Repurposing Schools and Churches to Meet Housing Demand

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Appreciate the scale of the growing oversupply of vacant school, civic, and religious properties and the difficulties surrounding their reuse.
• Spot the zoning barriers to using these vacant structures for housing and learn about different approaches being drafted to remove them.
• Identify the non-zoning barriers to reuse of vacant schools, places of worship, and civic buildings and how planners can assemble resources to overcome them.

MORE SESSION DETAILS

Civic and religious life in America has been disrupted by shifts toward private and charter schools, outsourcing government services to private suppliers, and generally declining worship attendance. One result is a growing oversupply of bespoke vacant buildings embedded into residential neighborhoods that citizens want to protect. These same communities often have serious housing shortages that are driving an affordability crisis. The answer seems easy —convert the vacant buildings to housing — but it is not. Planners are challenged to identify the types of housing that these buildings can accommodate, address the concerns of surrounding neighborhoods, and remove planning and zoning- and building-code barriers. Colorado and other state governments have assembled committees to study whether changes in state and local regulations could ease these conversions. Cities also are exploring various zoning- and building-code changes to increase housing while preserving historically significant buildings. Speakers discuss many of these approaches and how to choose among them. Vacant schools and civic and religious buildings often considered eyesores could be viewed by planners, investors, and neighborhoods as unique opportunities to fill needs for congregate living, transitional housing, and independent living centers that have little impact on surrounding neighborhoods.

The NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Intermediate. For more on learning level descriptions visit our General Information Page.

Session Speakers

Donald L. Elliott, FAICP
Organizer and Speaker
Clarion Associates
Denver, CO

Mary Lydon
Speaker
HomeAid San Diego
San Diego, CA

Paige Eaves
Speaker
United Methodist Church
Altadena, CA