September 2026 Member Spotlight – Micah Ministries

This month, VHA is proud to feature Micah Ministries as our Member Spotlight. Based in Fredericksburg, Micah Ministries serves neighbors experiencing homelessness with compassionate care – and their upcoming Jeremiah Community is generating a lot of excitement within Virginia’s housing ecosystem.

We recently caught up with staff at Micah to ask a few questions – read more below!

Q: How would you describe your organization’s mission, in a nutshell?

Micah Ecumenical Ministries is the result of a group of downtown Fredericksburg churches seeing a gap in services for chronically unhoused individuals. Believing they could be more together than they could be apart, their collaboration became a unified effort to cultivate a “continuum of compassion” with unhoused neighbors, focusing not just on immediate needs, but on long-term stability and belonging. Micah emphasizes community, relationships, and collective responsibility in addressing homelessness.

Micah’s continuum of compassion includes health stabilization, income development, respite care, basic need care, co-located community resources, and bridges to permanent housing as well as permanent housing stabilization. It also provides community building, as well as social and spiritual support through Street Church.

Q: Are there any upcoming events or projects you’d like to share with VHA’s community?

While Micah’s work has lifted hundreds of the region’s residents off the street and decreased the numbers living chronically outside, experience has taught us that addressing homelessness is about more than keys and a case manager. People don’t become homeless when they run out of money. People become homeless when they run out of relationships.

Jeremiah Community is the vision that has evolved from these learnings. It is a solution formed in the unique context of our chronically homeless neighbors. It will be a community built on shared experience and [understanding], rooted in the kind of relationships we all need for stability and purpose.

It is a 31-acre master-planned supportive housing neighborhood. Phase one will include 50 small homes, dedicated for the chronically homeless, surrounding a [holistic] Community Center that offers wrap-around support for our neighbors. Future phases will include more small homes and other supports, like a garden, an arts development workshop, and more.

The week of September 7th, you can watch our model home come to life – live [and] online. With the partnership of Atlantic Builders, local trade partners, HomeAid National Capital Region, and students from the Oberle Academy’s Career and Technical Education Program, a momentous feat will occur: over the course of just 72 hours, these partners will work side-by-side to build a Jeremiah Community prototype home. An Open House [will take place] at the Oberle Academy (404 Willis St, Fredericksburg, VA 22401) on Sunday, September 13th.

Experience has taught us that housing alone will never solve homelessness, but community will. The fundamental component that human beings need to thrive is human interaction, and human interaction occurs within community. We hope to break ground [on Jeremiah Community] in November.

Q: How has Virginia Housing Alliance membership been valuable to your organization’s affordable housing and community development work?

Our VHA VISTA has significantly expanded our capacity to build authentic relationships with the neighborhood adjacent to the future Jeremiah Community. This is a culturally rich area, home to people from a variety of racial, ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Our VISTA has helped us listen more intentionally, learn the neighborhood’s history and strengths, connect with residents and community leaders, and create opportunities for neighbors to shape how Jeremiah Community takes root.

At Micah, we believe that owning property does not automatically make us a neighbor. We must earn the right to be one by showing up consistently, listening before acting, honoring the cultures already present, and contributing to the well-being of the whole neighborhood. The VISTA’s work has given us the dedicated capacity to approach this responsibility with the patience and care it deserves—helping Jeremiah Community become not an isolated development placed beside a neighborhood, but a community formed in relationship with it.

We also had the opportunity to hear from the current VHA VISTA serving at Micah Ministry. Here’s what she has to say about working at her site.

Q: What do you believe to be the most rewarding aspect of Micah Ministries’ work?

As a VHA VISTA serving at Micah Ministry, I get the incredible opportunity to see all the moving parts that make Micah Ministries so effective:

Staff that give so much time and effort into helping the neighbors – [our] term for the unhoused – have a place to belong, have dignity, and have what they need to [reach] long-term stability.
Numerous churches and volunteers that help with all these efforts – hosting and serving weekly community dinners, running the Cold Weather Shelter, Respite House meals, helping with transportation to and from doctor appointments, and much more.
Partnerships with local community resources to help with health needs, clothing, counseling, jobs, etc.