Bay Area churches are building housing in God’s backyard

To help solve the Bay Area's housing crisis, local churches are doing something they've never done before: they're building new homes.

There’s a new acronym floating in the alphabet soup of California housing parlance: YIGBY, or “yes in God’s backyard.”

Congregations in the Bay Area and beyond are taking steps to build affordable housing on their properties to shelter some of the many local residents who can’t pay the region’s sky-high rents. Housing advocates and religious leaders hope the movement for faith-built housing — christened “YIGBY” by a group in San Diego as a play on “not in my backyard,” or “NIMBY” — will open up new properties for development and pad the Bay Area’s depleted housing stock with hundreds of new units.

Playing developer can be daunting for a congregation that has no experience navigating the lengthy permitting processes or the backlash that can come from neighbors. But for many, it seemed like the obvious, and godly, way to help those struggling with homelessness or unstable housing situations.

“We just knew we had to do something, and this was something we could do,” said Donna Colombo, executive director of the Trinity Center, the nonprofit connected with St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Walnut Creek. “We could build housing for people who have nothing.”

St. Paul’s is wrapping up construction of 44 affordable apartments on its property and plans to start moving residents in as early as November. The apartment building is going up next door to the church, replacing two structures the congregation formerly used to provide day-time services to the homeless. Half of the apartments will be for renters with Section 8 vouchers, and all will have varying income caps. Most will be for renters making between about $26,000 and $35,000 a year — equal to 30 to 40 percent of the area median income for a single-person household. Renters will pay between $759 and $1,302 a month, or one-third of their income.

St. Paul’s leased its land to developer Resources for Community Development, rather than selling it, so the church could retain some control over the project. The apartment building, dubbed St. Paul’s Commons, cost about $23 million to build and was funded through a combination of city, county and federal dollars, as well as private loans. It already has received more than 5,000 applications.

Experts say places of worship can make ideal sites for affordable housing. Many congregations have owned their land for decades and now are sitting on large properties worth a small fortune. At the same time, some congregations are shrinking as high housing prices force members to move to cheaper areas. The result is chunks of prime but under-utilized real estate — half-empty sanctuaries, vacant auxiliary buildings and barely-used parking lots.

Faced with that realization, East Palo Alto city leaders convened a meeting of local churches in October to discuss turning some of their under-used land into housing. Of the 80 churches in the city, about 35 sent representatives, said Patrick Heisinger, the city’s community development director. Now two of those congregations are in talks with developers.

“We’re really working hard to stop the hemorrhaging of gentrification in East Palo Alto,” he said. “So if there’s a way to preserve churches … as well as building more affordable housing for folks in our community to live, I feel like it’s a win-win.”

To make sure a deal really is a win for the congregation, many religious leaders are turning to developer and real estate consultant Landis Graden with Dublin-based DCG Strategies. Graden specializes in helping congregations downsize or find new sanctuaries. But over the past few years, more Bay Area congregations have come to him with the idea of building housing. He’s now working with four on residential development plans — including a Methodist Church in San Jose that wants to build a seven- or eight-story apartment building on its property — and is in early discussions with five or six more.

“We’re really, really busy,” Graden said.

Not all church property can easily be turned into housing, said Kathleen Piraino, executive director of The Episcopal Impact Fund, which worked with St. Paul’s on its housing project. Their lots might not be zoned for residential development — or zoned only for a few homes — which means the congregation would need to appeal to city officials to change the property’s designation.

“It’s rare to have the combination of the church being excited and saying this is their mission, and have the property be suitable,” Piraino said. “We had a number of congregations that were really excited and then got the word from DCG that nothing probably was feasible there.”

Affordable housing development can be fraught, as it is challenging to fund, can be tough to get approved and often prompts a backlash from neighbors. But doing it on church land can be especially difficult because it’s an idea people aren’t used to — and navigating a church’s hierarchy to get the proper approval from the top often is complicated. It took Colombo two and a half years to convince her congregation that they should build housing on St. Paul’s property. And then they had to get the Episcopal Diocese of California to sign off on the plans.

Local ordinances also must be considered. Clairemont Lutheran Church in San Diego has been trying for years to build housing on its parking lot but has run into roadblocks, including a rule that dictates how much parking space a church must have per pew.

State Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, hopes to tackle that issue next year, possibly by introducing a bill that would loosen parking requirements for religious organizations.

“We have all these willing participants who want to build this housing,” she said. “We have to figure out a way to do it.”

Other churches are taking advantage of existing laws designed to streamline housing production. All Souls Episcopal Parish in Berkeley faced backlash from a handful of neighbors when it proposed tearing down an apartment building it owns next to its church and replacing it with 35 affordable studio apartments for seniors. So All Souls invoked SB 35,  a state law passed in 2017 to allow for certain residential projects to move more quickly. The congregation plans to break ground early next year on the $25 million project. So far, the congregation has received $6 million from the city and $5 million from the county and hopes to find the rest from federal tax credits and state funds.

Meanwhile, the nondenominational Friendship Christian Center in West Oakland plans to raze its church and build a new one side-by-side with 50 affordable apartments for seniors. The congregation got approval earlier this year — after three years of working with the city — and plans to break ground in January.

“We felt that we didn’t need a lightning bolt from heaven to let us know what the direction should be,” said Senior Pastor Gerald Agee. “We have to be creative in these times.”