It’s taken years, but the first tenants for St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church’s long-hoped-for affordable housing units on the four acres where the old parish school once stood should be moving in this summer.

They’ll include Richmonders who have the very toughest time finding homes – families with incomes well below average, in some cases at 30% or less of the area median, which translates to $27,250 for a single parent with one child.

St. Elizabeth’s and Commonwealth Catholic Charities have been working on this project since 2019, and they nailed down zoning permission from a cooperative city government in 2021.

But in the years since, construction costs have soared, while the special use permit the city granted locked the church and CCC into the plans they’d first developed.

“It means we couldn’t pivot, be flexible in response to costs, to try tightening here, saving money there,” said Jay Brown, CCC’s chief executive officer.

“By-right zoning would have allowed us to,” he said, using the jargon term for what local government zoning ordinances allow in each type of zone.

Which is why, although it won’t help the St. Elizabeth’s project, Brown is an enthusiastic backer of legislation (Senate Bill 388 and House Bill 1279) that the General Assembly passed. The bills would allow religious organizations and nonprofit agencies owning tax-exempt property to erect affordable housing or mixed-use projects – that is, a combination of housing and commercial space – on their land by right.

Like many congregations, St. Elizabeth’s felt called to reach out to families struggling to find a decent, affordable place to live.

It isn’t easy, and not just because of zoning.

Wooing investors to put money into projects that don’t charge high rents is a challenge.

For the 56 units in 14 buildings now under construction behind St. Elizabeth’s, it started with Low Income Housing Tax Credits. These allow investors to save on their tax bills, as a sweetener for putting money into a project that can’t yield the same profits as other real estate investments.

Another key was the 14 project-based rent subsidy vouchers from the inventory Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority got from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Loans from Virginia Housing, the state’s housing authority, as well as money from the National Housing Trust Fund and the Virginia Housing Trust Fund helped.

So did grants from the Virginia Housing and Community Development Department’s Housing Innovations in Energy Efficiency program, which is funded by payments to the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative program that former Gov. Glenn Youngkin pulled Virginia out of, but Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the General Assembly want to return to.

A city Affordable Housing Performance Grant, money from the city’s American Rescue Plan pool and funds from PlanRVA’s Regional Housing Development Program also helped.

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