What happens when neighbors object to your congregation’s building plans?

The conflict surrounding Glencliff United Methodist Church’s plans for affordable housing started before there was ever a vote, or even a discussion.

The pastor of the Nashville, Tennessee, church had mailed a letter of inquiry asking members their thoughts about a proposal she had received from a nonprofit. The idea was to build tiny homes on church land to give unhoused people discharged from the hospital a place to rest.

A member of the church received the letter and left it lying on a coffee table. His stepdaughter, who was visiting, photographed it and posted it to Facebook.

That was all it took. The neighborhood around Glencliff United Methodist Church rose up and organized to oppose the project. They marched on the church grounds carrying “No! Tiny Homes” posters. They accused church members of inviting criminals, drug addicts and rapists into the neighborhood. Ultimately, they sued.

This church of 50 members sitting on six acres of land soon became a hotbed of contention.

“It was intense,” said the Rev. Ingrid McIntyre, the church’s pastor. “People were mean. I got spit on.”

Faith communities, burdened with declining membership and diminishing resources, are finding new uses for their underutilized property in the form of affordable housing projects. But they often face strong headwinds in the process: financial hurdles, land use restrictions and, foremost, conflict with the wider community. Those conflicts typically take the form of neighbors who seek to thwart churches from introducing low-income housing — a phenomenon sometimes known as NIMBYism: “not in my backyard.”

These conflicts can, and sometimes do, defeat affordable housing development projects.

Nationally, there is a shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes for an estimated 11 million low-income families, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Many congregations are finding new purpose and meaning in helping mitigate the problem, especially as they look for solutions that might also benefit their own long-term financial stability.

A Rutgers University analysis of 200 affordable housing developments and shelters built on religious property found that congregations contributed to the construction of nearly 10,000 new units of housing and more than 120 shelter spaces between 2015 and 2025. Researcher Nadia Mian said there could be double that amount nationwide, and she is continuing to build a database.

Dozens of property development organizations have cropped up to help congregations of all faiths consider their property assets and help find solutions to the housing crisis. While some congregations sell or lease parts of their land to developers at market rates, others decide to develop property themselves. They see it as part of loving their neighbors.

Affordable housing projects on church land take on average five years from conception to completion. Almost all will involve some kind of conflict.

“There will always be somebody who says, ‘You’re changing who the church is. You can’t do that,’” said Joel Gilland, president and CEO of Wesley Community Development, a North Carolina-based nonprofit real estate organization that manages unused property for three United Methodist conferences, or regions.

But the biggest advocates for affordable housing on faith properties often turn out to be the church leaders who undertake those projects.

“Our job as faith leaders cannot be to just say, ‘OK. Then we won’t do the hard thing,’” McIntyre said. “It’s not easy. But we cannot back down.”

What’s your vision?

Faith leaders and experts in church property development say there is no magic fix to make conflict go away. But there are steps to manage and mitigate it.

The first and perhaps most important step is for congregation members to agree on a vision of their mission in the community.

“We tell congregations, ‘Don’t start with the question, How do we begin a housing project? Start with, What do we see our mission being in this community?’” said the Rev. Dr. Reginald Blount, co-founder and executive director of the Oikos Institute for Social Impact, a Chicago-based organization that helps guide congregations to harness their assets for social change.

Many congregations, especially those that have moved to the suburbs, have become inward-focused. They are unaware or uninvolved in the needs and concerns of the wider neighborhood.

If those congregations want to repurpose their property for affordable housing, they need to figure out the needs in the larger community and which ones the congregation feels called to address, Blount said.

Does the community need senior housing to prevent retired people from moving away?

Does it need workforce housing for first-time homeowners — teachers, healthcare workers, police officers, retail workers?

Does it need transitional housing for people coming out of homelessness, or shelters for people living on the streets?

Which population does the congregation feel most called to help?

The deeper a congregation’s ties to its community, the better its relationships will be with key stakeholders, who will already know and trust its members.

When Daniel Pryfogle works with congregations to help them reimagine their spaces, he first looks for clues that the church has social capital — high-trust ties with neighborhood associations, businesses and social service groups.

“When it comes time to appear before the planning commission with a zoning change or plans for a development, those congregations are going to need neighbors to stand up and speak on behalf of these projects,” said Pryfogle, co-founder and CEO of Sympara, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that helps religious congregations reimagine underutilized properties for the betterment of the community.

Community stakeholders, Pryfogle said, should be brought into the conversation early on so they can offer input and guidance.

