts here. We are in a growing region and the growth of course is exponential, but with that comes some growing pains. We've seen a lot of escalating land costs. Many of us are aware there is an affordable housing crisis, just in the sense that homes in every range of affordability are in shortages for all income levels. Where the Urban Land Institute has an opportunity to have impact in that realm is identifying ways that we can responsibly access the land that is available for development and keeping in mind how that impacts cost of living and quality of life. So when we're looking at a program like Faithful Foundations the overall objective of course is to create affordable housing. And we are working with faith organizations specifically because we realize really not just in this region, but all over the country and all over the world, churches have substantial land holdings. For whatever reason, many of them have held them for hundreds of years. And there might be a historical presence there or cultural presence, but at the same time in a region like this, that land has escalated in value exponentially. When we see affordable housing projects very commonly dismissed because they just don't pencil right The it doesn't make sense to build a low cost housing on land that's so expensive. When you're working with a church that is already a nonprofit organization they're not looking at a project that is based entirely on a capital revenue stream or something like that. They are thinking more about expanding their missions. So a lot of the churches are already working boots on the ground in their neighborhoods. They're working in food pantries, they're working with those in need in warming shelters, homeless shelters. There's all sorts of ways that they're connecting with people every day in their community. To introduce housing as an extension of some of those missions on land that is vacant and available That's a very high cost for a traditional developer or a designer or someone who's looking to build housing. Otherwise. It's the Venn diagram overlap of where the ULI mission for responsible and ethical land use planning overlaps with that of a faith organization that has land available and maybe doesn't really know what to do with it or how to capitalize on it for a greater good.
mike rusch.:I think in listening to you, the, this is really interesting because you're bringing together some unlikely allies, I think in some ways, right? Is that a fair statement? I think, and not that they wouldn't be allies, but these are traditionally not people who are working together in a way that could be collaboratively benefiting the community. And I'm curious, where did the origin of this program, the idea of this program, come from?
candi adams.:That's a really fair question, and I think what is really interesting, because when you look at the membership of ULI that are in real estate architecture engineering, land planning, urban design a lot of those are policy makers. And then when you look at the typical. Staff components of a church. they're usually very limited. They're seeing declining revenue, declining membership, so they're, it's volunteer staff in a lot of their mission programs. How are you getting all of these people to work together? And I think one area where ULI is successful is in their educational programming And so we already have several opportunities for people to learn about urban design and development But we have another program. That is structured similarly in the sense of curriculum development, real estate development 1 0 1, it's called the Real Estate Diversity Initiative. And it is a 12 part workshop series for aspiring developers that's historically designed to increase diversity in the real estate development industry. We were able, because we've had that program established as as a national organization and a national program, we borrowed that curriculum and basically tweaked it to think about how can we respond specifically to affordable housing and typologies and demographics associated with that But at the same time, how can we tweak it to communicate with churches? I think we have a lot of things to still fine tune as we continue developing, but as a first iteration The program was designed specifically as an educational and networking opportunity. So how can we bring churches in that are already thinking about designing affordable housing or building affordable housing on their land in various scales and typologies? How can we bring them into the conversation of what does it really take to develop real estate? So we introduced, this year we had six churches. We worked with all six churches through a 12 part workshop, curriculum series. Eight of those workshops were content education, around site development and assessment and financing and how to develop a proforma. What is a proforma? How do you hire an architect? And what is the process for working through construction? Just introducing them to a lot of terminology, but also the processes and the teams that are required to see a project through the last four parts. The last four workshops were intended to help them develop a site and project specific proposal. So we brought in 18 technical consultants that were within our member network. They were volunteers, but they were professionals in design, development, finance engineering, site planning, urban planning. And we divided them into teams to work with each church. And they were able to sit down across the table over the course of about eight to 10 weeks total. And develop a strategy for affordable housing implementation. That was number one, specific to that church's context. So what's appropriate within their neighborhood and their location. Building in downtown Bentonville, for example, is very different than building in historic South Fayetteville. So how do you relate to that design context? And then also how do you capitalize on your missions that you already have in place? So how do you tie housing in as an extension of the missions that you are already pursuing? And I think keeping a focus on those things was important in keeping these projects to a level of feasibility and capacity that the churches can manage them long term. But then also it's something that they believe in, right? They can build a consensus around this because they're already doing some of this work.
mike.:I think from my perspective anyway most people that live in northwest Arkansas they probably understand that it's a profit driven model. But when you step into a church faith-based paradigm all of those rules or requirements they take on a different component. You started to talk about this a little bit, and I'd love for you to expand, like from your perspective, how does this, intersection between a church's mission and this practical boots on the ground building housing. What's that first phase of trying to understand motivations and mission alignment and how you bring these two worlds that are, in my opinion, seem to be very different? How do you bring 'em together?
