Originally published by The Economist: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/08/08/can-churches-fix-americas-affordable-housing-crunch.

The puritans who founded America’s divinity schools could not have imagined that they might need a course on property negotiation. But these days, in addition to counselling the dying and giving sermons on Sundays, some pastors are at the forefront of a new housing project. Churches across the country are working with non-profit groups to convert their under-used land into affordable flats. Riffing off the anti-development slogan “Not in my backyard” (NIMBY), they are advocating something cheerier: “Yes in God’s backyard” (YIGBY).

The movement is the result of two trends colliding: a worsening housing crunch and the hollowing-out of places of worship. In the past decade house prices rose by 42%, mortgage rates nearly doubled and, as cities filled up, restrictive zoning laws prevented new building, leaving the country with a deficit of up to 7m homes of the sort that ordinary folk can afford. Meanwhile the share of Americans who attend church weekly fell from 31% to 24%, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, a pollster. Covid-19 left pews emptier and many churches had to close. YIGBY-proponents, like David Bowers of Enterprise Community Partners, a housing charity, reckon that provides an opportunity to repurpose the properties. “We call it radical common sense,” he says.

Building flats on godly land has its perks. Churches tend to be in the heart of neighbourhoods that people want to live in, where land is priciest. And their leaders, more charity-minded than typical developers, are often willing to rent out space at below-market rates. Sometimes plots are already zoned for residential use, which lets builders bypass planning constraints. Where they are not, carve-outs are being arranged in some cases. Two states, California and Washington, have passed laws allowing faith-based groups to override local restrictions; New York recently introduced one, too.

The Church of God In Christ (COGIC), a black denomination and one of America’s biggest, is unusually well-suited for the YIGBY mission—and is the first to do it on a large scale. Born out of the Los Angeles revivals of the early 20th century, the church brought Pentecostalism to the South and fought for the economic mobility of its parishioners. During a sanitation workers’ strike in 1968, Martin Luther King gave his last speech at COGIC’s headquarters in Memphis. “The American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world,” he said. “That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.”

Today COGIC has 6.5m congregants and 12,000 churches across America—and it is pooling its power for good. A survey run by church leaders found that the denomination owns at least 21,000 acres of latent land across 222 cities, equivalent to about half the footprint of Washington, DC. In suburbs they identified empty parking lots; in cities vacant terrace housing. Last November they joined up with Enterprise to start building 18,000 new flats for 37,000 people.

Building is already under way at Refreshing Spring in Riverdale, Maryland. On a recent Sunday worshippers convulsed and hollered as the spirit overtook them in the pews. Across the street, meanwhile, a ten-acre forest is quiet as can be. The church has leased the land there to a developer for nearly $1m and plans to build 250 flats for local poor people and asylum-seekers. “This is part of the strategy to continue to give Refreshing Spring a financial foothold for several years,” says Lisa McDougal, a church employee. The assistant pastor, a former intelligence analyst who sports sunglasses in the sanctuary, has become the congregation’s real-estate guru.

Other communities see dire need among their own. In Southaven, Mississippi, a pregnant church-member fell through the floor of her second-storey flat last year. More than 2,000 units surrounding the Tabernacle, the local COGIC church, ought to be condemned, but remain occupied because residents have nowhere else to go. The church is now developing 18 acres of bare land into homes.

Yellin’ a YIGBY

The promise of this model seems extraordinary. However, housing experts say it will not answer all their prayers. One of the biggest constraints to developing affordable housing is the lack of funds to do so—a flat in California, for example, can cost $1m to build.

Federal, state and local governments offer tax credits, which lower what banks owe if they finance projects, but the waiting lists to participate in those programmes are long. (And a bill to increase funding for the federal scheme was blocked by Senate Republicans this month.) If churches are to make proper use of their assets they will need more cash. In Michigan COGIC identified 60 congregations with substantial landholdings that they cannot afford to build on.

Nonetheless Derric Scott, a developer and church elder, reckons their projects will have a catalytic effect. In March Ohio’s senior senator introduced a bill to give $375m for technical assistance to congregations and local governments keen on YIGBY. Buy-in from cities is the next step. There, too, COGIC may have an edge. Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, and Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, were both brought up in the church.■

©The Economist Newspaper Limited, London, 2024, originally published at https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/08/08/can-churches-fix-americas-affordable-housing-crunch