Churches, synagogues, and mosques own millions of acres of land across the US, but are usually barred from building any housing on their property. Over the last few years, that’s started to change, and on Friday, congressional lawmakers are introducing a bill to exempt houses of worship from restrictive local zoning laws so they can build affordable homes.
The bipartisan Faith in Housing Act would override local housing rules, relying on Congress’s authority over interstate commerce and a federal statute that prevents local governments from unfairly limiting how religious groups can use their land. The bill, sponsored by Reps. Scott Peters (D-CA) and Chuck Edwards (R-NC), would require any new housing built to serve low-income families on average, though individual units could be priced for moderate-income households earning up to 140 percent of the local median income. Up to 5 percent of the homes could be reserved for staff and clergy, but all other units must be made available to anyone regardless of their religious beliefs.
“It’s not going to generate hundreds of thousands of units, but it’s going to make the right statement,” Peters told me. “I think there’s always a concern about local control — something the left sometimes describes as ‘community input’ and sometimes on the right as ‘states’ rights’— but what we found is there’s a lot of places that are challenged to provide homes in both red and blue areas, and we hope to find common ground around our values.”
The Faith in Housing Act is part of a growing national movement known as “Yes in God’s Backyard” or “YIGBY” that seeks to take advantage of two worsening trends: the country’s growing shortage of affordable homes and the surplus of religious institutions grappling with rising costs and declining memberships. Many faith leaders recognize the win-win potential of YIGBY — by helping to house the homeless and other vulnerable populations, they can better serve their religious mandates, while also developing new sources of income to stabilize their finances.
The YIGBY movement got its start in San Diego, where advocates focused on ending homelessness worked with lawmakers in 2019 to make it easier for churches to build housing without first getting approval from local planning boards. In 2023, California’s legislature approved the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, taking San Diego’s concept statewide, and streamlining approvals so housing on church property could no longer be blocked by zoning or environmental objections. The Terner Center at UC Berkeley estimated that more than 47,00 acres of land owned by faith-based organizations across California could potentially be developed into affordable housing.
Building on this momentum, last year, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced the Yes in God’s Backyard Act in Congress to provide technical assistance and grants to religious institutions and local governments interested in the idea. Brown lost his reelection bid, but that federal bill was reintroduced earlier this month, with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) now at its helm.
And at least half a dozen states introduced their own YIGBY bills this year, though most saw less success than they’d hoped, mostly due to local governments balking at the idea of states preempting their zoning authority.
In Texas, despite strong support from faith-based groups, including the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, their YIGBY bill became associated with a separate fight in North Texas over a Muslim community’s plan to develop new housing. Conservative Republicans and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott disavowed the project and accused its backers of promoting Sharia law. The backlash brought down the YIGBY bill along with it.
Felicity Maxwell, the executive director of Texans for Housing, was frustrated at the outcome of her state’s YIGBY bill. She’s encouraged by the new federal legislation to preempt local zoning and says that national-level attention could be what they need to get resistant states like hers to take action.
“Federal preemption is a big deal, so maybe the states then say, ‘Oh, we don’t want the feds to get involved and we’ll figure that out ourselves locally,’” she told me. “Just putting pressure on states is important.”
States’ rocky YIGBY efforts in 2025
Advocates went into the 2025 legislative session feeling relatively optimistic. The case for affordable housing has only gotten stronger and more urgent, and the YIGBY advocacy coalitions were bigger and more diverse than they had been in previous cycles.
Florida saw the most success this year, with lawmakers passing a bill that gives cities and counties the authority to approve affordable housing on certain land owned by religious institutions. Their win, however, was significantly watered down from their original goal: a statewide mandate to allow religious institutions to build on any property that they own.
Faced with fierce pushback from local governments worried about losing control, the Florida legislature compromised by allowing localities to either approve projects on a case-by-case basis or establish new citywide rules to allow it. Lawmakers also limited the kind of land that housing could be built on, granting authority only to property that has a house of worship on it or next to it, excluding other parcels of land owned by religious institutions.
“That was the biggest limiting factor,” said Kody Glazer, the chief legal and policy officer for the Florida Housing Coalition. Still, if every local government in Florida agreed to allow churches and temples to build housing on eligible land — a big “if” given the politics of zoning reform — advocates say about 30,000 parcels of land could be unlocked for building.
