How a Florida law now clears the way for housing on church and school land
Affordable housing may be coming soon to a school or church near you.
An amendment made to the Live Local Act during this year’s state legislative session, which concluded last month, makes it easier to build affordable housing on land owned by school districts, municipalities and houses of worship across Florida.
This change, and the Live Local Act more broadly, are part of a push to address affordable housing shortages across Florida. The issue is particularly acute in high cost-of-living areas like Miami-Dade County, where the nonprofit Miami Homes for All estimates that to close the gap, the area would need around 90,000 additional units of housing that are affordable for people making less than 80% of the area’s median income.
For a single person in Miami-Dade, the median income is around $87,000 per year.
The Live Local Act, passed in 2023, provides tax incentives and allows developers to bypass certain zoning restrictions if they commit to designating 40% of a project’s residential units as workforce or affordable housing for at least 30 years. Local governments cannot block developments that meet the state law’s criteria, which has made it controversial with local elected officials in municipalities across South Florida.
To qualify under Live Local, the designated workforce units must be affordable to people making 120% of the area’s median income. The amended law also requires that land owned by a religious institution must have had an operating house of worship on the site for at least 10 years. The religious institution must be a co-applicant with the developer and continue operating the house of worship after the site is redeveloped.
Now, schools, houses of worship and municipalities can partner with developers to build affordable housing projects on their land. Previously, they would have needed special waivers from the local government to do so, said Annie Lord, the executive director of Miami Homes for All.
“I think this is a really positive step, in terms of just streamlining the process of getting it done,” Lord said.
Affordable housing developers have also praised the change. But others, including Miami City Commissioner Christine King, have taken a more skeptical view. In January, a similar proposal went before the Miami City Commission and was voted down 4-1, with King as its most vocal critic.
“This is a ‘no’ in every respect for me,” King said at the time.
Changes ‘open up new opportunities’
Related Urban Development Group, the affordable housing arm of the Related Group, signed a deal last month with Miami-Dade County Public Schools to redevelop J.R.E. Lee Education Center in South Miami with housing and new educational facilities.
The developer plans to build more than 300 mixed-income residential units, which teachers at the school will be given priority to rent, said Alberto Milo, Jr., the president of Related Urban.
Milo said he thinks building affordable housing on school district land will help high cost-of-living areas like Miami-Dade retain teachers who may otherwise struggle to afford housing. He added that schools and churches often have large parcels of land, and these changes “open up new opportunities” for the future of that land.
Michael Wohl, a principal of the affordable housing-focused Coral Rock Development Group, said his firm sometimes partners with churches to build affordable housing. Wohl said this can be particularly helpful when building senior housing. That’s because churches’ congregations skew older and churches tend to be better connected with an area’s senior population.
‘Cautious’ optimism from religious communities
Audrey Warren, the senior pastor of First United Methodist Church, sees the benefits of making it easier for churches to redevelop their land.
Warren’s church sold its one-acre property to a developer in 2018 for $55 million. The developer built a luxury condo tower on the site at 400 Biscayne Blvd., and the new building included 22,000 square feet of space for the church.
These deals have the potential to be beneficial for churches, developers and people who need affordable housing. But Warren worries about the potential downsides, too. Many people she’s spoken to in religious communities are “cautious” about the new rules.
Congregations across the country are shrinking, and many churches are struggling financially, leaving some in a “desperate” situation that could cause them to be taken advantage of, Warren said.
Warren also worries that once the 30-year affordable housing requirement expires, developers may redevelop the land once again with luxury condos. She said one way for churches to address this concern would be to enter a covenant with the developer laying out the future of the property.
“Churches really need to think about the long-term legacy they want to leave,” Warren said. “We all have to think about 50 years from now.”
Similar proposal rejected by Miami commission
Just as King criticized the proposal that Commissioner Ralph Rosado brought before Miami City Commission in January, she has continued to express concern over the recent amendment to the Live Local Act.
“While the intention to increase affordable housing availability is honorable, the recent amendment to the Live Local Act enters dangerous territory,” King told the Miami Herald in a statement. She added that she worries some churches lack the “expertise” to navigate real estate deals, which could leave them vulnerable.
King’s district has the largest number of properties that the city had identified as eligible for affordable housing development under Rosado’s failed proposal. At the time of the commission’s vote in January, the city had identified over 660 properties, totaling nearly 1,800 acres, that would have been eligible.
The proposal, which Rosado called the Land of Opportunity Initiative, would have changed the city’s zoning code to allow affordable housing development on land with a place of worship on site or land zoned for civic uses, including schools, nonprofits and government entities.
“Expanding access to affordable housing is a step in the right direction, and we’re encouraged to see this approach move forward,” Rosado said in a statement, noting that he had shared the details of the proposed initiative with state lawmakers.
This story was originally published April 18, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
