The Arlington Housing Commission is considering a push to make it easier for houses of worship to redevelop their land with affordable housing.
A subcommittee of the full commission discussed whether to press the issue in advance of next year’s legislative session, which opens in January. Whether County Board members embrace the proposal remains to be seen.
“This is one we definitely want to talk more about,” Housing Commission Chair Kellen MacBeth said at a July 30 meeting.
That panel was set up to advise the full Housing Commission on items to recommend for inclusion in the county’s 2026 state legislative package.
Legislation introduced in the 2024 General Assembly session would have provided a streamlined process for religious organizations seeking to develop affordable housing on property they own. In each case the bills — by Del. Betsy Carr and Sen. Ghazala Hashmi — first were deferred to 2025, then killed off in committee.
Despite support from housing advocates, including the full Housing Commission, the County Board’s legislative priorities packages for both sessions indirectly opposed the measures.
Identical language in the county’s 2024 and 2025 legislative packages asked the General Assembly to “protect the authority of local governments to plan, zone and enforce land-use regulations, without restricting local zoning authority or the zoning process.”
At the July 30 subcommittee meeting, one member of the panel said concerns that local governments will lose all regulatory authority were overblown.
Projects “would still have to go through a County Board process — you can still impose conditions,” said Jason Schwartz, a subcommittee member.
Another member, Joe Ventrone, said it was worth considering limiting any housing built under a streamlined formula to units serving seniors.
With many mainstream religious denominations facing significant membership and attendance declines, some individual congregations have turned to developing their land for affordable housing.
Often, the housing will occupy a portion of the site, with the religious organization becoming a tenant in a smaller footprint than before.
In Arlington, efforts to develop affordable units on church-owned land have seen mixed results.
One bruising battle came in the early 2000s, when Clarendon Baptist Church partnered with a developer to propose construction of an eight-story building with affordable housing atop church facilities.
Attendance at the church had dropped 90% since its heyday of the 1950s-60s, leading congregation leaders to see the plan as a way to provide a community benefit while also securing future financial stability.
The proposal drew pushback from some in the Clarendon community, concerned about the massing of the building. After a noisy battle, the project won County Board approval and opened in 2012.
Arlington Presbyterian Church and Central United Methodist Church each later partnered with housing organizations on redevelopment projects for their sites, located along Columbia Pike and Ballston, respectively.
Less successful was the recent effort by Clarendon Presbyterian Church and True Ground Housing Partners to create 102 units of housing for LGBTQ+ seniors on its land in Lyon Village. The plan was abandoned earlier this year owing to financing challenges.
At the July 30 meeting, MacBeth said it wasn’t just religious communities that needed relief from regulations when building affordable units. Hurdles should be lowered for all affordable-housing projects, he said.
“The state should lay out a streamlined process for building 100% affordable housing, period,” he said. “We should just be speeding up that process.”
Local-government leaders across the commonwealth tend to zealously guard their land-use authority. A statewide requirement bypassing local autonomy would get around that, MacBeth said.
“I don’t know that localities have the political will to pass something like that” on their own, he said.
The subcommittee will meet again in mid-August before forwarding its recommendations to the full Housing Commission. That body is next set to meet Thursday, Sept. 4.
On another contentious issue — imposition of rent-control or rent-stabilization measures — the subcommittee seems likely to recommend that instead of going to the General Assembly, county leaders fund a local study of options.
The same request had been made in late 2024, but county officials declined to include funding for a study in the fiscal year 2026 budget adopted this spring.
