A group of Baptist churches in North Carolina are retrofitting vacant church-owned buildings for refugee housing, Yonat Shimron reports in the Washington Post.
“Organized through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina but open to any religious congregation, a new initiative encourages churches to refurbish church-owned parsonages, office buildings, youth clubhouses or single-family homes and make them available to refugees or humanitarian parolees for a nominal fee,” Shimron noted.
In late April, the network held its first housing and hospitality summit with 210 congregational leaders, “mostly from North Carolina, to learn more about how to use vacant church properties to minister to refugees. The conference made plain twin realities: a glut of underutilized church properties and a severe shortage of affordable housing for newly arrived refugees with few means.”
The Immigration and Refugee News Digest 