candi adams.:They can be very different, I think. For starters, we've seen a lot of understanding from churches over the last few decades Often they're experiencing declining population, which is also a declining revenue If I have heard once in the last year, I have probably heard it a hundred times, we are land rich and cash poor. They're declining revenue streams, but they know the value of their land. And so to your point of, this is not a traditional development and it's not necessarily a for-profit strategy. Churches are already working in a world of how to benefit the community that is not capital driven. It's not a for-profit endeavor. They're not doing it for their own personal gain They're doing it for the betterment of their community. And so when you look at the value of their land, it's really not worth anything unless it's used. And that's really the case in any land, right? Just knowing how that might be an asset. But for churches specifically, when we're bringing them into the discussion of real estate development or they suggest, we're already doing this on one side of service, how can we bridge into housing It's a huge step It is a huge step. There's a lot of difference in, managing a church facility daylight hours only in some cases, to managing a housing complex that have families of, however many families that are living there 24 7 with dogs and kids and cars and everything else. It's a different strategy altogether. And so how do we get them to feel comfortable? And I think where, where we are at an advantage within ULI is, that's what our members do every day. They are property managers. They understand development, they understand long-term financing strategies. They also understand long-term property management strategy. Do you hire that done or do you have someone in house and they can speak from experience on what is successful, what are lessons learned even if it's a for-profit model that they may be pulling from, they can understand the experience and the process of this is what you're gonna need to think about as you're going into this,
mike rusch.:I'm curious, maybe can you just click a profile of what maybe some of these churches or if you want to name them you're welcome to also, but like these churches, what's the context that they're coming from? I mean, I gotta be honest, there's a lot of churches that are very well resourced in northwest Arkansas. Are we talking about well-resourced faith communities or are we looking at a different profile of churches that are coming in and stepping into this space?
candi adams.:We intentionally set out to identify churches this year and it was a little bit organic because again, it's a pilot program. Sure. connecting networks and the research that we have since done was not yet compiled, but identifying churches that we had been told or interested or even just cold calling and doing outreach. We connected with dozens and dozens of churches and faith organizations throughout northwest Arkansas. Just asking the question and what I think was a really good surprise for me, and I say good surprise in the sense that I didn't really expect to see this happen, but, there was a lot of enthusiasm. There was a lot of interest that had already been pursued that I hadn't even been aware of. I think too, we really wanted to try to identify churches that represented a good cross section of our communities. So some of the churches we worked with are probably better resourced than others. That wasn't necessarily a deciding factor in any way. It was more trying to understand a difference in neighborhood context, understand different groups that they may be wanting to serve but also we were looking for churches that had different ideas on. Ranges of affordability and housing typology because from where we stand as real estate and design professionals, it's all needed. Everything from those who are unhoused to, workforce families, up to 120% of the AMI are struggling to find housing that's affordable unless they are being moved into peripheral communities. And so I think we specifically focused on the four primary population centers. So Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville. And we were fortunate to work with one in Bentonville, two in Rogers, one in Springdale, and two in Fayetteville. From all different ranges different age groups, different racial profiles and demographics. And I think that's a really important thing to consider because as a growing population it is more diverse and I think that's economically and all different ways that we wanted to offer some sort of representation of what that could be.
mike rusch.:As I listen to you talk about these churches and these profiles I can't help but like grasp onto this thought that you have a, I looked at the list of churches will provide that in the show notes that's available on your website, but these are churches that are serving really under-resourced people already and trying to meet a really resource heavy need. And they don't seem to flinch, they seem to move right into that unconcerned about maybe how far apart sometimes the needs are from what the resources required are to do that. I'm curious your thoughts on that. Is that a fair representation of that?
candi adams.:I think so. I think learning about. Some of the missions and some of the impact that these churches are having on a daily basis has probably been one of the most personally rewarding parts of this program. Just because, they have so much on their plates in a lot of ways. they are they're offering resources to immediate needs on a daily basis and on a weekly schedule. And they don't flinch. They don't, there's not, oh we're not gonna run the food pantry this week. They know that's, especially in, current circumstances where people aren't receiving food assistance. They are, they're the resource And they step up and they do that without questioning it. I can't say I know why they do it. I just. I do think a lot of it has to do with their faith. I think that's what they feel like they're called to do. But I think too, they just, they believe in what they're doing. And I think that's I think that's a beautiful thing that they're doing this because they see the value they're getting to know these people that they're assisting and they're able to connect with them at a level of at a personal level. And I think that's really important. as someone who's worked in community development and nonprofit work and even affordable housing for a number of years is personal. Housing is very personal. Housing as we talk about it in society is very. Quantitative, right? We talk about homelessness and statistics and numbers and how many people live here and how much it costs. But home personal to everyone. Whatever that means And so I think, there's a of understanding from a lot of what the churches are providing in their missions. They see the humanity in what they're doing. And I think that is really important because it's not about statistics or numbers or how many families they feed per week. It's how many people can we help?
mike rusch.:I would love you to continue just that stream of thought. I think it's really beautiful to hear that. And we probably can't hear it enough. Because these are churches that are they're dedicated to the mission that they're working through. They're taking it unbelievably serious to commit themselves to this type of cohort model in a year long program. I'm curious how those churches within those cohorts interacted or collaborated. I'm assuming they didn't go through it on their own, just in an individual silo. I'm curious what happened behind the scenes a little bit within those Yeah. Spaces where they're all brought together working on these problems together.
