A small-town church in North Carolina has secured a conditional rezoning for a 30-acre campus expansion that includes transitional housing, vocational classrooms and 12 single-family homes, without state law requiring it.
Across the country, lawmakers are moving to make such deals easier, faster and more common, and at least one city has already shown what implementation would look like in practice.
The “Yes in God’s Backyard” movement, known as YIGBY, is rapidly growing across the country, with California, Florida and Virginia passing laws allowing faith-based organizations to build homes on land they own, and more than a dozen states considering similar legislation.
A federal bill introduced in January by Reps. Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., and Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, would layer grants and technical assistance on top of state-level progress. The question for real estate professionals is no longer whether faith-based land will join the housing pipeline. How do you deal with it when it happens?
the land is there
Faith-based organizations own more than 84 million square feet of land in New York City alone, according to a 2025 policy brief by the New York University Furman Center. Of that, about 5.5 million square feet will consist of open space and surface parking, enough space to support about 22,000 homes, the preliminary documents found.
Nationwide, faith communities collectively own more than 2.6 million acres of land, much of which is underutilized and could support as many as 800,000 new homes, according to Realtor.com.
California enacted what is believed to be the first statewide YIGBY law in 2023, allowing faith-based institutions and nonprofit universities to build affordable apartment complexes on their land by streamlining permitting and overriding local zoning regulations. The law requires 100 percent of housing to be affordable to low-income households, and allows up to 20 percent for moderate-income households, according to the Furman Center.
Florida also passed Senate Bill 1730 in 2025, which would give local governments the power to approve affordable housing on eligible land owned by religious institutions, even if the land is not currently designated for residential use, according to Stateline. Now, one Florida city is trying to implement this law.
The city of St. Petersburg officially launched its YIGBY program on Tuesday, according to Patch. It became the first local government in Florida to adopt the provision into city ordinance after City Council members unanimously approved it in December, according to Patch. The city’s Office of Community Impact will lead the effort, and the Florida Housing Coalition will serve as technical assistance consultant.
The program provides education and one-on-one support for congregations, including assessing site feasibility, navigating the city’s review process, and accessing funding sources such as the state’s predevelopment loan program.
Virginia’s Housing Faith Act passed both chambers of the Legislature earlier this year and was signed into law by Governor Abigail Spanberger in April. The law eliminates rezoning requirements for faith-based organizations and nonprofits to build affordable housing on their property, with an effective date of January 1, 2027.
The St. Pete launch in particular comes as advocates are closely watching whether the YIGBY Act will produce actual housing at scale. According to CalMatters, a report released in February 2025 by pro-development nonprofit YIMBY Law evaluated five California housing rationalization laws passed since 2021 (including the state’s YIGBY law, SB 4) and found that no projects had taken advantage of this new option at the time of the report’s release.
The report cites affordability mandates, labor demands, and local government resistance as causes for initial inefficiencies. Zoning reform opens the door, but whether anything gets built depends on funding, technology, and politics.
what it looks like on the ground
In Mint Hill, North Carolina, a small town southeast of Charlotte, Shiloh True Light Church did not wait for state law to pass. Mike McGee, the congregation’s longtime pastor, filed petition ZC25-5 last year seeking conditional zoning to expand the church’s 150-acre campus.
The expansion includes dormitories, classrooms, a family life center and 12 single-family residential lots, the last of which could eventually be developed as cottages similar to nearby church-owned homes currently housing Ukrainian refugees, McGee noted at the hearing.
The project aims to be a transitional housing program for homeless individuals and their families, and is structured around job training and a drug-free environment. McGee cited Greenville Tabernacle Church’s partner program and local ministry One7 in South Carolina as models the church has studied.
This admission drew support and backlash. Sidney Newell, executive director of One7 Ministries, told the board that the need for transitional housing is too great to be addressed by a single facility and fully supports the project. Jim Ford, vice president of the nearby neighborhood association, argued that the density and type of use conflicted with the town’s half-acre site standards and asked whether the board wanted a large-scale housing project in the rural area.
The board approved the petition.
What agents need to know
Ana Granger, a broker with First Choice Properties in Mint Hill, said faith-based developments can have a local impact on similar properties and inventory in the surrounding area.
“Such projects can change the highest and best-used traffic signals on nearby land, add new supply types to the immediate area, and impact purchaser perceptions of traffic, use intensity, and neighborhood character,” Granger said.
He said ownership and transaction complexities arise more often than in standard housing transactions when a religious organization is the landlord or developer. Agents need to be aware of questions about conveyance authority, deed restrictions, easements and access rights, and surveying and boundary issues, she said.
“As church-campus and faith-based mixed-use developments become more common, agents should treat these transactions more like small institution-developer partnerships than standard residential properties,” Granger said.
Regarding the question of whether such project units should be open to the public rather than reserved for members of a congregation, Granger said the distinction is important both practically and politically.
“Ideally, these units should be open to the public to provide affordable housing opportunities for everyone,” she said. “Neighbors may be concerned that the project is intended for church interior use rather than community benefit, which could lead to increased opposition and scrutiny at rezoning hearings.”
From a market perspective, Granger said faith-based housing alone is unlikely to significantly change a market like Mint Hill. “I don’t think that’s a big factor for Mint Hill,” she says. But multiple projects pursued by different congregations can change the character of an area over time, she added.
For buyer clients in areas where projects are being proposed or approved, the priority is to frame development as a known, quantifiable factor rather than an undefined threat, and to help clients decide whether it is a benefit or a disadvantage to their particular situation, Granger said.
Mint Hill’s approval points to a path that doesn’t rely on state law. Faith-based land use victories are being secured through local conditional zoning processes that pave the way for housing lots. Whether you generate salable inventory in 5 years or 10 years depends on your timeline. But the zoning is already done.
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