written by Bob Grant
The WRPC Session, in its January meeting, approved WRPC joining ONE Wake and renting the 4 bedroom “Brick House” at 2505 Vanderbilt Ave adjacent to our church to refugees and immigrants at a reduced rate. This will have direct impacts on the critical concerns of affordable housing and refugee support in our area. This work is being made possible by commitments of members of WRPC to contribute additional monies to address an income shortfall.
Renting at below market rate to those in need of affordable housing will reduce income from the Brick House by $15,000 a year or more. Joining ONE Wake harnesses our desire to make a difference and exponentially increases our efforts to actively engage political leaders and our community to make laws & policies that address critical issues such as affordable housing. As a ONE Wake member, WRPC will commit to financial support and person-power support. ONE Wake asks member institutions to contribute 1% of their annual budget. For West Raleigh, that will be about $5000 annually.
These two efforts (renting to refugees and joining ONE Wake) will result in minimally a $20,000 funding need.
How do I help contribute to this budget gap??
The good news is many in our congregation feel called to address affordable housing and refugee support and the potential budget gap that is occurring due to joining ONE Wake and renting to refugees/immigrants. We currently have about $15,000 in commitments from 19 people/families and more may be interested in joining in this support. If you previously indicated you wanted to contribute, or if you are newly interested and want to contribute funds, the process is easy. You can either:
Write a check for the amount you wish to contribute and put “Affordable Housing/BrickHouse/ONE Wake" in the memo line. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Log in to the Realm website https://onrealm.org/WestRaleighPres
Click Giving in the upper left corner of the web page
Click +Give, highlighted blue, in the top middle of the web page
In the Fund drop down box select Affordable Housing/Brick House/ONE Wake. Your donation to ONE Wake/Brick House is going into a common fund to reduce or eliminate the reduction in the Church’s income resulting from offering the house at below market rates and to support membership in ONE Wake. That fund is titled “Affordable Housing/Brick House/ONE Wake ”
The church will need to receive approximately $20,000 annually to make this work possible. For the 2023 year the church will start renting to refugees/immigrants in August. The church will have market rate income for the first half of 2023 but there will be maintenance/updating costs of up to $6,000 as we prepare renting the house to a refugee family (refinishing highly worn wood floors, replacing old linoleum, etc.) It is our hope you will make the largest financial commitment you can as funds raised will carry over from year to year if all monies are not used in that calendar year.
Thank you WRPC, for joining with others to make a difference in the lives of people beyond our walls. Interested in a fuller history of this process? See this link
Questions? Email Bob at bobashgrant@gmail.com or call at 919.219.8153