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Beloved in Christ,

 

In the months since Palm Sunday, when we met to vote on approving the Memorandum of Understanding with Habitat for Humanity to build affordable housing on part of the property stewarded by our church, we have been diligently moving in that direction. The Memorandum of Understanding with Habitat for Humanity is signed and Habitat is still excited to work with us.

 

There are two new pieces of information that we want to share with you this summer. First, the City declined to open the grant cycle that Habitat had hoped to apply for in July because they had so many qualified applicants in the previous round of submissions. Therefore, there is a delay until next summer before grants from the City of Seattle can be accessed. The grant cycle that was cancelled would have been a smaller cycle than next year’s is expected to be and it was unlikely that our application would have been awarded in that cycle, but we had hoped to at least receive feedback on the application, which we will not be able to do. We and our partners at Habitat are still hopeful that next summer’s grant application process will be successful. However, the City’s decision has removed some of the urgency for us to reach agreement on a Purchase and Sale agreement with Habitat immediately. Our new goal is to sign that agreement in November.

 

The second piece of information is that the P Patch gardeners have come to us with a proposal to purchase the land where the P Patch is now and preserve it as green space in perpetuity. We did not anticipate that this would be possible, but through an alliance with Grow Northwest, they have been able to assemble a draft agreement that would allow gardeners to continue producing fruits and vegetables for their own use and donations to the food bank, as well as provide all the benefits of green space for the neighborhood. Leaders from the church and our contacts at Habitat are in the process of figuring out how both projects might move forward, during the time that the City inadvertently created for us by not forcing a rush to apply for grants.

 

There is no decision that has been made about whether to proceed with GROW and the P Patch gardeners’ proposal. We are still in the exploration phase. GROW will need to do an appraisal of the land and line up financing. At church, we need to hear from our conference leaders and our congregation whether the impacts this process would have to the Habitat proposal are acceptable. However, it is possible that an agreement may be reached with GROW in the fall, which wouldn’t be final until property lines are adjusted, likely in 2027. To move forward with grant applications for the Habitat project, decisions on decisions on how to proceed with both organizations need to be made by November, so that timelines need to coincide.

 

We realize that moving toward an agreement on the GROW and P Patch gardeners’ proposal is not in keeping with the congregational vote that we held on Palm Sunday. Therefore, if an agreement with GROW is possible, it will require a new congregational vote. We anticipate that the earliest that could occur is in October. Before such a vote, we hope to talk with many of you and share information in the church newsletter so all your questions can be answered. We encourage you to come to us with questions as they arise, so we can research answers and share them with you.

 

As a church, it is clear that our mission of building community and welcoming neighbors may be done in a variety of ways. None of them include us managing property for a garden or affordable housing in the future, but rather partnering with others whose mission is defined in those ways. We hope that whatever the outcome, the result is Spirit-led and Spirit-filled.

 

Listening for the guidance of the Holy and the questions of our congregation in this moment,

The Faithland Team: Carol Jaeger, Jon Daniel, and Pastor Laura