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Mandatory Credits

Housing Challenges and Solutions

Local Programming: Religious Institution Lands as Affordable Housing Sites

Saturday, March 29, 2025
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM MT
Location: Mile High Ballroom 1 -2
CM: 1 Law
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:
  • Summarizes the relationship between land supply and the housing crisis;
  • Explores the growing trend of developing affordable housing on faith-based land;
  • Reviews 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;
  • Outlines 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;
  • Highlights several successful efforts and partnerships that are developing or have resulted in permanent affordable housing; and
  • Examines legal challenges to such projects to ensure planners and faith-based communities can continue to contribute to the mission of affordability.

Learning Objectives:

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