Zoning

A Chattanooga Baptist church will ground-lease its land for 53 rental cottages for seniors and families, the first project under the city’s new flexible zoning programme, with construction due in 2027.

A Chattanooga Baptist church will ground-lease its land for 53 rental cottages for seniors and families, the first project under the city’s new flexible zoning programme, with construction due in 2027.

The City of St Petersburg and the Florida Housing Coalition have begun training faith leaders to use Florida’s new Yes in God’s Backyard law, which lets places of worship bypass some zoning red tape to build affordable homes on their land.

A Maryland resort town that fined an Episcopal church $1,000 a day for sheltering homeless people in its hall has countersued, claiming the shelter has never been a permitted use under the zoning code.

A Maryland resort town that fined an Episcopal church $1,000 a day for sheltering homeless people in its hall has countersued, claiming the shelter has never been a permitted use under the zoning code.

Neighborhood Congregational Church in Laguna Beach won planning, parcel map and gap funding approvals in mid-2026 for 28 affordable apartments on its land, with rents limited for at least 55 years.

St Bartholomew’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Crown Heights, a 1974 landmark, has been listed as a development site with about 181,000 square feet of as-of-right space after a rezoning, prompting calls to protect the complex.

An Ohio church whose pastor faced 18 charges for sheltering homeless people in its building has won dismissal of the city’s lawsuit, in a fight over fire codes, zoning and religious freedom.

A Massachusetts judge has ruled that a church’s 26-bed basement homeless shelter is protected by the state’s Dover Amendment on religious land use, defeating a lawsuit brought by two neighbours.

NYU’s Housing Solutions Lab set out how governments can help churches build homes through zoning reform, faster approvals and development support, citing Atlanta’s 2,000-home goal and Nashville’s faith development institute.

In 2025 Queensland released an opt-in Model Code, co-designed with 14 councils, to make it easier to build community housing on church and charity-owned land, a move welcomed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

Residents of Harare’s Borrowdale suburb who won a High Court order halting a United Methodist church project on a residential stand accused a council planning official of issuing a temporary permit that let work continue.

The City of Mutare issued a demolition order against a ZAOGA church building in Dangamvura, saying it was put up on public open space without planning approval, sanitation, water or sewerage and using substandard materials.

In “Churching NIMBYs”, published in the Yale Law Journal, Notre Dame’s Patrick Reidy argues that faith communities blocked by neighbours’ zoning objections can invoke religious liberty protections to build affordable housing on church land.

A former Wesleyan chapel in Stoford, empty since 1984, is on sale for £170,000 with full planning consent to become a one-bedroom home, though it sits in a conservation area and a flood zone.