But one inner-city neighborhood has seen its hopes dashed.
In 1995, neighbors in the Oakland University Park neighborhood (bounded by Seventh and 19th Avenues, Roosevelt and Van Buren Streets) helped FHC and other volunteers clean up trash in the area.
FHC promised to build seven low-income houses for poor people in a blighted area bordering a city park at 11th Avenue and McKinley. FHC said it would sell the houses for less than $50,000 apiece, with 100 percent financing and no interest, to qualified parties, a grant application to the City of Phoenix says.
In a neighborhood where the median annual income is $15,000, people clung to the hope that maybe they would qualify for a house.
But so far, the houses haven't been built.
The reason: In 1996, FHC had applied for a $216,000 block grant from the City of Phoenix. In 1997, the grant was denied because FHC claimed it did not have the necessary $108,000 in matching funds, says Jerome Miller, acting grants administrator for the city's Neighborhood Services Department.
With net assets of more than $1 million, FHC couldn't come up with matching funds.
"We haven't been officially notified that it's kaput," says Harold Fox, president of Oakland-University Park Neighborhood Association. "They're still working on the funding. My impression (of FHC) is that they are wonderful people but this being their first major project, they jumped into the deep end. I have a hunch that with their good intentions they've gotten in over their head."
That same year, FHC told the IRS that Crotts received compensation of $154,772 in 1996. But Crotts only worked two hours per week for Foundation Housing, according to the tax form 990. BFA says in its letter that the money Crotts received came from BFA, not FHC.
The same form shows that FHC extracted an unusually large fee for a house at 1343 West Sack Drive: $35,074 in "sales expenses" when it sold the $70,740 house to a Phoenix couple in 1996, according to tax records.
In its letter to New Times, BFA says its accountant made a mistake on the tax form, that the actual fees were $6,000.
The 1996 tax form, which was signed by FHC treasurer Donald Deardorff under penalty of perjury, was prepared by the Phoenix accounting firm Tull, Foresberg and Olson. Lynn Olson, a principal in the company, said the accounting firm had made a "mistake" about the fees and had amended FHC's tax form last week. When asked how the accounting firm could make such a large error, Olson replied: "What can I say? We made a mistake."
Rio Vista
During the decade that BFA has built up its real-estate empire, the Rio Vista mission in South Phoenix has struggled to feed the poor. Yet missionaries never expected aid from BFA, the agency specifically set up to help such good causes.
Like most of the Southern Baptist missionaries who staff the Rio Vista mission, Olivia Gonzales was called to dedicate her life to the Lord after she retired.
Now the former schoolteacher is a full-time urban missionary, an unpaid director of a down-and-out mission at 16th Street and Southern, the leader of a staff of about a dozen elderly volunteers who risk living in the violent inner city in order to feed, clothe and pray for the poor people who make their way through Rio Vista's doors.
Dedicating one's life to the Lord has its own financial challenges. Gonzales says Rio Vista mission has no budget. Rio Vista is almost as destitute as the Latino immigrants, homeless and disabled people who seek its help.
To keep the mission's doors open, Gonzales relies on donations from local Southern Baptist churches and Valley food banks. But donations from money-strapped Southern Baptist churches have declined in the past two years, Gonzales says. And donations from local food banks are also down.
The lack of donations is taking its toll. Two years ago, clients could count on receiving a box of nourishing food--legumes, peanut butter, powdered milk, canned tuna fish and other staples--once a month.
Today, the poor receive only four boxes of food annually from Rio Vista missionaries.
The retiree-missionaries who have to turn away the hungry are heartbroken.
"If I had a million dollars, I'd buy food for these people," says Kenneth Jackman, who lives with his wife, Jewell, in an old recreational vehicle parked on the mission grounds. Jackman ticks off the other necessities he'd buy for the poor if only he had a million bucks: utilities, rent, transportation money, toys for the children.
But Kenneth Jackman is not a millionaire, only a missionary with a willing heart. Among other duties, Jackman works in the mission's "intake room," where donated food is received and sorted. On a recent day, the only food donation comes from the U.S. Postal Service, which has dropped off about 100 advertising samples that could not be delivered. There are packets of Breath Asure, envelopes of Healthy Choice dried soup, small green bottles of Pert shampoo.
Not enough to feed Rio Vista's hungry.
A few feet away from the intake room is the Iglesia Nuevo Nacimiento--the Church of New Birth, a clean but dilapidated chapel with folded chairs.
Pastor Jose Gonzales (no relation to Olivia) is a man who saves souls prodigiously, even though the baptismal tub in the chapel is so deteriorated that it leaks on the floor. Neither Pastor Jose nor the missionaries have been able to save enough cash to fix the tub.
