ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the discussion of political, market, social, and other contextual factors that have helped shape the nature of faith-based involvement in urban housing and that contribute to the expansion of housing provision to other types of community development. Faith based nonprofits have been providing social services for decades and were receiving public funding long before the political visibility of the Bush administration's Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Citizen, neighborhood, and community groups are also involved in service provision and production. The collaborations, partnerships, and networks for low-income housing provision and the political and policy dimensions of nonprofit activity in the housing arena. The nature of low-income housing provision suggests that collaboration is indeed an ingredient essential to success. The evaluation of publicly funded faith-based services is further obscured by the fact that the minimal academic literature on faith-based community development efforts.
