- Seattle’s 2026 report covers its ordinance allowing extra housing density on religious property
- Eight religious organisations have eight projects with 599 affordable units
- Four projects are finished, with 331 rent-restricted homes occupied
- Homes must be affordable at or below 80 per cent of area median income for at least 50 years
Five years after Seattle changed its rules to let churches build more homes, the city reported on the results. The Seattle Office of Housing’s implementation report on Ordinance 126445, dated June 30, 2026, shows what a single policy change has produced on religious land.
The ordinance, passed in October 2021, created a new land use code chapter to implement a Washington state law, SHB 1377. That law allows additional density on property owned by religious organisations, on the condition that “every housing unit developed with this additional density be affordable to households with incomes at or below 80 percent of area median income (AMI) for at least 50 years.”
According to the report, eight religious organisations had eight projects with a combined 599 affordable units, and all eight sites had building permits. “Four of the projects have completed construction and are in service today, providing 331 rent-restricted units for income-eligible households,” it said. All the projects were funded by the Seattle Office of Housing.
The organisations named include Mount Zion Baptist Church, Lutheran Church of Good Shepherd Missouri Synod, the First African Methodist Episcopal Housing Association, the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, New Hope Baptist Church and Catholic Community Services of Western Washington. Together they show that congregations of different traditions, from Baptist and Lutheran to Episcopal and Catholic, have used the same rule.
Seattle’s numbers show that a clear law plus public funding can turn church land into hundreds of homes within a few years. For Jamaica, the lesson is that small changes, such as allowing more homes on church sites if they stay affordable, backed by NHT or government financing, could unlock land already in church hands. For Jamaican congregations in the diaspora, the Seattle projects offer models they can visit and learn from.
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