Ribbon Cutting Held for New IFC Community House

The new Inter-Faith Council Community House is now officially open.

Voices from the United Church of Chapel Hill choir filled the air on a cool cloudy Monday at eight o’clock in the morning, as hundreds of community members gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new IFC at SECU Community House off of Martin Luther King Junior Blvd near Homestead Road.

Richard Edens is one of the pastors at the United Church of Chapel Hill.

“‘Welcome Home’ are cherished words,” he says. “We hear them at the door when we’ve gone over the hill and through the woods to grandmother’s house.

“And today, after 29 years of being located in Chapel Hill’s old municipal building, men who are transitioning from homelessness to independence are welcomed home to the Inter-Faith Council at SECU Community House.”

READ MORE: IFC Community House to Focus on Permanent Housing for OC’s Homeless

Many elected officials from all levels of government were in attendance. Locally, Chapel Hill and Carrboro Mayors Mark Kleinschmidt and Lydia Lavelle and many of the municipal leaders from each town were in the audience. At the state level, Senator Valerie Foushee was in attendance, and US Congressman David Price was present for the ceremony. UNC Chancellor Carol Folt was also there, rounding out all of the partnerships involved with the process that culminated with the ribbon cutting on Monday.

McKinley Wooten is the Chair of the State Employees Credit Union Foundation Board. He says this project show the collaborative spirit of our community.

“I reflect upon something that Dr. Benjamin E. Mays said many years ago,” he says, “it is not enough to just give charity. It is our duty to do our share to see to it that we build a society where charity will not be necessary.

“A society where no sick person will go unattended, no hungry person will go unfed, no one will be poorly housed, and no able-bodied person will go without adequate employment. That is the society for which we should all long.”

The SECU Foundation donated $1 million to kick off construction of the building.

Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt says the IFC Community House is an example of a tangible landmark of the values of our community.

“In manifesting a reality around the values that we share,” he says. “They often seem really tenuous and ephemeral, those values sometimes. They never get more concrete than this.”

Anthony Sharp recently went through the IFC program and says the opportunities that were offered came at a critical time for him.

“It was kind of hard for me to decide to go into the shelter,” he says. “But I’m glad I did. This community has showed me a lot of love and support, and that’s what people in my situation need – a lot of support and help and love from their community.

“And so it helped me get back on my feet.”

Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle closed her comments with a stanza from Sam Walter Foss’ poem The House by the Side of the Road.

“I see from my house by the side of the road, by the side of the highway of life,” she recalls, “the men who press with the ardor of hope, the men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears, both parts of an infinite plan. Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”