c. 2000 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ The Department of Housing and Urban Development has given a vote of confidence to the faith-based organizations that administer federal assistance for housing and community development work.

At a recent conference at New York’s Riverside Church, HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo said the amount of HUD assistance administered by faith-based housing and community groups would increase to at least $1 billion by 2001 _ a $200 million increase over this year.

Speaking at the June 15 HUD-sponsored conference, “Faith Communities and Community Building,” Cuomo called faith-based groups “the eyes and ears, hearts and souls” of their communities. He praised their role in being “effective and innovative partners” in providing affordable housing and being catalysts for economic development, particularly in areas where the national economic boom has not been felt.

“We intend to significantly step up our partnership with these groups to help people and places left behind by the current boom,” he said.

One of the aims of the conference was to provide a forum for clergy and faith-based groups to learn how HUD could assist them in community development projects.

Churches and other faith-based organizations have worked for years with private developers, federal, state and local governments and others in the construction of low- and moderate-income housing and other community projects. The role of such groups has become more important, Cuomo said, as federal and local governments have looked to such groups to provide social and economic services.

Cuomo said the record of such groups has been excellent, and has been one of the unsung successes of the drive, since the 1960s, to provide affordable housing in the United States.

One example of this work has been in Harlem, just blocks away from the Riverside Church. There, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, among others, formed a development entity, the Abyssinian Development Corporation.

The corporation has renovated apartment units and constructed senior citizen housing and moderate-income condominiums.

The Rev. Calvin Butts, Abyssinian’s pastor, told the conference that while he was proud of the development corporation’s record, churches also have to be careful and face a “difficult balancing act” when they become involved in such work because of the temptations and dilemmas faced when working with government and private developers.

Churches must be prepared to uphold their “prophetic tradition,” he cautioned. “In fact, if you want to be in community development work, you have to be prophetic,” he said.

But he said community development work is often difficult for churches to sustain and said he believed the churches should try to leave the day-to-day operations to a community development corporation “once it is on its own two feet.”

Some attending the conference suggested there were political undertones to the event, as Cuomo has been mentioned as both a possible Democratic vice presidential candidate with Vice President Al Gore or, as seems more likely, a candidate for New York governor in the year 2002. One participant said the appearance at Riverside was a way for Cuomo to solidify support among New York’s black clergy and community leaders, who made up the majority of those attending the conference.

While Cuomo did not address the political issue directly, he left little doubt he was glad to be back in his home state, joking that he would not have to soften his distinct rapid-fire New York accent, something he said he does elsewhere in the country while traveling as HUD secretary.

And speaking in a cadence similar to that of his father, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Cuomo sounded a distinctly prophetic note, saying it was wrong for the United States to judge its success as a nation on the recent economic prosperity _ a prosperity, he said, that has not been felt by all classes, races or communities,

If racial, social and economic justice were the measure of the success of the United States, he said, “You paint a much different picture of this country’s success.

“We have so much further to go,” he said, noting the nation’s continued income gaps and even the large number of New York City children who “sleep in poverty just miles from Wall Street.” Given those realities, he said, it is important for the faith community to join partnerships with the private sector and the federal and local governments to alleviate poverty and provide affordable housing.

Another son of a famous orator, Martin Luther King III, also spoke at the conference. King urged the faith community to take the lead in such work.

Recalling his father’s involvement in anti-poverty campaigns late in his life, King said too much had remained the same in the United States since his father’s 1968 assassination.

“Why can’t we live in a just society?” he said. “What has happened to the `American Dream’?”

DEA END HERLINGER