{"id":189414,"date":"2026-03-12T23:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T23:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/189414\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T23:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T23:58:19","slug":"affordable-housing-can-be-built-at-orange-county-churches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/189414\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordable housing can be built at Orange County churches"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0This week, Orange County commissioners approved a program that allows housing to be built on religious-owned property.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

The Affordable Housing for Religious Institutional Lands program was approved by Orange County
\n
It allows flexibility with zoning so religious institutions can build affordable housing on or near adjacent to their property
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The program is an approach under the county’s Housing for All 10-Year Action Plan to provide thousands of affordable housing units by 2030<\/p>\n

The program is called Affordable Housing for Religious Institutional Lands (AHRIL). Community leaders believe it will lead to some much-needed change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need in our community more affordable housing within the already dense parts of our community, and churches can be a really good avenue towards fixing some of that problem,\u201d said Eric Gray.<\/p>\n

Gray, the executive director of the faith-based Christian Service Center, believes religious institutions can work toward a solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe right now have an estimate that we\u2019re at a deficit of about 75,000 apartment units just in Orange County alone,\u201d explained Gray. \u201cSo we need big solutions… this isn\u2019t going to solve the affordable housing crisis in Central Florida, but it is going to make a dent if churches decide to take up the call and really enact this idea of faith in action.\u201d<\/p>\n

First United Methodist Church of Orlando\u2019s associate pastor, Rushing Kimball, is glad to hear the county approved the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is wonderful. This is one area where the missional needs and work of the church align with the county initiatives to build thousands of affordable housing units by 2030,\u201d said Kimball.<\/p>\n

Although tight on space in downtown Orlando, Kimball believes there are plenty of other churches that can help.<\/p>\n

\u201cChurches across the county are sitting on unused properties that can meet the needs of people who are most in need,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

AHRIL is an approach under the county\u2019s Housing for All 10-Year Action Plan<\/a>. Its goal is to provide 11,000 affordable housing units by 2030.<\/p>\n

The program is in response to Senate Bill 1730<\/a> \u2014 also known as the Yes In God\u2019s Backyard law \u2014 which was signed by the governor last year. While state law requires at least 10% of the units to be affordable, the county is striving for 100% of units to meet its affordability standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really great opportunity that the state was able to provide local jurisdictions the flexibility. Instead of saying you have to and how you have to do it, we were able to take this allowance and with that flexibility that they provided us, build a program that\u2019s based around our context, our needs, our specific requirements and priorities to really address our affordable housing here in orange county,\u201d said planning administrator Nicolas Thalmueller.<\/p>\n

Eligible properties must be within the urban service area, be owned by a religious institution at the time of application, and contain or be adjacent to a place of worship. Projects can include up to 10 acres of land.<\/p>\n

Although approved this week, Thalmueller says they\u2019ve had conversations with developers and institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been actually a tremendous amount of interest in folks looking to try and take advantage of this program, to give back to the community and create this affordable housing in their communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0This week, Orange County commissioners approved a program that allows housing to be built on religious-owned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1571,21948,16022,274,1015,1644,115,1335,139,141,140,278],"class_list":["post-189414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-affordable-housing","tag-app-affordable-housing","tag-app-housing","tag-app-top-stories","tag-emma-delamo","tag-housing","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}