Zoning

An Arizona House committee advanced a bill letting religious institutions build affordable housing on their land despite local zoning, with at least 40 per cent of units for low-income families.

Silver Spring United Methodist Church in Maryland revised its affordable housing plan in 2024 after neighbours objected to a seven-storey height, agreeing to stay within the county’s faith zoning limit while keeping at least 120 units.

Marking Church Teachers’ College’s 60th anniversary, Mandeville’s mayor urged the institution to build a five-storey boarding block, pointing to new rules that raise allowable density in some areas from 30 to as many as 80 habitable rooms per acre.

A Grade II-listed former church in Stoke-on-Trent won planning approval for a new community use, but a restrictive covenant written into its 2009 sale limits any worship there to church use only.

A federal judge has allowed a Castle Rock, Colorado, church to keep sheltering homeless people in two campers on its 54-acre property while it sues the town over zoning rules that ban residential use.

Yes In Faith’s Backyard Queensland lobbied in 2024 for planning changes letting churches build homes on under-used land zoned for community use, describing the church as one of the state’s biggest landowners.

Montgomery County, Maryland, passed the FAITH zoning amendment in April 2024, removing barriers to affordable housing on land owned by faith groups and private schools, with projects required to meet affordability thresholds.

At Antioch Baptist Church in Jamaica, Queens, Mayor Eric Adams outlined zoning changes to help faith groups convert unused buildings, sell air rights and build homes on their campuses, as part of a 100,000-home plan.

Former members of a Florida church say a deed restriction meant to keep their land in church use was lifted without them, clearing the way for a merged megachurch to seek rezoning for 68 townhomes.

An Idaho church built as three geodesic domes in 1977, listed at $3.9 million, could be demolished for 152 affordable apartments if planners approve a switch to higher-density zoning on the Caldwell site.

Jamaica’s Hillside Development Manual has classified slope-based building density since 2014, built on real UWI geological research. Jack’s Hill residents are still fighting the same enforcement battles the manual was meant to settle.

Boston’s zoning board delayed a vote on converting the former St Matthew convent in Dorchester, built in 1889, into 14 condos with two affordable units, after neighbours objected to its size, parking and traffic.

Los Angeles churches with spare land, including a Compton congregation planning 65 homes for homeless families and a four-acre Whittier campus with 20 members, said in 2023 that zoning rules were blocking their plans to build affordable housing.

A company cleared land for apartments in Jack’s Hill without a permit, on a lot whose own title restricts it to a single private dwelling. The clearing caused a landslide that blocked the road before any approval was ever granted.

A small church meeting in a Bedford, New Hampshire, house was ordered to stop for lack of an occupancy permit, and the dispute fed into a new state law limiting zoning bans on religious uses.