When neighbors in central Alabama began talking about housing, they weren’t content to just talk about the issue; they wanted to decide and move to action quickly. In the fall of 2024, a group of concerned citizens at the University Baptist Church in Montevallo, Alabama – representing local nonprofits, healthcare, and business leaders – began talking and planning for how they could address some of the most pressing housing challenges facing their small town in Shelby County, Alabama, just south of Birmingham.

The informal group brought in Herman Lehman, a Retired City Clerk and Co-Founder of Keys to the City Community Coaching, to discuss potential solutions for addressing housing needs in the tri-county area of Bibb, Chilton, and Shelby counties. Lehman describes the complexity of issues related to housing in the tri-county area as “a dire need in a lot of different directions,” and an “issue that touches everybody.”

Lehman began by asking the group questions about next steps, and together they decided that to address the region’s needs and plan for sustainable, long-term solutions, the broader community had to be involved in the conversation, decision-making, and resulting actions. Lehman describes what happened next as a “collaborative effort.” The informal group invited more members and evolved into a steering committee for planning engagement with the broader community, and brought on a new partner: the David Mathews Center for Civic Life (DMC).

The DMC, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to building habits for effective citizenship, worked with the steering committee to engage other residents in framing housing challenges in the tri-county area for deliberation. Working together, they created a discussion guide to help local community members learn about the issue, consider possible options, weigh tradeoffs, and chart practical steps forward. The guide organized ideas around affordability, availability, and accessibility, and followed the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) model by laying out multiple approaches with clear benefits and trade-offs. That shared framing set the tone for everything that followed.

Participant Perspectives from the Tri-County Forum Series

Using the discussion guide to spark deliberation, residents from Bibb, Chilton, and Shelby counties met in forums during the spring and early summer of 2025. Participants spoke candidly about cost burdens, long waitlists, barriers to homeownership, and gaps in emergency and transitional housing. They also pointed to zoning, permitting, and infrastructure as obstacles to building the kinds of options communities need. Many urged a regional view, noting that Montevallo’s (Shelby County) challenges are Centreville’s (Bibb County) and Jemison’s (Chilton County) too. Across these conversations, three themes kept emerging.

• Affordability and cost burden: rising rents and mortgages strain household budgets. Participants explored tools like a housing trust, strategic subsidies, and rehabilitation funds.
• Limited housing availability: waitlists are long and choices are thin. People discussed zoning updates, mixed-use development, accessory dwelling units, and adaptive reuse of vacant properties.
• Accessibility and stability: seniors, people with disabilities, and families need design-forward options close to work, schools, and services, paired with transportation, childcare, and mental-health supports.

Residents also stressed the need for cross-cutting services, including transitional and emergency housing, wraparound support, and ongoing engagement with developers and nonprofit builders. The steering committee tracked these throughlines and worked with facilitators to reflect them back to the community in clear, actionable language.

“It was reassuring to hear the same themes articulated by participants at different forums,” reflected Scotty Kirkland, Executive Director of the DMC. “That meant we had planned well and put forth thoughtful materials to guide the discussions. But what also emerged was a broader feeling of a community of individuals with shared values and a desire to address these issues, perhaps in a new way or with a new partner. Seeing those connections grow in real time was very rewarding.”

 

The Big Reveal: From Common Ground to Commitments

On August 14, 2025, the Mathews Center hosted “The Big Reveal” to present the forum’s findings back to the community. Attendees reviewed themes, ranked priorities, and volunteered for action teams. By vote count, the top regional priorities were (1) Lack of Transitional Housing, (2) Affordability and Cost Burden, (3) Limited Housing Availability. The largest number of volunteers signed up to work on transitional housing and wraparound services, matching the steepest gaps identified during the series. The tone in the room was hopeful and practical:

“This meeting provides evidence that people do care. We may not get it perfect, but we can do stuff together,” one forum participant reflected.

The steering committee is now organizing working groups to move from insight to implementation following the Big Reveal. Early focus areas include improving housing literacy, exploring a regional housing trust or similar funding models, engaging developers and nonprofit builders, and aligning local reforms with county plans so that approvals, infrastructure, and design standards support diverse, attainable options.

The steering committee and other engaged community members are working to translate the Big Reveal priorities into pilot projects and partnerships that fit the Tri-County region’s scale and character, while keeping residents at the table for decisions that affect their homes and neighborhoods. Lehman succinctly summed up the steering committee’s commitment to translating talk into action: “We’re just beginning.”

A Blueprint for Community Problem Solving

The deliberative process utilized by the David Mathews Center for Civic Life, Keys to the City Community Coaching, and the steering committee can serve as a blueprint for any community looking to talk, decide, and act better together. The process is easily adaptable for multiple issues, settings, and contexts.

Start with others who care about the issue. It helps to have engagement and buy-in from local official leaders, but if you, like the University Baptist Church in Montevallo, Alabama, have a group of concerned citizens who care, start with them to build an informal coalition or steering committee to lead the effort. Then frame a deliberative discussion guide by and for the community that surfaces potential options for addressing the issue and identifies possible actions, actors, and trade-offs. (Or localize a national NIFI issue guide for your context!) Convene resident-led forums that welcome all community members, moderated by trained neutral facilitators. Return to the community to report back on common themes. Then, invite people to choose and commit to the next steps for acting together.

The deliberative process, according to Lehman, “requires more time,” but “it opens up the possibilities for so much more than what you start out with” and it can produce “lasting impact.” Kirkland agreed: “I think the community connections that grow from a deliberative process are stronger. I think they are built to last.”

If you would like to learn more about how you can utilize deliberation in your community to help citizens and leaders talk, decide, and act for the public good, email us today. The National Issues Forums Institute would be delighted to help you identify a nonpartisan deliberative discussion guide, supply tools for framing an issue locally, connect you with a center for civic life in your state, or provide training opportunities to develop talk-to-action deliberative initiatives.