Pine Bluff program restores homes to restore lives and communities

PINE BLUFF, Ark. – A Pine Bluff pastor has introduced a program to restore families and communities by restoring dilapidated houses.

Matt Mosler of New Life Church calls the program Home Again Pine Bluff. The program buys groups of dilapidated houses in a neighborhood, strips them down to the basics and rebuilds them into up-to-date single-family homes.

RESTORING HOPE AS A FOUNDATION FOR CHANGE

Mosler explained that when he came to Pine Bluff in 2017 to plant this church, he had the typical goals of most pastors in caring for the community, clothing the needy, and feeding the hungry.

“But over the generations, Pine Bluff has become a dependency culture,” Mosler explained, adding, “What we decided to do was not make people comfortable in their poverty, but get them out of it.”

The point is to restore hope, the pastor said, and from that lowering crime rates, raising education levels, and replacing hopelessness with family structure.

BUILDING EQUITY AND COMMUNITY PRIDE

Being a neighbor in a Home Again neighborhood requires participating in a process.

Mosler explained that after the homes are ready, a family rents them for two years while the parents agree to take parenting, marriage, and financial & home management courses taught at the church.

After two years of renting, which builds credit history, and completing the classes, the homes are sold to the tenant at half the appraised value.

“So you can go from relative poverty to equity in just about two years,” Mosler said.” And these houses are all appraising for $120,000 or more, you buy it for 60, well now you have $60,000 in equity, which after a couple of years it’s all yours.”

These same renters-becoming-buyers live in neighborhoods where they share a street with others in the same program. Mosler explained that this was part of the program’s intent: to create a community of shared lives alongside places to live.

A second level of the program is building new houses, not for current community members, but to attract professionals to the city.

Providing homes for professionals

Home Again Pine Bluff has built two new homes and plans more, including a 34-home development currently in the works. Mosler said the program around these houses would attract teachers, first responders, and law enforcement professionals to the city with a new home with $15 to $20,000 equity offer to these professionals.

Home Again Pine Bluff plans to expand beyond housing and into other areas of community development. Mosler said he plans to start an entrepreneurship class to encourage home-grown business development in the city.

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