candi adams.:I would like to think that they all built relationships through this. I know at our pitch event that we held in October for all of them to present their projects we had everyone lined along the front row because they went one after another to speak. But just watching them time each other and communicate and seeing them in the workshops together, it was. It was certainly intended to be some sort of peer mentoring, peer learning. I do think we can dive a lot deeper into that. And I think, getting them to each other's property and saying, this is what we have, this is what we're working with. Like how can we really build on connecting different ideas, but then also these are the resources we have. This is what we're looking at I will say and I don't wanna backtrack too much 'cause it's not fully related to the question you just asked, but something that you mentioned earlier about how do you connect these two groups of people between a group of real estate professionals and a group of church often volunteers, staff or volunteers. And there is a level of disconnect just in the reality of what these projects are. There's certainly the, "I believe in this and I wanna help people and I wanna do good and I'm called to do good." And there's that side of it that is really important because they have to have the belief that's going to make a difference in their community for them to even pursue it. But then the reality of it's gonna cost $6 million to build this. How do you get into the, this is a financing structure that works, this is what a capital stack is, this is what your pre-development costs are. And I think that was where we tried in the educational programming to be as real and open about that terminology as possible. These are the real estate terms. This is the real world of real estate development. And I do think we need to probably do a little more work in just bridging that communication. but at the same time, I do think it's important to. To explain, these are real projects and they cost real money, and it takes a lot of time. And there are approvals through the city and there are zoning requirements and there are policy changes. There's all sorts of things that go into a project that they may just not be familiar with and they may not really be prepared for. And that's just the reality of it. But that's with any development project, anyone who is looking to build anything is not familiar with the process. It's gonna be a learning curve
mike rusch.:Yeah, I'm continually, I think, drawn back to this dynamic of churches that are working with really under resourced people in a really resourced technical a place to provide something that, to your point, is very personal. And those dynamics of churches that are being active in that way just is really appealing to me and really beautiful to see. And, And I know that happens in our world, in our community a lot more than we probably understand. I think maybe the stereotype that I would carry into it is, in many ways that like you've got churches, it feels like, that are working together on this aligned mission of what's best for our community. I'm gonna assume they had a lot of conversations to iron out and make sure that all their theology aligned before they decided to go in and do something like this in the community, right? Is that part of that conversation? I wouldn't answer that if I were you, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
candi adams.:I'm gonna be honest. Going into this and knowing what this program was, I was very nervous. Okay. We're gonna bring six churches of varying faith and ideology and just even in the local. Not local, just global political climate of being divisive and, polarized in so many ways. I was very nervous and I have to say, one of the things I think was probably most successful and probably surprising to me is that it really wasn't about that. It wasn't ideology. It wasn't, oh, you're Church of Christ and I'm Methodist, and you're Baptist. It wasn't about that. At all. I don't think the conversations ever even really came up except for each, we asked the churches to focus on their independent missions. We worked with an excellent church in Rogers. First Christian, and he is very open. This is our vision statement and this is what we believe in. And our response was simply focus on that. Okay, what are you already doing And how can you build on that But I think by allowing them to search within themselves and their own congregations of what is important what's important to St. James Missionary Baptist and what is important to First Christian in Rogers or Trinity United Methodist Church. I think it was more about letting them be self-reflective. Because that's their story and that's why they're doing what they're doing. And it's not about I believe this or I believe that. And I was really grateful for that.
mike rusch.:you mentioned a little bit about the diversity of the churches that you were working with. Was that intentional as a part of this screening process? Or walk me through how that kind of played out a little bit more.
candi adams.:I don't know if I would say is intentional in the screening process because, truthfully, it was really organic. We had an incredible leadership team with this program put together of professionals in housing advocacy nonprofit management. We had several faith-based leaders that were, that are guiding nonprofits now in faith housing initiatives. And it was really relying on them and, within their networks. And they're aware of this church that's looking at housing or we learned that this church has established an affordable housing committee over a year ago, and they don't really, they don't really know what to do with it, but they wanna build housing. So it was very organic. We, were fortunate in the sense that we happened to meet a number of churches that had already considered this, but they were all over the map at what level they had pursued it. We worked with one church that there, they just purchased their first property and they haven't built their church yet, but they know that they need housing within their community and they wanna build housing to support their congregation and their community members. We worked with another church who had gone to a developer and had a full fledged feasibility study ready to go and wanted to look into Litech applications. It was a very broad range of where they were. I think, within our capacity, we set, I think in our grant proposal, four to six churches for the first year. And so we were fortunate to come. Work with six. But a lot of that was just logistical relationship of people in a classroom. How many people can we effectively work with at one time? And I think there's opportunity for more, within the research that we found, I have six, six hundred and fifty eight churches listed in the spreadsheet that are faith organizations, not necessarily just churches. A lot of nonprofits are also faith-based. And we're open with working open to working with those as well. There are a lot of them here. We're in the Bible though, I get that I grew up in Jonesboro.