“We want to see houses built on faith properties in underutilized spaces,” he said. “But what excites us most is the possibility of a new kind of spiritual community being created with neighbors — not for neighbors but with neighbors.”

Fear of change fuels opposition

Affordable housing experts say there’s no perfect time to begin holding community meetings. But generally those conversations should begin before the congregation draws up a plan or files for zoning changes.

Some recommend holding a “charette” or collaborative workshop where architects, church members and community members work together, often over a series of days, to create a workable plan.

Still, even congregations with good community ties will likely face some local opposition.

The neighbors may have legitimate concerns. The working-class neighbors living around Glencliff United Methodist Church, for example, were afraid the value of their homes would fall and crime in the neighborhood would increase if tiny homes for unhoused people needing medical respite were built around the church.

“It really felt like it was a neighborhood of those who probably struggled themselves,” said the Rev. N. Neelley Hicks, who serves the church as a deacon. “The fear of having homeless people fueled the fire.”

But in many cases, it’s simply change itself that’s hard to adjust to.

People struggle with change, and their first instinct may be to resist it, said Mark Elsdon, a an expert on faith-based property development who lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

“I’ve never heard of a project in the church — or outside of the church, for that matter — that hasn’t had someone complaining about it from the neighborhood,” said Elsdon, co-founder and co-CEO of RootedGood and co-founder and co-principal at Threshold Sacred Development.

Elsdon remembers working with two churches that had merged. They were no longer able to maintain both properties, but some neighbors opposed redevelopment.

“I essentially framed it for the neighbors as a choice,” Elsdon said. “Either this is a development, or it’s an empty building with a fence around it, collecting trash and trouble. Which of those do you want?”

YIGBY, not NIMBY

Increasingly, many municipalities are siding with religious congregations and helping them undertake reuse projects as a way of encouraging more affordable housing. Cities across the nation have created housing initiatives that give faith-based organizations tools and resources to carry out affordable housing projects.

Community foundations are also investing in affordable housing on church land. North Carolina’s Triangle Community Foundation, for example, is offering congregations the opportunity to apply for grants of up to $25,000 to help them envision affordable housing projects on their property. The money can be used for technical assistance, site feasibility studies or initial financial modeling.

State legislatures have enacted laws that allow religious organizations to build affordable housing on their land with provisions to bypass difficult zoning hurdles. To date, eight states have enacted so-called YIGBY laws (yes in God’s backyard); three more are pending.

Reuse experts say that’s a sign of the times. “People are understanding that the trajectory we are on is not sustainable — that we have to make thoughtful, reasonable adjustments,” Gilland said.

Lawyers and policy analysts are also calling attention to free-exercise protections that faith communities can use to challenge land-use restrictions. Those include the First Amendment and the Religious Land Uses and Institutionalized Persons Act, known as RLUIPA, a federal law passed in 2000.

RLUIPA prevents local and state governments from using zoning laws to unfairly burden religious groups. It was the basis of Glencliff United Methodist Church’s defense in challenging the lawsuit filed by neighbors in 2017.

The neighbors had argued the tiny home project should be subject to city zoning laws. But the state appellate court and later the state Supreme Court agreed that the project qualifies for a “reasonable accommodation” based on RLUIPA because it would fulfill the church’s religiously motivated desire to help people who were homeless.

‘Let’s do the faithful thing’

In the fall of 2021, five years after the project was first considered, the Village at Glencliff opened with 12 tiny homes of between 200 and 440 square feet each. The brightly colored homes are set in a semicircle around a garden and community space. Its residents are people released from the hospital with nowhere else to recover.

The village is run by a nonprofit that rents office space on a level below the sanctuary. It raised the money to build the tiny homes and is responsible for their maintenance and upkeep. The nonprofit selects the residents and provides them with food, clothing and transportation to doctor’s visits. Critically, it works to find permanent housing for the residents once they are well enough to live on their own.

Volunteers from Glencliff and other area churches help residents move in and out and tend to the garden.

“It’s been beautiful,” McIntyre said. “It feels like no matter what is happening in the church, we’re being church.”

McIntyre said she recently ran into one of the neighbors who was a part of the lawsuit against the church. The neighbor apologized for all the trouble.

“This is the most Christian thing I’ve ever seen,” the woman told McIntyre.

Despite the arduous and contentious process to develop the site, McIntyre said she would do it again.

“I get the pain,” she said. “I’m not saying that it’s not a really hard struggle.” But she added: “There is little in this world that we control, but we do have a lot of land that is owned by people of faith, and so let’s do the faithful thing with it, and let’s fight the hard fight.”