Virginia Beach needs more affordable housing, and the city recently put out a request for churches and nonprofit organizations to consider helping fill the gap.
Churches and nonprofits can respond to the city’s request before Aug. 14 with information about their available land. Then, the Housing and Neighborhood Preservation office will help them identify possibilities for development.
The Interfaith Alliance at the Beach, a nonprofit coalition, raised the idea of using land owned by churches and other nonprofits to build affordable housing. That idea has met with success locally in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
A housing study Virginia Beach released earlier this year proposed a city-managed housing trust fund and denser development to solve the shortage — but community members also wanted to get in on the solution, said Sharon Shoff, Housing Finance Coordinator for the city.
One in three households in Virginia Beach are cost-burdened, which means they pay 30% or more of their income in total housing costs, according to the housing study. The issue particularly affects seniors, nearly 40% of whom 75 and up are cost-burdened.
Courtney Pierce, Co-Chair of the Affordable Housing Collaborative for Interfaith Alliance, sat down with WHRO’s Cianna Morales to explain how churches and nonprofits can make a difference on this issue.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Cianna Morales: Welcome, Courtney, thank you for joining us today.
Courtney Pierce: Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.
C.M: Tell us about the work the Interfaith Alliance does in Virginia Beach.
C.P.: Sure. So the Interfaith Alliance has been around for a really long time, a little over 30 years. We serve as a coalition of faith-based congregations and nonprofits to serve the city of Virginia Beach to really meet those social justice needs and issues through the advocacy and collaboration of other nonprofits, other faith-based communities and churches and the community coming together. One of the issues that has always been a part of the Interfaith Alliance at the Beach, or IAB for short, is the issue of affordable and attainable housing.
C.M.: The City of Virginia Beach recently put out a request to nonprofit and religious organizations to consider using some of their land for affordable housing development. How is the Interfaith Alliance involved in that idea?
C.P.: In conversations with the city and in conversation with faith communities, we know that affordable housing is a huge issue and it’s a crisis within our nation, and then particularly here in our area.
We had a fireside chat where the City of Virginia Beach was invited to come talk about this upcoming RFI (Request for Information) that they were putting out to many of the churches that we have been working with. They were able to look through a database and find churches that have land that might be able to be utilized. And also many churches have reached out to the city themselves about the additional land they have and how they can utilize that. In addition to that, we really want (churches) to be able to partner with maybe a nonprofit or an organization that is able to utilize their land.
C.M.: What would that use of land look like? Would that be new houses or apartments built, or using an existing church structure?
C.P.: What they’re looking for more than likely will be some sort of new development on the land that is being utilized by the church.
Also churches have the ability to come up with their own plans. So there are some churches in Virginia Beach that have expressed interest in being able to provide some affordable housing, whether that might be for the older population, so those 65 and older. Or it might be for foster youth that are coming out of the program. We call it disconnected youth, ages 18 to 24.
There might be churches that say, “Hey, we just have some land, and we want to utilize that.” It could be restructuring a part of their church building to afford that, or it could be a new structure.
Zoning is going to play a part in that. The structure of the building and the program within the housing project will also be a part of that as well.
C.M.: What kind of need is this project fulfilling in Virginia Beach?
C.P.: I think it fills the need of being able to have some sort of housing that is supporting a marginalized community. So increasing tenancy for those folks so they’re not displaced from housing.
And I think on the end of the church, it’s an opportunity for faith communities to do what we have been doing in the community, supporting the community, but also branching out into the sector of housing.
C.M.: Are there places, either locally or further afield, where this idea has been put into action?
C.P.: Yeah, there are a couple of places in Northern Virginia where they have taken churches and revamped the church to create affordable housing, mainly for older adults.
There’s also been a project in Asheville, North Carolina called the BeLoved (Village) community where they took an acre of land from a Presbyterian church and they built 12 micro homes, so housing between 400 to 600 square feet, where they decentralized parking to create more of a community feel. Those houses are being built as we speak.
A little bit different, they’ve taken a high school in Franklin, the Hayden Village project. They restructured that to provide support for older adult communities as well as programming for them to really engage in community. We really want to make sure that as our folks are aging, and as we’re living longer, that we’re also providing community for one another.
C.M.: Is there anything else related to this issue that’s important to consider?
C.P.: I think collaboration on this issue is the only way we’re really going to make a dent in it. So just encouraging community members to collaborate with one another, collaborate with nonprofits and faith-based organizations and cities to be able to really make something like this happen. We know the beauty of what it means when you collaborate together and we get things done.