mike rusch.:Yeah. 658 churches, that's a lot. You got to work with 1% of 'em. But the implication, I mean, even to work with 10% of them who would be willing to step into this space could really be, I don't know, this is not my area of expertise, but it feels like that could be pretty transformative in our region around housing. Because I'm curious, like when you think about one church and the number of maybe housing units that they're going to build and I realize it may vary, but it like, is there a range in there? Like one church could build 20 housing units, or how do we think about that and maybe what the potential for this program could be? I
candi adams.:think that's one thing we've tried to think about a lot. Especially knowing in the background. So of course all of the outreach and building a leadership team around this building with professionals developing curriculum. We had 42 volunteer workshop instructors that came in and presented all the educational content working with six different churches and site specific project specific development. And their sites ranged everything from 2.1 acres to, I think 11 acres was the largest property that we worked with. And then looking at all the different scales of things that we might do on each of those, what's most appropriate. And I think in affordable housing, what is appropriate is a conversation that's really important to have. As far as the potential for this somewhat in the background we were fortunate to partner with the Centers for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas to help us identify faith owned land. Our project was specific to Benton and Washington counties, certainly scalable replicable, but at the same time, just knowing how much vacant land is available in our communities. That could be housing When we see escalating land cost and it is in a capitalist economy, we understand that most people aren't looking to give away land. But at the same time when we find those landowners who are not looking for a profit maybe a revenue stream and capitalizing it on the best way that they can, but not necessarily just a cash profit there is a lot of potential in northwest Arkansas, we've identified over seven square miles of land I think there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600 individual parcels owned by these 650 plus organizations. And I think our next step of this process in identifying potential, we just recently partnered with Acres in Fayetteville. They're gonna help us take our data from CBER and really start building the layers to zoom in and identify, faith organizations that are located in neighborhoods that might be high potential for affordable housing development. Just knowing what is the affordability index? What is the housing and transportation costs and the AMI within that neighborhood. What's within a walkable 10 or 15 minute range? Are you near trails in schools and stores and healthcare? All of the things that make somewhere livable, especially for someone of limited means someone that might have a limited income and maybe they don't afford a car, or they are extremely low income in their, they're needing access to that community for any number of resources. What faith organizations can we identify and then how do we organize that outreach to connect with them? Is it. as organic As it was the first time around where this church has a lot of land. What are they thinking about the about doing with it? And we just connect with them. Or is it something that we can really build capacity where we can start to build a precedent of this is what faith organizations are doing in our communities. And you could do this too, right? You have this land, this isn't an appropriate context for affordable housing. This is a way you can have impact and not all churches are gonna be prepared to do that. I've connected with so many many are just at capacity in what they're already doing. They're already doing so much. They don't have the capacity to take on a project like this'cause it's a lot. But at the same time, I think a lot of them are tinkering with the idea, or at least they're starting to. And hopefully those ideas can grow I really am hopeful that we can, bring more churches into the educational component. That's something that we've talked about as a leadership team Just how can we advocate for this and help people understand this is a really huge impact. There's a lot that can be done. And you're not working alone, right? We have, even just in ULI, within Northwest Arkansas, we have over 260 members in the real estate industry that you know, are members of ULI because they believe in that mission. So how can we connect you to the resources and the people you need to help you with your project?
mike rusch.:For these churches when they think about these projects are these projects benefiting people that are in their own congregation, or is this community wide? how does that work? Is there a consensus on maybe the best way that some of those churches are thinking about that?
candi adams.:I would say, just like with almost any of the other missions that we have encountered in the last year with these six churches this is not about only helping people within their congregations or any sort of indoctrination or anything like that It is about who needs help and how can we help them. They're looking we ask them specifically to think about who are you building for because that ties into your why and we'll help you with the what, where, and how. And every one of the churches we worked with had a very distinct identity of who they really wanted to target in their housing projects. Whether it was workforce earners and community servants, like policemen or firefighters. One of the churches was specifically looking for young workforce, families and workforce, first time home buyers. They actually are looking at, home purchasing, like home buying, not rentals. some of them were looking at more of the populations that they're serving in their food pantries, which is certainly reasonable. They see these people every day. I think one of the important conversations that we've had too are the senior population. There are a lot of aging congregations and there are very few resources in northwest Arkansas for senior housing. And we see, we see where this like loneliness epidemic is causing a lot of health issues for our seniors. But then at the same time, they're struggling with housing affordability. So they were targeting groups that they're familiar with. And yes, if they can help people within their congregation, that's certainly something that is important to all of them. Obviously we we worked with the Marshallese community the AJRD United Church of Christ. There's no question their community is in desperate need of immediate housing. And they have been for many, as long as they've been migrating here, they're moving here for a higher quality of life or this idea of higher quality of life And many of them are working in our local industries and they're really struggling financially. A lot of them are living in motels. How can we as a community see that need and recognize that yes, this church is working specifically for people in their church and in their community. But that wasn't typical. A lot of the churches that we were working with were looking at the broader context of demographics or people that they wanted to serve.
