St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison, Wis., is being converted into a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments. Lawmakers see the potential for much-needed housing on church-owned land, but opponents worry local communities could lose their authority over neighborhood development. (Video screenshot courtesy of St. John’s Lutheran Church)
Growing up in a religious family, Florida Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud has seen how many church communities are no longer anchored to a single building in the way they used to be. Her small prayer groups take place over chats these days, not necessarily in person or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in pews.
With churches in her Miami-Dade County district grappling with shrinking membership and aging buildings, Calatayud thinks those institutions can do good with their unused land, by acting as anchors of new housing rather than as bystanders in neighborhood redevelopment.
“When you look at someone sitting on a small church, on a 10-acre property with a dwindling congregation, the question becomes, ‘How can this entity continue to be the beating heart of the community?’” Calatayud said in an interview.
“I think it’s to create a village, where we can create more housing and even centralize other needs in the community on that land.”
This year, Florida enacted a measure, sponsored by Calatayud, allowing multifamily residential development on land that is both owned by a religious institution and occupied by a house of worship, so long as at least 10% of the new units are affordable. Some housing advocates believe the zoning override has the potential to unlock roughly 30,000 parcels statewide.
Florida’s new law is part of a growing movement known as YIGBY — Yes in God’s Backyard. Touted by many faith leaders, lawmakers and developers, the movement imagines a connection between a religious mission to serve and the very real hurdles of building affordable housing.
If the U.S. is to meet the nation’s demand for new apartments, developers are going to need land, experts say, and parcels owned by faith-based organizations are starting to become a part of the solution for some states. At the same time, some skeptics question whether the movement could strip local communities of having a say in neighborhood development.
Places of worship are found in every corner of the United States. Land owned by faith-based organizations makes up 84 million square feet in New York City, for example, with enough land for 22,000 units on just the vacant lots and surface parking lots of those organizations, according to the Furman Center of New York University. Elsewhere, HousingForward Virginia says faith-based organizations own 74,000 acres in the state, nearly twice the size of Richmond.
California enacted what is considered the first statewide YIGBY law in 2023. It cleared the way for churches and other places of worship, as well as nonprofit universities, to create affordable housing on their land. It allows landowners to bypass public hearings, discretionary votes by city councils or planning boards, and certain environmental reviews so long as they meet affordability requirements, with at least 75% of the homes affordable for low-income households.
Several states — Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Texas — have considered YIGBY legislation this year, though none has passed. And a bill filed last month in Congress would allow rental properties to be built on currently unused church land with federal assistance.
Opponents of the Colorado bill frame it as state overreach on local zoning decisions and worry about a potential pathway for religious landowners to bypass Fair Housing Act protections for housing applicants who may not share that faith, according to a position paper opposing Colorado’s YIGBY legislation.
Beverly Stables, a lobbyist for the Colorado Municipal League, told Stateline that local governments worry YIGBY bills could undermine constitutional home-rule authority and saddle towns with unfunded state mandates.
“Our members have worked successfully with schools and churches on housing projects already,” she said. “The question is, what problem are we really trying to solve?”
The Rev. Patrick Reidy, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame who has studied the relationship between housing and faith-based organizations, says states and cities are eager to partner with faith-based organizations to use their land.
The decision to change the way church land has been used historically for decades or even centuries is not easy for a place of worship.
– The Rev. Patrick Reidy, professor of law and co-director of the University of Notre Dame’s Church Properties Initiative
It’s not an easy decision for faith leaders to switch the purpose of their land from a devoted congregation space to housing, he said.
“The decision to change the way church land has been used historically for decades or even centuries is not easy for a place of worship to make, so lawmakers should meet faith communities where they are,” said Reidy, who also is co-director of Notre Dame’s Church Properties Initiative.
“It’s more an understanding that the way places of worship approach housing is from a moral mission to serve, so things like financing, zoning and legal know-how to create housing requires some walk-through for faith-based organizations,” Reidy said.
“The real challenge is learning to speak each other’s language.”
‘Right in the middle’
Every afternoon at 3:22, members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin, pause what they are doing and pray. Whether they are working, at home, watching baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers or sitting in a temporary worship space, they pray at that exact time.
It isn’t random: “322” is the address where the German Lutheran church has stood downtown at East Washington Avenue and North Hancock Street — just a block from the state Capitol — for 170 years, the Rev. Peter Beeson said.
Congregation members no longer worship there because the site could be set for the biggest transformation in its history: trading in stained-glass windows and church pews for a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments.
Beeson told Stateline that the congregation moved out of the building in the fall of 2023 for a groundbreaking later that same year.
“Our current building was built in 1905, and was nearing the end of its useful life, with many additions and renovations over the years,” Beeson said. “And it made sense to sacrifice our existing building to build affordable housing plus worship and community space as a way of serving our mission — providing much needed affordable housing for 130 or so families, and providing a home for the congregation for the next 150 years.”
