Inner City Christian Federation (ICCF)
Jonathan Bradford, Executive Director
Mary Schat, Development Director
816 Madison SE
Grand Rapids, Mich. 49507
(616) 336-9333
(616) 243-9911 fax

The bricks-and-mortar success of this model affordable-housing organization can be shown by a simple windshield survey: Drive through the streets of its central-city neighborhood in Grand Rapids, and you'll see house after house, block after block, of rehabbed and new housing standing out in bold colors and stylish architecture that makes new buildings fit in gracefully with the old.

It began in a very small way almost a quarter of a century ago, when an elderly woman donated her somewhat dilapidated inner-city Grand Rapids house to her church, Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed. Church members banded together, rehabilitated the house through their volunteer efforts, and sold it at an affordable price to a poor family in the congregation. This worked out so well that the church acquired, improved and resold more houses, and by 1977 incorporated as a non-profit organization, independent and non-sectarian though rooted in a strong Christian, Calvinist tradition of community service.

Over the years, responding to observed needs, it added on a range of programs and services, including short-term shelter for homeless families (now serving about 70 families a year, most of whom stay in shelter for up to 30 days while receiving support and counseling aimed at getting them back into permanent housing); about 86 units of affordable rental housing (generally ranging from $130 to $430 a month, depending on income and family size, limited to families earning 60 percent or less of the area median income and paying no more than 30-35 percent of their income as rent, and who participate in the management of the apartment complexes); and nearly 100 units of rehabilitated or new affordable housing for home ownership.

This happy record alone, providing quality housing that's not merely sound but of real architectural merit, rebuilding an urban neighborhood that was once considered fine and someday may be again, would be sufficient to rank ICCF among the nation's top low-cost housing organizations.

But an additional program that takes it a giant step past bricks and mortar makes it a national model: The Home Owners Education Program, inaugurated in 1985 and recently expanded into the broader HOPE (Home Ownership Preparation and Education) program, aims at ensuring that the families who move into ICCF-developed housing will be well prepared to maintain their houses and stay there. Under this program, families who move into new ICCF houses -- 14 are currently enrolled -- lease the home for the first two years before they buy. During this two years, they attend a series of nine 2-hour workshops that cover the range of home ownership skills from simple home repairs to budgeting, financial planning and dealing with the complexities of mortgage and interest. Their lease payments -- usually $380 per month -- go in part to cover the costs of the program; but 80 percent of the money goes into an escrow account that's available to the family, upon successful completion of the program, to buy down the cost of the home at closing, allowing an affordable mortgage at about $360 a month.

The new HOPE program, which staffer Sue Ortiz describes as "a grocery store" of home-ownership training programs from which individuals may choose just the services they need, includes these home owners but is also open to prospective home owners from throughout the community, who gather at the organization's new Housing Opportunity Center for classes and counseling.

With its offices based in an attractively renovated brick building that was formerly a fire house, ICCF's staff of 25 (including a 10-person construction crew) works under an annual budget of nearly $2.5 million.,

An organizational fact sheet makes it clear that this organization sees its role as more than just housing construction and development. "It could be said that ICCF is not really a housing organization," its short fact sheet, "A Brief Look," reads. "We say this because none of our housing development finance and none of our residential construction comes without some form of education, enablement or empowerment activities. At ICCF, we are strongly committed to the principle that housing is more than shelter . . . In our Home Ownership Education Program and in our Tenant Centered Rental Management Program, new skills are acquired and self-confidence is strengthened. With these accomplishments, families are able to succeed in their housing ventures and in turn, this success enables other achievements."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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