mike rusch.:In listening to you, I can't help but think about these are real people with real faces with real communities. It, as I listened to you it feels like it's hard not to come face to face overtly with just some of the real systemic problems in our community. And I'm curious how that enters into this conversation around really churches and ULI, who's stepping in to help en enable those to really take on what sounds like some real systemic issues, not yes, around housing, but also around what it means to belong here, what home looks like, labor, affordability. This goes, sounds like it goes way beyond simply making sure someone's got a roof over their head.
candi adams.:I think it does, and I think that's where the perspective of the churches is so important because they see that every day. I think there is such. A broad gap in what is available. just looking at yes, the cost of housing, but the cost of living and how can how do we as a community, as nonprofit organization, as a real estate development industry how do we really address those issues that have a long-term impact? I think that's one of the things I, that the churches recognize, their food pantries, their utility assistance their warming shelters in the winter those are all very important missions and they are meeting immediate needs that dramatically impact someone's life in a moment or in a day. Providing housing stability for those same people is an impact for a much longer, it's a much greater impact over a longer time. And I think they understand that this is an opportunity to make a lasting impact in some of the things that they are wanting to see happen. And that's really important. I think that's certainly an impact that ULI seeks in terms of transformation and understanding that communities evolve over time and how do we build those to be sustainable. Looking at the economic and environmental impact of those things, but knowing that's a decision over time. And I think that's where housing comes into play that it's. The metrics are very clear. The impact of housing stability on children's outcomes on someone experiencing childhood poverty or food insecurity. Housing stability provides that foundational basis of higher educational outcomes and social and economic mobility that other things can certainly play a role. But having that foundation, believing that maybe housing is a human right and maybe housing is something obviously every person needs that how do we address that as a community, whether that's in policies or just working together towards that common goal. I do think for what we are doing. And even just going back to the suggestion that this isn't about ideology, it's collaboration. It's finding the people who really wanna do this kind of work but then also want to work together. I think it's more important that we're building these networks and these broader networks and examples of, you might, maybe you're building tiny homes, maybe you're building multi multifamily housing. Maybe you're doing this, someone else is doing this too. How can we work together to do that? And I think that capacity building within our communities is essential to really seeing this have a long term impact.
mike.:Okay. Listening to you talk about this idea that housing should be available to everyone. I've heard people talk about this idea of affordable housing as this idea of critical infrastructure, and I'm curious how you view that How would you frame, or how do you think about this idea of affordable housing within that context where we're thinking about housing as infrastructure?
candi adams.:I think I would probably I think you have to go back to the sense of what I said earlier about Housing is personal. Home is personal. Where you live at whatever age you're in right For a child where you live determines where you go to school determines who you play with after school. Right? That's your neighborhood, that's your community. I think that can be said of anyone where they live has an impact on their life and on their quality of life. What we're seeing now in our society, which is starting to or at least is causing a lot of problems, is the fact that people are having to make really difficult choices about where they live because of the cost, and it is impacting every other aspect of their quality of life. So if I'm having to live. 30 miles from my job, not only is that probably costing me X percentage of my income and transportation costs, it's also costing me time with my family. And I think what we see in affordable housing as infrastructure is just understanding that the value of mixed income communities and diverse communities economically benefits everyone. And it may not be a metric that you can point to as a statistic, but I think at the same time you can also look at the fact that there's proven instances of failure, right? When you look at housing that has been concentrated For example, a lot of subsidized projects that are concentrated. Generational poverty There's so many examples of where that has failed, right Because there is a level of influence in not being able to get out of that, not being able to escape that circumstance. And how do you, how do you prove to say, I hate to say how do you prove it but how do you make it really understandable to people in communities who are maybe anti affordable housing development or they don't necessarily understand different ranges of affordability and what that means? How do you make it really clear that actually not only increases a community's overall economic value that increases everyone's quality of life. There's more awareness, there's more education, there's more diversity, there's more acceptance. There's all of these things that may be more qualitative in understanding how they're benefiting, but at the, but they realize it's a good thing.
mike rusch.:I think within this conversation, so often when we think about this idea of affordable housing our expectations really go in many ways to our cities, right? To help us solve this problem. I'm not hearing you talk about the city's involvement, maybe outside of zoning in any way, shape or form. I'm curious, within this program, within this type of model, what is a city or municipality's role here? Do they have one?
candi adams.:I think they definitely do, and I know we haven't gone into a lot of the policy discussions. And part of that UI is not a lobbyist we can advocate for policy changes that positively impact communities, but we don't lobby for policy changes specifically within a community though within a city specifically. I think understanding the processes for nonprofits to get homes on the ground is really important that there's some sort of public private partnership and streamlining some of those processes. Lightning, some of the regulations in terms of. Allowing churches to build on their property by Right. As long as it's missionally aligned. They should have the theoretically they should have the opportunity to build by. We do see policies like that across our nation. We've seen it's called the YIGBY movement. I don't know if you're familiar. So you've heard of nimby, right? Not in My Backyard. So YIGBY is "Yes, in God's backyard." Oh, wow. And there has been legislation passed in various states around the country. California, Colorado, Washington State, I believe Tennessee and North Carolina. I've also seen some policy changes that are specific to how churches have development rights on their own land, as long as those programs are missionally aligned. What we, what is really interesting is while we're. This is seemingly new in northwest Arkansas. This is not a new concept. Churches have been housing people for hundreds of years all over the world and they're doing it in our country. They've, there's many examples. We've tried to provide precedent studies and case studies for the churches that we've worked with just to say, Hey, this is happening. This has happened in your denomination across the country. And and it can happen here. I think building awareness of what some of the best practices would be and what, some of the low hanging fruit is and what policies can change to accommodate more housing. But if cities are seriously advocating that they believe in affordable housing and they're not making some of these common sense changes to their policies, I think that, there's a real opportunity to do that and make some of those changes to get more housing on the ground.