The congregation, founded in 1856 by German Lutherans, has evolved with the needs of its community.
The church hosted a men’s homeless shelter for more than 20 years, ran a drop-in center for people with mental illness and offered small-scale aid for residents seeking anything from bus tickets to steel-toed work boots to child care, Beeson said.
Before construction could get underway on the housing project, though, Beeson and the church ran into a familiar issue that constrained housing across the country in 2023 — rapidly increasing construction costs and skyrocketing interest rates.
Beeson said he isn’t deterred. Other projects have taken 10 to 15 years to break ground, he said. “So keeping that timeline in mind, we are right in the middle.”
He believes the project, which has received sizable donations from community members via GoFundMe, is a God-ordained mission to provide a service for its community.
“We are continuing to move forward with the project. There have been setbacks and challenges along the way,” Beeson said. “However, like God led the Israelites through the wilderness with a pillar of fire by day and a pillar of clouds by night, God continues to open doors and pave pathways to bring this project to completion.”
Ceding local control
The economic realities surrounding homebuilding are among many hurdles challenging congregations that want to develop new housing.
In states such as Colorado, local governments worried that a proposed statewide development measure that would give preferential treatment to faith-based organizations could undermine local control and even potentially open the door to religious discrimination.
“Not suggesting it from all entities,” said Stables, of the Colorado Municipal League, “but we were concerned about the potential for discrimination, and potential violations of Fair Housing Act requirements.”
Stables also thinks this year’s legislation was premature, just a year after Colorado lawmakers made sweeping changes to land use rules — including new laws removing parking minimums and encouraging transit-oriented developments and accessory dwelling units — that she said haven’t had time to take effect or be meaningfully implemented locally.
She also said the bill would have stripped local governments of zoning authority while offering no new resources. More than 200 municipalities opted into an affordable housing fund created through a 2022 ballot initiative, Stables said, but the legislature has been sweeping out some of that money for other budgetary needs, leaving cities under-resourced to deliver on those housing goals.
In the end, Colorado’s legislation passed the House but died in the Senate after supporters concluded it didn’t have the votes to pass.
YIGBY supporters elsewhere have had to balance the tension between state goals and local zoning authority. A 2019 Washington law requires cities and counties to offer density bonuses for affordable housing on religious land — an incentive, but not a legal override of zoning laws.
In Minnesota, state Sen. Susan Pha, a Democrat, told Stateline she modeled some aspects of her YIGBY proposal off the California law. She also tailored aspects of her bill — such as a focus on middle-housing options like small studios — to find solutions that work specifically for her state.
Pha said some of her big battles have been around the allowances of small lot sizes, such as 220-square-foot studio units, which she said the state “really needs” in order to make a dent in its housing shortage.
“The obstacle really is zoning,” Pha said. “If we can change some of those zoning requirements, we could produce more affordable housing and leverage the space and the dedicated work these faith-based organizations already do.”
Pha’s bill failed to reach a floor vote.
Other YIGBY-like policies have passed in localities including Atlanta; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Seattle. Atlanta’s program aims for the creation of at least 2,000 units of affordable housing over eight years.
When New York City passed its City of Yes housing initiative in December 2024, it permitted faith-based organizations to convert underused properties into housing by lifting zoning, height and setback requirements.
Unlocking land, a bit at a time
In an interview with Stateline, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens pointed out that some of the city’s historic churches sit on prime land with underused parking lots that at one time were filled by many of the churchgoers’ cars.
Unlike many developers who might flip properties after short-term affordability requirements expire, Dickens said, churches may offer stability, since their mission is to serve “the least, the less and the lost” — meaning they might be less likely to sell off the property due to market pressure.
Atlanta is working with financial partners such as Enterprise and Wells Fargo to guide faith-based institutions that need that help, he said.
“Churches are usually on great corners, and they’re hallmarks of the community with land that’s underutilized, and their mission aligns perfectly with affordable housing,” Dickens said. “We’ve got churches that say, ‘Teach us how to develop. We have no idea what we’re doing.’”
The potential is vast, experts say. California faith-based organizations and nonprofit colleges own about 170,000 acres of land, equivalent in size to the city of Oakland, and much of it could be developed under the state’s YIGBY law, according to a 2023 report by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.
In North Carolina, congregations have had small successes. A Presbyterian church in Charlotte turned an unused education wing into 21 units of permanent housing, and an Episcopal church in Chapel Hill built three tiny homes on its property for a trio of formerly homeless residents.
Eli Smith, the director of the nonprofit Faith-Based Housing Initiative, argues that state YIGBY laws should ease affordability requirements for small infill projects such as those in North Carolina and allow them to get built more quickly. Otherwise, he said, small churches’ projects “can’t get off the ground.”
“Think of it as a cottage neighborhood tucked behind a sanctuary — people know each other, it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful,” Smith said. “The future of this movement isn’t in [high-rise apartment] towers; it’s in small, intentional communities that fit their surroundings.”
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
