Blueprint Communities<\/a>, an initiative to rehabilitate housing and strengthen community investment.<\/p>\n\u201cWe want to beautify that area as much as we can,\u201d Guridy said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the poorest areas in the region, but it\u2019s also one of the most diverse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turning churches into housing partners<\/p>\n
While the housing authority is starting from the ground up, another group is looking upward at excess church properties.<\/p>\n
Faith & Home, a partnership between the Lehigh Conference of Churches and Lehigh University\u2019s Small Cities Lab, aims to convert portions of underutilized church properties into affordable housing.<\/p>\n
The concept grew out of conversations that Lehigh Conference of Churches Executive Director Abigail Goldfarb began having after the COVID-19 pandemic, when congregations increasingly questioned how to use large buildings that no longer matched their shrinking memberships.<\/p>\n
Church leaders, she said, repeatedly called her asking variations of the same question.<\/p>\n
\u201d \u2018We don\u2019t need this huge parking lot. We don\u2019t need a sanctuary that seats 2,000,\u2019 \u201d Goldfarb recalled them saying. \u201d \u2018How can we use these assets to help our community?\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n
Rather than selling those properties outright, organizers began exploring whether they could be adapted into housing while allowing congregations to continue worshipping in the same buildings.<\/p>\n
The initiative now includes several churches within Allentown Collaborative Ministries.<\/p>\n
Small Cities Lab has spent the last several years studying faith-based housing models across Pennsylvania while helping participating congregations evaluate whether their properties are suitable for redevelopment.<\/p>\n
Wes Hiatt, co-director of Small Cities Lab, said the project is about more than architecture. Mainline Protestant congregations own valuable land and buildings but face declining attendance and increasing maintenance costs. At the same time, communities continue to struggle with an acute shortage of affordable housing.<\/p>\n
The challenge, he said, is finding ways to address both realities simultaneously.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can we work with what we already have?\u201d Hiatt said. \u201cMany faith-based organizations want to invest in their communities while also sustaining their own existence. That\u2019s really the opportunity here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike the Ridge Avenue project, Faith & Home will focus primarily on adaptive reuse, converting space rather than constructing buildings.<\/p>\n
Designs haven\u2019t yet been finalized because organizers are still determining which participating site will move forward first.<\/p>\n
Current plans envision anywhere from three to 12 affordable units depending on funding and site conditions.<\/p>\n
Once a location is selected, organizers expect to begin engineering, design work and community engagement before seeking local approvals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand what that change means not just for the congregation, but for the neighborhood,\u201d Hiatt said. \u201cWe want this to be additive and constructive to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldfarb said the project also reflects a broader shift taking place among many mainline Protestant churches.<\/p>\n
\u201cMainline churches are changing,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is a completely new way of looking at sacred space and a new way of doing missions.\u201d<\/p>\n
She described affordable housing as an extension of ministries many congregations already provide through food assistance, homelessness prevention and refugee support.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor churches who own so much underutilized space and also have a heart for their community,\u201d she said, \u201cthis is a unique opportunity to make a lasting impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
A growing housing challenge<\/p>\n
The two projects arrive as affordable housing continues to dominate conversations among local governments and nonprofit organizations throughout the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
PHARE funding, administered by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, supports housing preservation, development and stability programs statewide. This year\u2019s awards included 10 projects across Lehigh and Northampton counties ranging from homelessness prevention to senior housing repairs, eviction assistance and home repair programs.<\/p>\n
In announcing the funding, state Sen. Nick Millerm, D-Lehigh, said expanding access to affordable housing requires preserving homes while creating opportunities for ownership and rental housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccess to safe, affordable housing is the foundation of strong communities,\u201d Miller said in a statement. \u201cStrategic investments like these help ensure residents have stable places to call home while preserving and improving the housing stock our neighborhoods already rely on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither of Allentown\u2019s $100,000 projects will solve the region\u2019s housing shortage on its own, and their organizers acknowledge both remain in early planning stages and will require additional funding before construction begins.<\/p>\n
But their significance may lie less in the number of units they immediately produce than in whether they create models that can be repeated elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone benefits from this,\u201d said Hiatt. \u201cThat\u2019s how we\u2019re going to solve the housing crisis in general. It\u2019s finding as many win-wins as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two newly funded projects in Allentown are testing how to expand affordable housing, one by building new homes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":["post-264545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}