mike rusch.:a as you've worked with these churches, and you're starting to see some of these maybe projects really defined at this point I'm curious maybe if you could describe one or two of those so we can get an idea of what may actually come out of this.
candi adams.:Absolutely. I think, like I said, one of the things I've been so excited about working in this program is that the churches we worked with this year have all very different visions. They're very specific to what they wanna see happen, which is intentional, but at the same time, they're working on projects that are appropriate to their place. And of course, as a designer, as a community developer I think that is also really important. Looking at some of the examples I can think of. First Christian is one that I think has a really unique model a really feasible proposal. I would really love to see them advance that project if they're at all, if it's at all possible. And as a, as they're able to secure financing. But they're proposing subdividing lots They have purchased a one acre lot just south of their church. There is an existing home already on it, I think they've used as a rental before. They're looking at subdividing that property. It's nestled in a neighborhood not far from downtown Rogers. Really great neighborhood residential area, near schools near trails, near stores, near jobs. They would like to subdivided into 12 lots and build workforce housing. Single family homes but operate the project as a community land trust. And where that benefits them and of course homeowners is that allows for a sustainable low cost over a long-term process. They're actually looking at pre-approved plans, housing plans, and they have 12 independent homes drawn on their site plan. Again, they're not they're specifically designed not to face the street They're facing each other, which also allows a sense of community building. And then of course, they're. Accessible to everything that's around them. They're right on a trail. They're on a major street. That's one that I definitely think is very feasible. I'm also really excited about the work that St. James Missionary Baptist is looking at in Fayetteville. They have such a historic presence in Fayetteville and in where their land is located. They actually have two sites. So they own the historic church that's on North Street and they have several acres that are around the church's currently parking. And then they also own their original church building, which is on Willow Avenue in South Fayetteville's, just across the street from the Willow Heights housing neighborhood, and they own around five acres just to the southeast of their outreach center. They are looking at building housing on both properties. The project on North Street is going to be in conjunction with a family life center with their church that would be accessible by congregation members. They're wanting to house some of their mission programs out of that as well as a community center for the surrounding community, but then provide town homes along Levert on the South Fayetteville property, which has an incredible history. And Minister Jones can tell you all about it. It is really interesting to, to learn how they acquired this land over 160 years ago and have maintained it all of this time, but the value of that to their community. They manage an outreach center. Now this now the Squire Jahagen Outreach Center. They're feeding anywhere from 800 to a thousand families a week, especially in some of the holiday times. She would like to build a community of housing across the street that supports the middle income from people who maybe they're living in subsidized housing. They get a job, they stable job they price themselves out of subsidized housing. But then the next step is market rate, whatever an apartment costs in Fayetteville and there's no middle ground. St. James would like to help provide that bridge. But then also integrate within their community community gardens and community opportunities for workforce and labor that they can start to really build a community in that location. And I just, it's just really exciting. It will support the functions of their outreach center with fresh fruits and vegetables, but then it will also support the quality of life of the people who are living there and help with that stabilization.
mike rusch.:Yeah. That's really beautiful to listen to and such a Yeah. Historic and meaningful place to see the community and the church be a part of. Yeah, not only bringing housing affordability or helping to maintain it, but also Yeah, to really think forward around what does it mean to build community and hold community in that space. So really beautiful to hear that. So in, with these maybe potential projects that are coming forward I'm curious what's the future of this program look like? And you we're gonna have the chance to do this again and invite more churches into this space.
candi adams.:Ideally, yes. I think there is a lot of momentum, a lot of enthusiasm. We've built a really strong network of people who want to be involved who want to see, obviously more housing, but also understand the mission driven collaboration that is really key behind this program. And we wanna move that forward. Of course, we want to be able to continue supporting these churches as they're advancing their projects. Knowing that we've connected them with a lot of industry professionals, but how can we continue to introduce them to new resources and new new ideas as they're looking to move this into pre-development and pre-construction. I think one of the primary ways we will do that is keeping that connection strong not just in the kinda comradery that they've built among the six of them, the six of them, but how do we as we continue to network with other churches and other organizations, how do we bring them all together? And also knowing that our network within ULI is very interested in seeing something like this happen. I do think those connections are gonna be really important. I think the expectation is that we will probably continue to make tweaks within our program design and our educational content and some of those things. And I, we've got some really great feedback from the churches who participated this year on how to connect with them more directly, but then also just general suggestions on resources that they may still need and things that maybe we didn't quite hit the mark. So just continue to evolve and work on that. Like I said, we have an incredible leadership committee around this program that I'm just in awe to work with. So we'll continue building capacity and building those networks. We are planning to still dive into the research a little more and better understand, what are things that we can do more immediately? Are there projects that are ready to go that we're just not aware of that we can really help to get off the ground and kinda start building some of those local precedents. But yes, absolutely. In the meantime, we'll continue outreach building network, building database of professionals and organizations that wanna build housing.
