Sell Its Land for Millions? Nope, Church Says, Make it Available for Worker Housing

Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church wants to use its land to help address the affordable housing crisis. Despite what some neighbors say, it may be the best site in Brevard for that purpose.

Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church Pastor Keith Thompson on a tour of the church property last week

BREVARD — Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church could easily sell its land, said Pastor Keith Thompson.

It has turned down previous offers for the wooded 4.7 acres just north of its East Main Street sanctuary, he said. And judging from the $2.45 million developers paid in 2021 for the nearby, much smaller site of the planned City Camper hotel, such a sale would bring a major windfall.

Instead, the church plans to lease the parcel at a negligible cost to the city of Brevard, which in turn hopes to offer it to a developer of affordable housing.

“We would rather do something to benefit this community,” Thompson said. “Everybody knows there’s a housing crisis in Brevard, but not everybody’s in a position to do something about it. And we might be.”

As that “might” suggests, the plans are still very much in the works, he said. Church leaders are engaged in the “very complex” process of writing an agreement that would guarantee the land’s long-term use for the purpose they intend — providing housing for workers ranging from restaurant servers to early-career school teachers and law enforcement officers.

It’s far too early to know what will be built on the site, Thompson said, or how it would be financed.

But the congregation seems to be behind the plan and eager to join the growing nonprofit effort to address the affordability crisis, he said. And last week, the City Council voted to commit $50,000 to fast-track a detailed analysis of the site’s development potential as soon as any future lease is signed.

Several of the church’s neighbors spoke out against such development at that meeting, raising the prospect of increased traffic and declining property values — and saying there must be a better location for affordable housing.

In fact, there probably isn’t.

Transylvania County is notoriously short of developable land, and a 2023 study by an arm of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s School of Government identified the church property as one of the three most promising sites in the city while listing significant obstacles to building on the other two.

The church site is within walking distance of employment and shopping, access that is key to qualifying for federal financing. Another factor that could contain the costs that helped scuttle at least one planned affordable housing project: it can be served by city utilities without extending lines.

And one major development expense — buying land — would essentially be covered by the church.

“We are absolutely thrilled to be partnering with . . . the Brevard-Davidson River church because of its generosity,” said Brevard Mayor Maureen Copleof.

“They are not looking at what kind of profit they can make from it, they are looking at how they can utilize this land in a way that will help the community.”

The Neighbors and the Experts

Image of the church’s land from the Transylvania County mapping website

But it won’t help the residents of Franklin Street, just east of the parcel, said Martha Carlton, owner of a downtown business and one of three neighboring residential property owners who spoke at last week’s meeting.

Employees of Carlton’s shop, she said, are more concerned about the shortage of downtown parking than the scarcity of housing.

Like the two other speakers, she decried a lack of communication from the church and the city about plans for the land. The construction of multi-story apartments on the property would mean the loss of one of the “few natural green spaces” near downtown, she also said, and “there are many buildable areas just outside the city limits that would still be close to downtown and more affordable.”

Dwarfed by towering hardwoods on a tour of the land last week, Thompson said he and Copelof toured the neighborhood two years ago to talk to residents about the church’s hopes for the land.

“We wanted them to hear from us and we gave them a packet of information,” he said.

If there haven’t been updates detailing the future use of the property, he said, it’s because that isn’t yet known and won’t be until the completion of the work the Council approved last week.

The $50,000 from the city’s Housing Trust Fund will go to the School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative (DFI) to procure engineering and other professional services needed to determine the capacity of the site.

Any doubt about the need for reasonably priced housing, meanwhile, should have been erased by the previous DFI report that found half of Transylvania’s workers are employed in industries that pay an average of less than $40,000 per year, while the average price of a new home more than doubled between 2016 and 2022, to $633,000.

Vacancy rates are less than 1 percent, the study found, and even in 2019 — before the Covid-19-powered explosion in local property values — nearly 800 families in the county were in need of housing assistance and nearly half of them were “severely cost burdened,” meaning they spent more than 50 percent of their income on rent and utilities.

But you don’t need a study to know there’s a housing crisis in Transylvania, Thompson said, citing the sky-high prices of homes going up in the city and conversations with workers such as the staffers of the physical therapy office where he recently received treatment. Almost all of them told him they commute from outside the county, he said.

“I talked to every one of them, and they said, ‘We can’t live here,’ ” he said.