Glazer is optimistic about the law but anticipates it will take time to educate and inform localities about this new option. The Florida Housing Coalition is currently providing free technical assistance to local governments and helping localities develop best practices, particularly to prevent potential religious discrimination. Miami is set to be the first jurisdiction in the state to approve a city-wide YIGBY policy this fall.
Most other states failed to achieve even a watered-down success.
Texas’s effort failed due to opposition to the Muslim housing development, and though Maxwell, of Texans for Housing, thinks YIGBY could be reintroduced next year, she told me she’s doubtful of its prospects as long as it’s embroiled in such culture war fights. “Until that rhetoric changes, it just makes it very difficult,” she told me.
A YIGBY effort failed for its second time in New York this year, despite the legislation being backed by a large, statewide coalition of faith leaders. Advocates couldn’t overcome the fierce stigma of any state preemption of zoning rules, and the political backlash to New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul trying to override local zoning in 2023 still hung in the air. “People in Long Island are still shouting, ‘We want local control, not Hochul control,” one New York housing activist told me.
Colorado’s YIGBY effort also failed this year due to opposition from local governments, a blow to Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who had designated YIGBY as a top priority for his administration. The state’s YIGBY bill passed the House but failed in the Senate, with a trade group representing town and city governments arguing that requiring cities to allow churches to build housing would “creat[e] a special privileged class of property owners” and “infring[e] on constitutional rule authority to regulate zoning, a matter of local concern.”
Advocates also in Virginia failed this year for similar reasons, but they feel more confident of their chances in 2026, not only to pass a YIGBY bill, but to pass a statewide mandate that looks more like California’s rather than Florida’s.
“The strongest opposition is pushback about local control, but I am optimistic that we have done the legwork to get a strong version of YIGBY passed in this next session,” Jessica Sarriot, the co-executive director of Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement, told me. Sarriot said they’ve since trained over 230 volunteers, had over 45 meetings with lawmakers, and have identified state senators who are willing to push for their bill next year. Next month, organizers and lawmakers are gathering for a Sunday rally in Northern Virginia to call for YIGBY legislation.
How California’s YIGBY law is going, about two years in
California’s YIGBY law — also known as SB 4 — took effect at the start of 2024, but the state does not yet have good data on how it’s been working in practice.
Supporters point to some bright spots of the legislation’s impact. For more than three years, the Bethel Presbyterian Community Church in San Leandro had been trying unsuccessfully to clear the local permitting process for authority to build five tiny homes on property the church owned. After SB 4 passed, the leaders were able to get their project approved within two months.
Vox reached out to the office of state Sen. Scott Weiner, the lead sponsor of SB 4, to ask how they think the law is working. Erik Mebust, a spokesperson for Weiner, said that while there’s “still a ton of interest” in the YIGBY projects, “there’s definitely been a lot of challenges.”
It can be hard for smaller churches to get their finances together, and many of the groups that might have been able to provide philanthropic support for these projects are currently facing pushback from the Trump administration, which is taking a broad aim at grants tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Plus, there are only a limited number of housing developers willing to work on these types of smaller projects.
Taryn Sandulyak, a California-based housing developer who specializes in these church housing efforts, told me she gets more calls of interest than her company can take, but she doesn’t know many other developers willing to do these kinds of small parcel developments.
“Generally, the standard developers want is 50, 75, or 100 units, and while there is so much church land, not all of that is big swaths of land,” she said. “Foundations also want to support bigger projects, so there’s not enough funding for projects like this.”
Sandulyak, however, is optimistic about the potential of YIGBY. Her five-year-old firm has already finished 150 units in partnership with various churches in California, and she noted many mainstream developers take a decade or more to build that many units.
“I think small sites really are a thing that we’re not leveraging enough to end homelessness,” she said.
Peters, the California Congress member sponsoring the new Faith in Housing Act, knows his bill might spark pushback from people concerned about losing local control, but said he believes it’s important to make a clear statement about what people ought to do for those who need homes.
“In my faith tradition, we remember that Jesus fed the hungry and housed the homeless, and consistent with the mission of churches and synagogues and other religious institutions, this is a way for the faith community to demonstrate their values,” he said. “This is what we value, this is what’s important.”
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