mike rusch.:I love hearing that I'm curious, with this program now completed like what do you see as possible for the future of affordable housing here in Northwest Arkansas?
candi adams.:I think I'm really hopeful to see it more Cross sector one of the earlier questions you were asking of, okay, you're bringing groups together that wouldn't necessarily otherwise work together. I wanna see more of that. it's not all about the for-profit developers and it's not about the the scalable single family neighborhoods that we've historically seen that just take more and more land. But what can we do on a smaller scale? What can we do incrementally more locally in our communities, smaller scale development, and how can we build capacity for those public private partnerships so that maybe we do see cities partnering to understand what collaborative development can do, or we do see we do see more opportunities for school districts who also own land in some of our communities who, what are some of these resources that we can start to model to build affordable housing where it is needed most with the people who wanna do it for the right reason.
mike rusch.:I have a couple questions that I ask at the end of every conversation And one of them is around our fears. And I ask that because I think it helps to normalize that there are concerns that we have or give space for that. When you think about all this work and this cohort and what looks to be a really promising future for this I am curious, what are your fears for this?
candi adams.:I I think one one of the biggest things that concerned me is that churches might get in over their head. I think that's one of the things, knowing that we are working with organizations with limited resources a lot of times, and a often limited staff, right? They're already at capacity. And how do we scale projects? When I say appropriate, I, it really is important to consider what is appropriate. Because that's not just responsive to their capacity or their financial ability or their long-term sustainability that's appropriate to what they're really capable of pulling off. who, who is in, who is running the project long term. and it has to be, it has to be a team. It really has to be a team of people. It can't just be one or two visionaries that have a, an idea to do this.'Cause they can get in and over their head really quickly. Also they have to understand that it's not a fast, it's not an overnight thing. It's not an overnight fix. It's not an overnight project. It's gonna take time years sometimes. And that's just part of it. I think working in design and development, we can take that for granted because it's not surprising that a project might take two or three or five years. And maybe churches feel the same, but they are also working in immediate needs every single day. And they're working in a little different capacity. So something like this is not meeting an immediate need. It's meeting a long-term need and it's gonna take a long-term effort. I think another fear I do have a little bit is just what is going to happen when they do hit a roadblock And are they going to stop and abandon everything? or are they gonna be able to move forward? Nimbyism is a real thing. People who don't wanna see things change, they don't want their neighborhoods to change. This is the way things have always been done. It's one of the most dangerous phrases in our world. And I think just knowing that they're gonna run into neighbors that don't wanna see this happen, they're going to, they're gonna hit roadblocks where, oh this isn't allowed by zoning Or, oh, you're in a floodplain. It's gonna take however long we are in a sewage problem that's going to delay everything for X number of years. how do they keep that momentum and belief in what they're doing knowing that there are going to be obstacles? And I don't think that's anything new to them in a lot of ways. I think they probably run against that all the time. But moving into real estate development is a little bit different. As we've mentioned, it's just a different animal. And so how do you maintain that momentum knowing that there's going to be some setbacks and it might be two steps forward and one step back for a long time. So don't get discouraged and keep the faith and keep moving forward. And don't give up
mike rusch.:I'm curious if you want to talk at all about maybe your personal connection to this work and to this program at just in listening to you and the course at this conversation. It, I don't know this doesn't feel like a job that you're talking about. This feels like something that really is at the heart of who you are as a person. And I don't know. Do you wanna talk about that?
candi adams.:I don't know. I, I grew up with a single mom. And an older brother with serious mental health issues. And, we were often struggling financially. it was not uncommon in any way, but at the same time it was I always knew I was loved, I think I've mapped out at one time, I think I moved 13 times before I was 17 years old. And for one, one reason or another whether that was we were evicted or rent went up or we needed to move to another place for whatever reason. Yeah, I moved a lot and I think where there are metrics about housing stability, I was always one that, like I said I I've also always bloomed wherever I was planted. So a new neighborhood to me meant new friends, new Creek to play in New Street to ride my bike on It wasn't ever um, a hindrance or a problem, it was just a new experience. And mom was doing the best she could. And I always knew that. yeah I grew up knowing that I had to be resourceful and I learned at a really young age that you kinda just gotta do the best you can. And sometimes that's all you can do. And like I said I knew I was loved and I had security in that and I didn't have to worry about that. My background personally, professionally, of course, I went to school here, got a degree in architecture. If I had to do it all over again, I would still go to school here and get a degree in architecture. It's one of the most broad fields with so many opportunities that just really opened my mind to anything. The ability to travel, the ability to see the world a different way of seeing the world and how to make a new world. It was just a really great experience. Lived in South Arkansas for a long time which I don't know if you're familiar with South Arkansas at all, but a
mike rusch.:little bit.
