Apartments built at Virginia parish highlight faith-led efforts to address housing crisis

 

CNA Staff, Sep 25, 2025 / 13:33 pm (CNA).

A project to develop dozens of affordable housing units in the backyard of a Richmond, Virginia, parish is underscoring the ongoing need for more housing in the United States.

St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, located in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood, broke ground last week on an initiative to construct dozens of affordable housing units on a plot just behind the parish.

The church, known locally for decades as the parish attended by U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, is collaborating with the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Commonwealth Catholic Charities, and the city of Richmond to develop the site, which will be known as “Greenway Village.”

Commonwealth Catholic Charities says on its website that the property will include “14 buildings with 56 rental units.”

“The development will include a neighborhood with a walking path to the local school and parish, and space for CCC’s supportive services,” the charity said.

In a statement to CNA, Kaine, who was present at the Sept. 21 groundbreaking, noted that he formerly practiced as a fair housing attorney. “I know how important it is to expand affordable housing for all,” he said.

The Democrat senator said he was “struck by how many faith leaders across Virginia talk about using their congregation land to offer housing solutions,” adding that he was “proud that [St. Elizabeth] has finally broken ground” on the effort.

Kaine told local outlet NBC12 that a school building and a convent used to sit on the project site.

“[T]he back two-thirds of this property have been sort of blighted and we’ve looked for all kinds of uses [for it],” he said.

Father Jim Arsenault, the pastor of St. Elizabeth, told CNA that multiple developers have been interested in the property over the years, and it had even been sold several times before the Richmond Diocese purchased it back a few years ago.

The parish voted unanimously to greenlight the project. “We’re very excited about it,” he said.

The development’s housing units “will look like houses that are already in the area,” Arsenault said. “We wanted it to look more like a neighborhood than an industrial building or a townhome, a bit closer to what the neighboring houses look like.”

Parishes, Church leaders have pushed for creative housing solutions

The Richmond project is one of numerous efforts by Catholic Church leaders and local Catholic communities to help address chronic housing shortages in the United States.

Housing supply has been critically low in the U.S. for years, helping drive sky-high prices and excluding many buyers from the market. The real estate marketplace Zillow said in July that the U.S. housing shortage hit an all-time high that month, with the country short 4.7 million units.

Local and national leaders have called for increased construction to meet ongoing demand. In some cases, Catholics have stepped up to help address those shortages, sometimes leveraging their own assets to help fund efforts by parishes and other ministries.

In Austin, Texas, St. Austin Catholic Parish leased half of its property to the developer Greystar, which built a student housing tower on the site. The parish was able to rebuild its school and utilize a gym in the new construction.

In 2024, meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Boston broke ground on a 19-story affordable housing project in downtown Boston, partnering with the St. Francis House shelter ministry to build the residential apartments, a majority of which will be used to support formerly homeless individuals.

Also last year, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City helped spur production of affordable housing in the region with the development of what it called a “pocket neighborhood” of prefabricated houses.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in a partnership with the Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing Alliance, also announced in 2024 that it would provide land for a new housing development dedicated to serving community college students and young people exiting the foster care system.

Numerous Catholic charity groups around the country are spearheading similar efforts. Catholic Charities USA says its affiliates are ”among the nation’s largest providers of affordable housing as well as emergency and temporary housing options.”

Though the total Catholic contribution to the housing stock in the U.S. might be relatively small, it reflects a commitment by Catholic leadership to help address housing woes throughout the country.

Calls for better housing — both within and without the U.S. — have come from top Church leadership. Pope Francis in November 2024 urged “diocesan realities [in Rome] that own real estate to offer their contribution to stem the housing emergency” in that city.

Citing the jubilee year, Francis said he wanted the Rome Diocese to give “a tangible sign of attention to housing issues” to help both pilgrims and city residents find shelter.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 2023 urged Congress to support affordable housing measures, calling for “robust investments in federal housing programs” in order to “satisfy the basic human right to shelter.”

Bishops have locally backed efforts to ameliorate the housing shortage as well. The Texas bishops have voiced support for measures to let churches and other faith institutions build mixed‑income housing on land they already own without running into prohibitive, regulatory red tape.

The housing shortage will likely continue for the near future as builders work to address the backlog of millions of housing units. But Kaine said his own parish’s efforts provide a blueprint for churches to do their part.

The senator praised both the Diocese of Richmond and the local Catholic charity for “[taking] this important step that can show other faith communities how to do it.”

Arsenault, meanwhile, said interest in the development is already high in the community. He said he has received multiple inquiries from individuals and families looking to move into the housing units.

“I took my car into a Ford dealership to get serviced the other day,” he told CNA. “On the way back, the courtesy driver recognized me and said, ‘Aren’t you the priest at that housing development?’”

“How do I get on the list?” the driver asked him. “I’d love to live there!”