Circus in the Nave, Housing Next Door? A Montreal Professor Compares How Two Cities Handle Closing Churches

• A Forbes contributor compared how Montreal and Dallas treat closing churches
• Montreal often repurposes churches creatively, including for circus performances
• About 10,000 Canadian churches are expected to close within a decade
• Releven’s SPREIIT investment programme aims to unlock faith land for housing

Montreal and Dallas offer contrasting lessons on what to do with churches, a McGill professor argued in Forbes in April 2026.

Karl Moore, a Forbes contributor and professor at McGill’s Desautels Faculty, wrote that Montreal tends to treat religious buildings as relics to be creatively repurposed, including as circus venues, while Dallas keeps many active churches but struggles to fit them into urban planning. Both cities, he argued, face housing pressures while overlooking a significant asset in faith-owned land.

The piece cited forecasts that about 10,000 Canadian churches could close within a decade, and that nearly a third of Canada’s 27,000 faith buildings are at risk. More than 10,000 churches serve the Dallas metro area. It pointed to Releven’s SPREIIT, a Social Purpose Real Estate Impact Investing Trust, and a July 2024 pilot involving Trinity Church and the Nonprofit Finance Fund.

Graham Singh, chief executive of Releven, was quoted on Montreal’s approach: “There is a clear public narrative that faith communities have zero welcome in solving public problems.”

The article’s central argument is that financial tools and institutional commitment could unlock faith land for housing and community uses at scale. For Jamaica, where churches remain central to public life and own land across the island, both lessons apply: keep churches involved in solving public problems, and develop investment vehicles that let them put their land to work. Diaspora investors could play a role in funds that finance housing on church land.