City explores 'Yes In God's Backyard' partnerships with faith communities to unlock sites for affordable housing
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Summary
Staff presented two workstreams—Simpara consulting outreach and a Bloomberg‑Harvard fellowship—to evaluate faith properties for affordable housing; Simpara found 27 candidate congregations (13 interested) and estimated roughly 400 acres of potential excess land, recommending city convening, education and a small predevelopment fund.
City housing staff described an exploratory program commonly called 'YES In God's Backyard' (YIGBY) that seeks to partner with faith communities to identify underused religious properties that could support affordable housing development.
Staff said consultants Simpara scored faith properties using LIHTC site criteria and identified 27 congregations with high scores; 13 of those congregations agreed to interviews and many showed interest in developing housing if supported. Simpara’s high‑level mapping flagged roughly 400 acres of land that faith communities may consider excess or repurposeable, but staff emphasized each site requires a site‑by‑site feasibility analysis (zoning, topography, utilities, historic structures).
The department recommended roles for the city as convener and educator—organizing peer‑learning visits, Q&A sessions, and web resources including a 'journey map' for congregations—and proposed a small predevelopment fund (staff cited a $500,000 example) to underwrite survey, soils and other early studies for a handful of projects.
Councilmembers raised concerns about keeping separation between government and houses of worship; staff said any city support would be gap financing for housing projects (similar to other nonprofit or for‑profit projects) rather than direct grants to congregations and noted developers often work with churches via sale, ground lease, or nonprofit subsidiaries.
Staff also noted the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative workstream, which is using GIS site assessment to flag parcels and produce a toolkit (journey map, discernment tool, and roles/responsibilities guide) to help congregations ask the right questions and evaluate developer proposals.
