Core Practices

We employ four core practices to bring about our mission of restoring and developing wholesome, viable, self-sustaining mixed-income neighborhoods where God’s peace is present and people’s lives and community are transformed.

1. Neighborhood focused: To strengthen the fabric of a community one needs to know each strand – its story, culture, people and resources. Knowing comes from more than just driving up and down the streets. Knowing comes from joining with a community. Staff members move into the community, so that the joys and pains of the neighborhood become our joys and pains. Each street, house, business and church is carefully mapped and followed over time. Together we paint a picture of tomorrow. Together we draft an action plan to see that dream come true. Together we work and watch as a neighborhod blossoms and becomes all that God intended it to be.
2. Homeownership: Homeownership stabilizes neighborhoods, increases one’s financial means and positively impacts the children of homeowners; however, the opportunity to purchase a home remains available to fewer and fewer households. Affordable homeownership programs help make the dream of homeownership and all its benefits a reality for families who cannot access homeownership via traditional avenues.
3. Intentional Neighboring: For Charis Community Housing, intentional neighboring is a verb that describes individuals and families deliberately weaving their unique gifts, talents and resources into the fabric of the community. At Charis we seek to not only create homeowners, but to also encourage intentional neighboring. Our moderate and affordable homeowners join with residents who already have been living purposefully in the community. Together they do life. Together they create defensible spaces – geographic areas in which neighbors know and look out for each other’s families and belongings. And together they raise their voices calling for justice to come to neglected communities.
4. Strategic Partnering: We believe that when it comes to doing God’s work there is no room for competition. It is about God’s glory and not our own. Therefore, we seek to work as a part of the larger body of believers serving together with the power of our Lord to bring restoration to His creation. By concentrating our energies and working with other strategic partnerships a larger, more comprehensive vision of neighborhood transformation can be achieved. We start with what already is in the neighborhood, and then we seek to pull in other partners that compliment and add to the fabric of the community.