Religious Institution Lands as Affordable Housing Sites

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Course Details

While communities across the country are struggling to provide affordable housing options for their most vulnerable citizens, a new set of sometimes-overlooked development partners is rising to the challenge: religious institutions. 

This presentation will:

  • Summarize the relationship between land supply and the housing crisis
  • Explore the growing trend of developing affordable housing on faith-based land
  • Review court cases in which the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) has been invoked as grounds for required approval of affordable housing on such lands
  • Outline the zoning reform and/or permit streamlining required to repurpose such property, which often contains vacant buildings and underutilized land that religious institutions are seeking to transform to both address their community’s housing-affordability challenges and preserve or improve their neighborhood
  • Highlight several successful efforts and partnerships that are developing or have resulted in permanent affordable housing
  • Examine legal challenges to such projects to ensure planners and faith-based communities can continue to contribute to the mission of affordability

Learning Outcomes

  • Understand key challenges and barriers to reusing excess religious institution lands for affordable housing.
  • Understand how courts have treated challenges to the reuse of religious institution lands for affordable housing under RLUIPA.
  • Understand how state and local governments have been revising zoning laws to encourage the reuse of religious institution lands for affordable housing.
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