The Ohio State University at Marion will welcome community activist and advocate for the homeless and low income housing, Bill Faith, to the Marion campus, Thursday, May 14, 12 noon, in Maynard Hall’s Guthery Community Room. Faith will present the 37th Annual Norman Thomas Memorial Lecture, “The Housing Crisis and the Credit System.”

Bill Faith is executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO), the state’s foremost organization for advocacy, policy change, public education, training and technical assistance as they relate to homelessness and affordable housing issues. As legislative chairman of the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending in 2007, he helped lead the effort to end predatory payday lending in Ohio. His work has been widely recognized. He was named the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s “Ohioan of the Year” in 2004, and has received honors from the Fannie Mae Foundation, the National Council for Affordable and Rural Housing, and the Ohio Senate.

Throughout his career, Faith has worked to develop housing solutions for people with disabilities; directed agencies serving the needs of the homeless and promoted affordable housing, especially for very low-income people. He has had extensive involvement with all of the key state and federal government agencies on a wide range of housing and homelessness assistance programs. On the national level, he has served as Chairman of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) for six years, also as President of the Board of Directors for the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Ohio State Marion has hosted a Norman Thomas Lecture annually since 1972, bringing in a speaker to discuss a topic related to Thomas’s ideals. Norman Thomas, a Marion native, was a tireless advocate of pacifism, civil rights, socialism, anti-Communism, and civil liberties. Thomas, a theologian, was the United States presidential candidate on the Social Party ticket six times between 1928 and 1948. By the time he died in 1968, both major political parties had adopted many of the ideas he proposed.

The Norman Thomas Lecture is free and open to the public. A seminar luncheon will follow the presentation.