Research Project: ACTS (Allied Churchs Teaching Self-Empowerment)

The ACTS program was started initially by the staff at St. Michael Church in 1992. After a few years, two other churches, St. Rose and St. Francis of Assisi combined their efforts along with St. Michael to formally incorporate ACTS Community Development Corporation. The program was set in place by the residents of the area along with staff at these churches to help clean up the area from the ground up.

This program began to be put together in the late 1980's when the crime rates in the area around St. Michael Church where at some of their all time highs. The lack of responsibility in the area led to greater violence and overall low living conditions in the neighborhood. The programs initial goal was to clean up the area, and make it better not only for the people coming in, but also for the residents who had lived there for awhile.

What ACTS does is work with the people in the community to allow for new immigrants, mainly from Laotian and Hmong ethnicity, and people that have been here for awhile to purchase a new home. What the program has done has put people in charge of the area they live in by empowering them to by a home, and by doing so caring about the area that they live in. The founding churches along with the ACTS staff work regularly to help coordinate several activities to keep the area clean. These activities can vary from cookouts and bake sales to planned clean up the neighborhood weekends, on a monthly basis.

ACTS also offers services, which includes one-on-one credit counseling, one-on-one home-buying counseling, real estate brokerage, down payment grants, rehab management and funding, and port-purchase assistance. All of these services are available on a daily basis to the residents from an area reaching all the way from Oklahoma Ave. to Capitol Dr. and from 40th St. to a little past Martin Luther King Dr.

More information about the ACTS Organization and their cause can be found at www.actshousing.org