The Scarcity of Land

Finding sites to house such workers isn’t easy in a city hemmed in by publicly owned forests, mountains and the flood-prone French Broad River, according to both the earlier DFI report and city leaders.

“People have this perception that we have all this buildable land and we just do not,” said City Council member Aaron Baker.

Affordable housing is necessarily dense development, which needs access to utilities. The highly competitive federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program — the main funding source for affordable housing — awards points to projects on sites near shopping, employment, healthcare and other services.

In Transylvania, that combination of qualities can only be found in or near Brevard, and DFI, after a review of properties throughout the city, conducted a “high-level” analysis of Brevard’s three most likely sites for reasonably priced housing.

An eight-acre parcel on Cashiers Valley Road is owned by the city, which would gladly make it available to a developer of an affordable  project. But slopes and a power line easement leave room for only about 30 units, according to the analysis by DFI.

A four-acre plot occupied by the U.S. Army Reserve on French Broad Street near downtown is virtually free of such constraints. But was not currently available, the report said, and its owners have since told the city they have no plans to sell for at least another five years, Planning Director Paul Ray has said.

That leaves parcel number three, the one owned by the church. It has access to French Broad Street by way of Appletree Street, the preliminary analysis showed. Though DFI noted the presence of steep slopes and a “potential stream” on the land, it could ultimately contain as many as 85 multifamily units and would likely be “competitive” for federal tax credits.

Sprawl Versus Infill

Another factor in this plot’s favor: Setting aside land costs — which the church hopes to make a non-factor in this case — building in cities can be far cheaper than building outside of them, planning experts say.

Development that requires replicating urban services outside of already built-up zones is called “sprawl.” Its counterpoint is “infill,” construction on sites such as the church property that can tap into existing grids of roads, sidewalks and utility lines — and that allow local governments and taxpayers to fully capitalize on investment into existing infrastructure.

“Infill is much more about fitting into existing development patterns,” said Brevard Senior Planner Emily Brewer, “versus expanding it further and paying to expand it out further.”

A plan to build the Falling Waters affordable apartment complex west of downtown on Rosman Highway and Nicholson Creek Road shows both the burdens of these costs and the hard road to securing federal assistance for projects outside city service areas.

Even with pledges of financial support from local governments, the costs of extending utilities for the project was one reason to move on the site, said Yamin, who would later abandon his years-long quest to find a suitable parcel for affordable housing in Transylvania.

Though the location was close enough to required amenities to make for a strong application for tax credits, Yamin said, it wasn’t strong enough to beat out a crowded field of other proposals seeking that backing in 2021.

“It’s just so darn competitive,” he said.

Affordable, Workforce or Both?

Thompson emphasizes any project built on the site would be for workers and shies away from the term “affordable housing.”

But in Transylvania, where so many residents are employed in the low-wage sectors DFI documented, such distinctions tend to blur. Here, by and large, affordable housing is worker housing. 

A teacher with seven years of experience and serving as the head of a two-person household would be near the top of the affordable classification, according to the 2023 DFI report. Further down on the scale would be a restaurant server living alone and earning $25,000 annually.

“Teachers, police officers, physical therapists, wait staff, firefighters —- all of those people qualify for that low-to-middle income target,” Thompson said.

Many of them would, at least, which is why the church is exploring this plan, said Janice Hiner, a Brevard Davidson-River elder and member of the ad hoc committee working on the agreement with the city.

“I think there’s a real need out there, and because the congregation cares so much about the community we have an opportunity to do something about it,” she said,

This pressing need for worker housing is why Thompson plans to urge other churches to explore similar opportunities at the Faith + Housing Social Impact Summit scheduled for 9 am March 12 at the Brevard First United Methodist Church.

And it’s the reason why not all the neighbors are opposed to the church’s plan.

Retired architect Doug Harris, who like Carlton lives on Franklin Street, shares some of her concerns about the impact of multi-family development on the woods that, he said, have long doubled as an expansive “backyard.”

But he recognizes the church’s right to determine the future of its own property. More than that, he recognizes the broad benefit of providing housing for people who serve the community.

When he sent his now-grown children to public schools, he said, “I expected them to have good teachers and teaching assistants, and for the floors to be clean.” When his wife’s elderly parents moved to Transylvania, he said, “I expected there to be (certified nursing assistants) to care for them.”

“When I think about this I need to be consistent,” he concluded. “I can’t say I want you to be there for my kids and in-laws but then say I don’t want you living in my neighborhood.”

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