Chapel Rock Community Development is on a mission to hear from its neighbors how the corporation can help Indianapolis’ westside community flourish.

Ron Greiner, a member of Chapel Rock Community Development’s leadership team, said he doesn’t have an exact definition of what a flourishing community would look like. Instead, he is opening the floor up to westside residents to voice the issues they’re facing, so the corporation can be a part of the solution, he said. That floor will open on October 24 at 6:30 p.m. for an organizational meeting at the Wayne Township Public Library on Girls School Road. The meeting is open to anyone who is interested in helping the west side of Indianapolis grow and develop.

“We want to learn from people what they are already doing, what they are excited about and what we can help with,” Greiner said. “We think of flourishing as something where people can say the westside is the best place to live, and here are the reasons why.”

Cultivating the Westside

Chapel Rock Community Development stems from the Indianapolis cohort of Cultivating Communities. This organization is committed to partnering with church congregations to “cultivate a deeper life together in Christ and overflow into tangible love” in their communities, according to its website.

One of the catalyst organizations of Indianapolis’ Cultivating Communities cohort was Englewood Community Development, which formed in 1996 in Indianapolis’ Near Eastside neighborhood. Englewood Community Development selected Chapel Rock Christian Church as one of seven congregations in 2022 to undergo training to start its own community development cooperation.

Greiner, who is also the previous executive director of Mission Indy, joined Chapel Rock Community Development because he wanted to be more involved in his local community as a leader and learner.

“That’s my passion — to love my neighbors in tangible ways rather than just go about my life, shut the garage door and wait till the next day,” Greiner said.

Chapel Rock Community Development launched a survey in 2022 to learn about these tangible ways the corporation could make a difference on the westside. From its responses, Greiner said, he saw many westside residents were concerned about mental health challenges affecting their children’s education, such as the stress from being evicted.

Indianapolis is one of the top evicting cities in the United States, according to the Eviction Research Network. Within the past year, there have been more than 27,600 eviction filings in Indianapolis.

To help westside residents impacted by Indianapolis’ high eviction rate, Chapel Rock Community Development has partnered with The Fuller Center for Housing, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to eradicate poverty housing by building and rehabilitating homes for people in need.

In August and September, more than 100 volunteers from the Chapel Rock Christian Church community and Allison Transmission spent three weeks building a three-bedroom house for a single mom and her two children. It was the first time this westside family would live in a home that wasn’t a rental, and they would live without fear of eviction, Greiner said.

Through partnering with Chapel Hill Apartments on 10th Street, Chapel Rock Community Development also plans to start an advocacy program for families to mentor them in financial literacy to help avoid eviction. The corporation is currently hiring volunteer teachers for an English language class for adults as well, Greiner said, which will start August 2024 at Chapel Rock Christian Church.

“This eviction crisis just breaks our heart,” Greiner said. “We’ve been going to eviction court, listening and taking notes… We think the [English language classes] are going to be a part of [the advocacy program too] because we are pretty confident, from what we see, that a number of people can’t really read and understand their lease fully, and that’s part of the reason they get into trouble.”

Bringing neighbors together

Chapel Rock Community Development will host a meeting 6:30 p.m. on October 24, 2023 at the Indianapolis Public Library – Wayne Branch. Here, westside neighbors who are interested in making a change can speak with Greiner and others on the corporation’s leadership team further about issues in the community, he said.

Next year, the corporation will also bring back the Westside Community Garden on Washington Street — a joint partnership between the MSD of Wayne Township and Chapel Rock Christian Church. The garden will serve as another way to bring the westside community together to talk while “working together around some common good,” Greiner said.

“We’ve been learning that there are a lot of cool things going on [the westside] but not a lot of people know what’s happening in a certain neighborhood,” Greiner said. “Many of our neighborhoods, like Farley, Chapel Hill, Westwood — their neighborhood associations are no longer meeting, so people are not getting together to hear about good things. We felt like part of our role is to be a connecting place.”

To learn more about the Chapel Rock Community Development and its mission, visit its website chapelrockcd.org or attend its meeting 6:30 p.m. on October 24, 2023 at the Indianapolis Public Library – Wayne Branch.