Affordable Homes Help Build Strong Communities

To support communities and United Methodist churches in rural North Carolina, The Duke Endowment since 1999 has funded housing projects that help people buy and own energy-efficient affordable homes.

Charles Penland, affordable housing coordinator at Hinton Rural Life Center in North Carolina, visits with a homeowner.

Challenge

Several state and national studies show that communities and families benefit from homeownership. Children in stable homes show higher educational performance and better behavior. Communities see lower crime rates. Households have less welfare dependency. Civic participation increases. Family health improves.

But many families can’t find housing that’s affordable. The generally accepted definition of affordability, according to the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, is for a household to pay no more than 30 percent of its annual income on housing. Families who pay beyond this for housing are considered “cost burdened and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.”

The government estimates that 12 million renters and homeowners now pay more than 50 percent of their annual incomes for housing. Perhaps more alarming: A family with one full-time worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford the local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States.

Many in North Carolina Struggle to Pay for Housing

In North Carolina, 740,000 households do not have and cannot afford a safe, stable home, says the North Carolina Housing Coalition.

According to the coalition, in North Carolina:

• the average hourly wage needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent is $12.61 — twice as much as minimum wage
• 8,891 households go without heat in the winter
• more than 13,000 homes still lack indoor plumbing
• nearly 48 percent of low-income households pay more than 30 percent of income for housing

“The State of Housing in North Carolina” report shows that the shortage of affordable housing affects 20.7 percent of homeowners and 33.4 percent of renters who spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing payments.

Response

The Duke Endowment began supporting housing projects after floods from Hurricane Floyd devastated communities in eastern North Carolina in September 1999.

Churches were among the first organizations that answered the call for help. Congregations rebuilt homes and repaired damages. They helped thousands of North Carolinians — and gained a wealth of experience.

As the need for replacement housing eased, the North Carolina Conference and the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church and The Duke Endowment began discussing ways that their home-building momentum could be sustained. Both conferences had built capable support systems for coordinating and managing volunteer teams across the state. They had facilities and equipment to help in construction work.

In 2002, each conference received a $1.5 million grant from the Endowment to help provide housing for needy families. The conferences used their staff and volunteer teams from area churches for home construction; grant funds supported the program infrastructure and were used to purchase home sites and building materials. The idea behind the program, explained one conference leader, was “to help needy people who otherwise wouldn’t have a prayer of getting affordable housing.”

Affordable Housing Efforts Continue to Grow

The Western North Carolina Conference’s program — Rural Affordable Housing Inc. — evolved into its own nonprofit, the Wesley Community Development Corporation. Wesley CDC targets people who earn less than 80 percent of the area median income, and helps them qualify for grants or low-interest loans so they can build houses in developments where the CDC has purchased lots. The homes are all energy efficient; they’re built using volunteer work teams from local churches and “sweat equity” from the future homeowners.

The North Carolina Conference’s affordable housing program operates through the MERCI Mission Center in Goldsboro, N.C.

The Endowment also supports two other affordable housing programs. One is run through the Hinton Rural Life Center, a mission of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. The other, Faithworks, is a partnership among the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, the North Carolina Council of Churches and Habitat for Humanity International.

Since those early grants, The Duke Endowment’s support in the area of affordable housing has continued to grow.

In 2006 and 2007, for example, the Endowment awarded nearly $4 million to support 14 affordable housing programs. Fifty-nine houses were completed in those two years with an estimated total value of about $7.1 million.

Participating Sites in North Carolina

• North Carolina Conference, United Methodist Church, Raleigh
• Western North Carolina Conference, United Methodist Church, Charlotte

Contact Us

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Director of Rural Church
704.927.2251