candi adams.:Yeah, very, we live in kind of our little Shangri Law in Benton and Washington County, but it's such an anomaly to the other 73 counties at the state. And again, I bloomed to where I was planted, took a long time 'cause I was transplant and takes a long time to build trust. But it was a great place to be.
mike rusch.:Candi, thank you for sharing that. I know that's personal, but I in so many ways just listening to you you can You can hear that personal maybe connection and that passion that comes through and sounds like it really motivates the way this work is done. And and o one of the last questions I ask is this thread that we've tried to to Really tie through all of these conversations in this idea of community wholeness. And so I'd love to ask you, when I say that word, wholeness, what is, yeah, what is community wholeness? What does wholeness look like in this work? Based on what you've seen through this experience?
candi adams.:I don't know. I don't know if I've ever really thought about it like that Wholeness in this work. I don't know I think li living the way I did growing up one thing I can say and this is much to the credit, my mom, because she just, she always worked so hard, but we never lost hope, and I think that's one thing that kind of keeps me driving even now. So working in a nonprofit setting, working in a mission-driven setting, that hope is a key element in everything that we do. Just because you do wanna think that what you're doing has value, it's making an impact and it's creating a positive change for the people that you're working with. And I think in terms of wholeness, bringing more people to the table around an issue There should be space at the table for everybody. And I think that is a really important thing to get any of this kind of work off the ground. It's connecting the people who not only need to be involved but wanna be involved or maybe even just be curious to be involved, but how do you make the connections that are necessary to build collaboratively? Because that is ultimately nobody ever does anything alone. I think. There's a tendency to give credit or look at somebody who's leading something or something, even in architecture, right? Who designed it. There were hundreds of people involved in getting something finished. And I think that is really important. Building our collaborative networks, building capacity around a, a goal of the greater good is such an important thing, but it doesn't work without hope.
mike rusch.:I'll take that definition of wholeness any day. So thank you for Yeah Thank you for being a light in a space that we maybe didn't even know was possible. And I'm just I just so love hearing about this program and the work and those that participated. Thank you for being a catalyst to help try to bring this type of idea and these types of our partnerships to a solution that by all rights we're still trying to figure out as a community how to solve. And so I think listening to you it's definitely hopeful to see what's possible, that when people come together as a community, that there are paths forward and that there are creative, collaborative ways that people can focus on what it looks like to care for your community in the way that it needs to be cared for. And Candi, I just, I'm huge fan and thank you for what you're doing. Huge fan of ULI and the entire team there. Just incredible in incredible work. And I hope that this program continues on and just continues to pour into our community more housing and beyond that the more relationship and more community building. And thank you. Please keep us informed on what's happening. We'd love to check in again and. Yeah, I hear about all the great things you're doing. So Candi, thanks for being here.
candi adams.:Thank you for having me. And thanks for interest in the program. I think it's really important to advocate what the potential of this can be here and just help organizations, but also industry professionals aware that, there's an opportunity here to work together.
mike rusch.:Yeah, if there's any churches that are listening I just be warned this is gonna be a program that I'm gonna ask them about because yeah, this is a really beautiful expression of what it looks like to be a community and to be a congregation that cares for people. Candi, thank you. It's been a joy.
candi adams.:Thank you.
mike.:Well, a huge thank you to Candi and the entire team at ULI for sharing the Faithful Foundations program with us. I sit here, processing what we just heard. I keep coming back to something. There are churches willing to step into systemic problems to find systemic solutions. Six of them said yes to this first cohort. They raised their hands and they said, we wanna learn how to do this. We want to be a part of solving this problem. And that makes me wonder, can others follow? Because six churches is just 1% of all the churches in our region. Is it reasonable to believe that faith communities could become a meaningful part of solving the affordable housing crisis here in Northwest Arkansas? I mean, is it really possible? And if it is, that changes things on more levels than just providing housing? It changes how we think about who's responsible for community wellbeing. It changes how we think about the role of faith in public life. It changes how we think about what it means to be a neighbor. What could 10% or 60 churches do, and what impact could they make in serving those at the margins or in the shadows who are simply wanting a place to belong in this community? I am cautious, but I could dare to believe that maybe this is one way that congregations could live out the call to love their neighbor in the most tangible, most needed way possible. Not just through a food pantry or a warming shelter, though those matter deeply, but through something as fundamental, as stable place to call home. Thank you to ULI for creating this program and believing that it could work. Thank you to the churches who said yes. And thank you to the Walton Family Foundation for providing the funding that made this training possible. I can't speak for anybody else, but you've made me a believer that this is a viable part of the solution to not only address affordable housing, but to see people at the margins cared for, acknowledged, and provided a chance to live into the wholeness of what our community is pursuing. And so in our next episode, I'm gonna sit with one of the pastors of the churches that participated in this cohort to hear from their perspective how this worked and what it meant to the mission of their church. And for all of those that have listened, I wanna say thank you. I wanna say thank you for being the most important part of what our community is becoming. This is the underview, an exploration in the shaping of our place.
