Fast Company: The hidden place that cities could build more housing

A nonprofit called YIGBY (‘Yes in God’s Backyard’) wants to convert unused church land into affordable housing. A new California law will make it even easier.

The following is excerpted from Fast Company.

On a drive to work in San Diego a few years ago, Harvey Vaughn, the pastor at Bethel African Methodist Church, listened to a story on the radio about the city’s massive housing shortage. Thousands of new units needed to be built each year just to keep up. Meanwhile, the homelessness crisis was growing.

Vaughn started thinking about the church’s own property—and how it could potentially be repurposed for housing. “I went to my congregation and said, ‘We need to be a part of the solution. We can help solve this. We can’t house everyone, but we can house some people,’” he says.

This month, [Bethel African Methodist Church of San Diego] broke ground on a 26-unit apartment building that will provide permanent supportive housing for veterans and seniors. The project is one of the first of its kind in California. But many more are likely to follow, thanks to a new state law designed to make it easier for religious institutions and nonprofit colleges to turn extra space into low-income housing.

Until now, zoning has been a challenge. Bethel AME happened to have a duplex on its land, so it was already zoned for housing; all it needed were building permits to take the old building down and start construction. But most other churches faced more complex permitting issues until the law changed.

“One of the biggest barriers for these types of projects is the discretionary review that would be required for a rezone or a change of use,” says architect Matthew Winter, a director at LPA Design Studios, who led the design of the new building, called Bethel One. “Once you get into that world, you’re adding a significant amount of time and up-front cost on professional services and development fees. Those usually stop projects from happening before they even get out of the gate.”

The new law will streamline permitting and, ideally, significantly decrease those costs, making projects feasible that wouldn’t have been before.

For several years, Winter has been working with a nonprofit called YIGBY—“Yes in God’s Backyard,” a play on NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”). He’s met with around a dozen religious organizations in the area that were interested in building housing. Around San Diego County, he says, there are thousands of acres of land that could potentially be used. The University of California, Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation has estimated that statewide more than 170,000 acres of religious or educational land could theoretically be repurposed for housing.

Read the full article in Fast Company.