After many years of prayer, planning and collaboration, the First Genesis Single Family Homes project will be the anchor project to transform families and neighbourhoods while changing the landscape for generations, said Reverend Dr Frederick Johnson Sr, president and CEO of First Genesis Development Corporation, at the groundbreaking of a $13 million, 22-home development in Rochester’s historically redlined Upper Falls neighbourhood.
First Genesis Baptist Church, founded in 1974, formed the development corporation as a separate legal nonprofit entity specifically to take on the project directly rather than simply partner with an outside developer, funded through New York State’s Affordable Homeownership Opportunity Program alongside county and city funds. It’s not necessarily church work, Johnson has said. It’s Kingdom work, right? So it’s building the community. He’s cited Jeremiah 29:5, build yourselves houses and dwell in them, as the theological basis for the church’s shift from congregation to developer.
The Rochester project is not isolated. First Genesis is one of several church-led housing developments under way in northeast Rochester, alongside Peace Missionary, New Bethel and Zion Hill, part of what local housing analysts describe as faith communities coming out of their walls to become active developers in the neighbourhoods they serve, rather than partnering with outside developers indefinitely. The state has since awarded a further $38 million toward First Genesis Senior Living, a three-building, 105-unit affordable apartment development for older adults, including 37 supportive housing units for disabled veterans.
The pattern echoes what Historically Black churches in the US have done for decades, but the shift toward churches forming their own development corporations, rather than remaining passive land donors to outside builders, is what housing analysts are now tracking as the more significant change. It’s about housing, housing, housing, city councilmember Michael Patterson said of the broader effort. If you’re trying to stabilise a community, it’s housing.
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