Columbus Field Office Hosts
Statewide Faith-Based Homeownership Roundtable

From left: Ken Brucks, HUD Regional Faith-based Coordinator (Chicago), Cindy Flaherty, Director, Fannie Mae Columbus Partnership Office, Tom Leach, HUD Columbus Field Office Director, Judy Majors, Manager of Faith-based Initiatives (Washington, DC)

Senior FHA Program Specialist Jim Cannon, Columbus Field Office, explains how Faith-based and Community Partners can use FHA products to promote homeownership.

HUD's Columbus, Ohio Field Office recently sponsored the first ever-statewide faith-based conference where about 100 people representing over 40 faith-based and community organizations gathered to look for better ways to build lives through homeownership. The results were new collaborations, strengthened partnerships and renewed commitments to making the American dream of homeownership more accessible to all. The Faith-Based and Community Partners Homeownership Roundtable was held on Monday, December 9, 2002 at the Radisson Hotel in Columbus.

Keynote Speakers, Ken Brucks, HUD's Midwest Regional Faith Based Coordinator from Chicago, and Judy Majors, Manager of Faith Based Initiatives for Fannie Mae in Washington, D.C., helped to dispel many of the common myths and questions on how faith-based groups can participate in government programs by providing information on current efforts to identify and remove regulatory barriers.

Bob Perryman, Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity - Columbus, explained how they worked with a private homebuilder to create a new mixed income subdivision of Habitat and market rate homes while getting the City of Columbus to pay for the new road.

Gil Barno, Executive Director of the Buckeye Community HOPE Foundation, shared their strategy to successfully grow a grass-roots organization from just an idea to a regional housing developer and YouthBuild grantee.

Bill Dodson, Executive Director of Dayspring Christian CDC, told how the Rhema Christian Church created a CDC to provide homeownership opportunities to a distressed northeast Columbus neighborhood and how they have adapted to serve a growing Somali population.

Amy Klaben, Executive Director of the Columbus Housing Partnership, described how they manage homeownership as a continuous cycle of concurrent efforts including homebuyer counseling, new project brainstorming, finding financing for planned developments, breaking ground and finishing current developments, and putting families in homes following homebuyer counseling.

HUD's partners in this event included the City of Columbus, Franklin County, the Ohio Community Development Corporation Association, the Ohio Department of Development's Office of Housing and Community Partnerships, the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, USDA Rural Development, the Economic Development Administration, and Fannie Mae.