Peace Lutheran Church discovers a mission opportunity and a supportive church-lending partner

Surging rents in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood inspired Peace to contribute to the area’s affordable housing stock and made them glad they found the Mission Investment Fund.

Peace Lutheran is working to make it possible for longtime Hilltop residents to remain in the rapidly gentrifying area.

When you visit the neighborhood just up the hill from downtown Tacoma, Washington, the signs of gentrification are all around you.

In the area known as the Hilltop, new tenants are leasing space in long-empty buildings. Developers are building condominiums, many of which will house employees of the burgeoning University of Washington-Tacoma campus. And the planned expansion of the Tacoma Link system will connect the community to other parts of the city via light-rail service.

All of that activity is helping revitalize a historically disadvantaged area which, through much of the 1980s and ’90s, was riddled with crime and violence. But the gentrification also has a downside.

“We’re seeing families of low-income backgrounds who have lived in the neighborhood for a long time having to move out because they can’t afford the rent here,” said the Rev. John Stroeh, pastor of Peace Lutheran Church, the Hilltop’s neighborhood Lutheran church and one in which about half of the congregants are people of color. “We want to maintain the mixed-income neighborhoods and the beautiful diversity. The gentrification trend is one of the reasons affordable housing is very near and dear to our congregation.

“MIF was very helpful in encouraging our idea to purchase homes in the Hilltop and make them available to families in need,” Pastor Stroeh recalled. “MIF saw this as a really great mission opportunity.”

After securing a loan from the Mission Investment Fund, in which Peace Lutheran is also an investor, the congregation purchased two homes directly across from the church. Here, Peace Lutheran offers housing to families who need assistance. Peace Lutheran Church also gave birth to the nearby Peace Community Center, a social ministry of the ELCA. An MIF loan helped finish the Community Center building, and MIF loans assisted the Community Center in purchasing two additional houses, also for affordable housing. These contributions to the neighborhood’s affordable housing stock have helped bring peace to the Hilltop in the largest sense.

“Peace isn’t just the absence of violence,” Pastor Stroeh said. “It’s also the presence of wholeness, safety, justice, community and love. These are the things that we wish for our neighbors, for our community.

“Given all that the Hilltop has been through, we want to be a place of safety and health and wholeness for all people, old and young. That’s a vision that we hold up.”