South Church: Building Affordable Housing in Their Neighborhood

Many of the faith communities in town have been long-time supporters of Andover Community Trust. Among them is South Church Andover, which sold the land for ACT’s first neighborhood of duplexes. The following article, by South Church member and ACT board member Ellen Arvidson, shares the story of this partnership.

South Church: Building Affordable Housing in Their Neighborhood

Over 10 years ago, South Church was approached by Andover Community Trust (ACT) to consider selling a one-acre parcel of the church’s land, which backs up to Lupine Road. ACT’s vision, brought to South Church by Susan Stott and John Pearson, would include a first ever partnership between ACT and Habitat for Humanity and would add 6 homes of affordable housing to Andover through the development of a multifamily community close to the Andover train station.  This would be the first 100% permanently affordable homeownership community in Andover and would result in 6 families being able to enjoy the resources, schools and public spaces that Andover has to offer.  

South Church has long held an interest in supporting local efforts toward solving food and housing insecurity and thus the spark was ignited. A discernment process took place to assess how the congregation felt about passing on a piece of property long held by the church. The land lies at the base of the South Church cemetery, but was not usable as an extension of the cemetery and thus stayed vacant. Through some digging, the church established that the land had been donated by Mary Byers Smith in 1939. Mary was a legacy of a mill family who supported several local philanthropic ventures including housing for mill workers and the founding of the Memorial Hall Library.  The church members felt that the use of the land for affordable housing would be in keeping with her family's legacy. Through a long congregational process of discernment, the church voted to go forward with the sale of the land in 2017.

For many years South Church has partnered with Habitat for Humanity on building sites in Lawrence.  Here was a project right in our backyard that would be a legacy for our church and spoke to our goals of supporting more economic diversity in our community.  The partnership between ACT, Habitat and South Church felt right.  As an added gift, we could directly offer the talents of our church members to help complete the project. 

Holy Rollers Take up their Brushes at Stott Circle

In the last few years, a group of church members has taken on many painting projects in our church and were fondly named the “Holy Rollers,” as they brought out their paint rollers to brighten up the walls. Over the last month, the Holy Rollers have moved down the hill to Stott Circle off of Lupine Road and helped to complete the painting in the final ACT unit in preparation for the final Stott Circle family to move into their new home.

“It is exciting to be nearing the completion of this project and seeing families with young children already moved into Stott Circle and enjoying the safety and community that their own home offers,” said Char Lyons, one of the Holy Rollers. “The partnership with ACT and Habitat, with full support of the Town of Andover, speaks to what is possible for housing opportunities in Andover.”