WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration plans to allow religious groups to use federal housing money to help build centers where religious worship is held, as long as part of the building is also used for social services, according to The New York Times.

The policy shift, proposed this month by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, significantly expands the administration's religion-based initiative. The new rules are still subject to final approval by housing officials.

Under the proposal, a church could erect a building using federal money to create a shelter for the homeless in one part and using private money to create a sanctuary in another part.

Current regulations generally prohibit religious groups from using federal housing and community development grants, which totaled $7.7 billion last year, to build or rehabilitate structures, according to the Times. The new rules would allow the use of federal aid to acquire, rehabilitate or build centers used for religious and specifically approved nonreligious activities, so long as no federal money is used for the religious section.

"We see no reason to exclude religious organizations from participation in these programs if there can be a reasonable mechanism to ensure that a program has no particular religious connotation one way or another," said Richard A. Hauser, the housing department's general counsel. "There's no reason you can't have a cathedral upstairs and something that would look like any other room in the basement" for counseling.

Opponents to the White House's proposed faith-based initiative say the policy breaches the separation of church and state.

"This is probably the most clearly unconstitutional aspect of the White House's faith-based initiative that we've seen up to this point," said Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What this does is take federal money that is serving the neediest of the needy in our society and diverts it to the bricks-and-mortar construction of churches and sanctuaries and other places of worship."