Emergency housing project begins phase one
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ST. IGNATIUS – Folks at the Cornerstone Faith Center have found another way to reach out and help people.
“We don’t want to be the church where you only see cars parked in the parking lot on Sunday,” said Pastor Lynn Lapka. “We want to be involved in the community.”
Church members are working to gather enough money to purchase the Sunset Motel next to the highway and turn four of the eight rooms into a place for emergency housing. The other half of the motel will be rented out, utilized for folks doing volunteer projects or other needs.
“There is nothing on this side of the valley like this,” he said. “There is nothing available when people get into a tight spot.”
As the pastor of a church, Lapka said he sees situations all the time where people need help. He said it could be something like a family being displaced due to a house fire and needing a place to stay to get back on their feet.
“We prayed about it and felt that this would be a good way to help,” he said.
The place also has the potential to become a hangout spot where people can visit and drink coffee. Machines to make specialty coffees are already set up.
“We’d like to add more seating and make it a central location for people to gather,” he said of the motel lobby.
The church started a similar project with the Cornerstone Pizza shop about five years ago. The nonprofit pizza place uses revenue from pizza sales to give back to the community, like with a recent project to raise money for Mission Middle School students to go on an educational field trip. The motel project would also be a nonprofit that would eventually sustain itself.
“We would put the money from coffee and room rentals back into the project,” he said, which would allow them to provide emergency housing.
The motel is currently owned by Mike and Amy Miller. Mike Miller runs the Cowboy Coffee Shop in the motel lobby and he said he is ready to sell out and get back to riding his horse.
“I’ve been at this for about 10 years,” he said adding that turning the motel into emergency housing sounded like a good plan.
Although, the church has to come up with $300,000 to purchase the motel.
“We want to do this without debt so that we can better serve the community and not have to serve the debt,” Lapka said.
The church started a GoFundMe account to raise donations and they earned $700 in about a week.
“We just need 300 people to each have a $1,000 gift to make this happen,” he said. “But we don’t want to keep asking people for money. We want this project to eventually fund itself.”
Lapka also wanted to make it clear that the church oversees the project but none of the profits go back into the church.
“It’s the same with the pizza place,” he said. “The church won’t receive money from this. We are just creating another footprint of service.”
Church members are currently in the fundraising mode and haven’t thought about a potential name for the motel project. Lapka said that Cornerstone seems to be popular at his church.
“Maybe the Cornerstone Motel,” he said, which is also the name used for the GoFundMe project.
It is possible that the project won’t happen.
“We just contemplate and pray about it and see what the Guy upstairs will do,” he said.
For more information, contact Lapka at saintigag@gmail.com or at the Cornerstone Faith Center.
