U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The government shutdown became the second longest in U.S. history Wednesday, though the mounting repercussions for dozens of federal programs, including food aid for some of the country’s most vulnerable residents, failed to spur any momentum in Congress. 

The Senate was unable for the 12th time to advance a stopgap spending bill that would have reopened the government and kept funding mostly on autopilot through Nov. 21. 

The 54-46 vote was nearly identical to those that have come before, a predictable outcome since neither Republicans nor Democrats are talking to each other. The legislation needed at least 60 votes to advance under the Senate’s legislative filibuster. 

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, both Democrats, and Maine independent Sen. Angus King voted with Republicans to advance the legislation. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted no.

The vote came shortly after Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley held the floor for nearly 23 hours, speaking at length about his concerns and objections to President Donald Trump’s administration. 

The government staying shut down much longer will lead to a funding shortfall for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which is relied on by 42 million low-income Americans, nearly 40% of them children younger than 17. 

Despite that looming deadline, congressional leaders remain in their political silos, just as they have since before the shutdown began 22 days ago. They’ve repeatedly held press conferences and meetings with their own members instead of making the types of compromises needed to keep government functioning on the most basic level. 

Republican leaders are waiting for Democrats to help advance the stopgap spending bill in the Senate and say they won’t negotiate on anything until after that happens. 

Democrats maintain they won’t support the House-passed continuing resolution until there is bipartisan agreement to extend tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. 

Johnson warns funding process at risk

The stalled short-term spending bill is supposed to give lawmakers more time to work out agreement on the dozen full-year government funding bills, which Congress was supposed to pass by the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. 

But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warned during a morning press conference that lawmakers may scrap that process for a second year in a row if Democrats don’t advance the continuing resolution soon. 

“We’re getting closer to November. It is going to be more and more difficult with each passing hour to get all the appropriations done on time,” Johnson said. “We acknowledge that, but we have to do this on a day-by-day basis.”

House Democratic leadership dismissed the notion of a longer temporary spending bill or continuing resolution, possibly for a full year, during an afternoon press conference. 

Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, of Massachusetts, said her message to Republicans is, “Why are you talking about the length of the (continuing resolution)? Come to the table and negotiate with us. End this health care crisis, help the American people.”

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sidestepped specifics when asked about a longer stopgap funding bill.

“At this point, we need to reopen the government. We need to enact a spending bill that actually meets the needs of the American people in terms of their health, their safety and economic well-being, particularly in terms of driving down the high cost of living, while at the same time decisively addressing the Republican health care crisis that grows greatly by the day,” the New York Democrat said.

Lawmakers have been unable to approve all the annual funding bills on time since 1996 and have consistently relied on stopgap spending bills to give themselves more time to work out agreements between the House and Senate. 

The alternative to full-year government funding bills is to use a series of stopgap spending bills, or one that lasts the entire year that keeps spending mostly on autopilot. 

Either option requires bipartisanship to gain the support of at least 60 senators, since Republicans control 53 seats. That means the only solution to the shutdown is for Republican and Democratic leaders to compromise. 

But that seemed like a remote possibility Wednesday. 

Democrats criticize layoffs

House Democrats’ Steering and Policy Committee held a mock hearing where they railed against Republicans and Trump for how they’ve managed unified control of government. 

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., rebuked Trump administration officials for trying to lay off federal workers by the thousands and for canceling funding to projects in regions of the country that vote for Democrats. 

“It is a corrupt abuse of power that they have chosen to carry out,” DeLauro said. 

White House budget director Russ Vought and Trump, she said, “have launched a scorched earth campaign to decimate the federal government and the programs and services the American people depend on.”

Rob Shriver, managing director of the civil service strong and good government initiatives at Democracy Forward, who worked as deputy director at the Office of Personnel Management during the Biden administration, said the layoffs could negatively affect federal operations for years. 

“The government has had historic challenges in recruiting young people and recruiting tech talent, and what this administration is doing is turning it into a workforce that doesn’t try to recruit the best and the brightest, but that tries to recruit the most loyal,” Shriver said. 

Lawsuit gains more unions

The Trump administration’s efforts to lay off thousands of workers during the shutdown have been on hold since last week, when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that was later expanded.  

The lawsuit was originally brought by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It expanded last week to include the National Federation of Federal Employees, the National Association of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union.

The updated restraining order issued by U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Susan Illston applies to any federal department or agency that includes employees represented by those unions, even if the Trump administration doesn’t recognize their contracts. 

Illston on Wednesday granted a request to add the National Treasury Employees Union, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and American Federation of Teachers to the case. 

Illston wrote that she found “good cause exists to modify the existing TRO without a written response from defendants due to the emergency nature of this case.” 

Those three unions represent hundreds of thousands more federal workers, including those at the departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice and Veterans Affairs. 

Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Social Security Administration are also represented by the three new unions seeking to join the case. 

The next stage in the lawsuit comes on Oct. 28, when the judge has set a hearing to determine whether to issue a preliminary injunction in the case. 

‘Patently illegal’

AFGE National President Everett Kelley wrote in a statement released Wednesday that the “administration’s move to fire thousands of patriotic civil servants while the government is shut down is patently illegal, and I’m glad we are able to expand our lawsuit to protect even more federal workers from facing termination.”

“President Trump has made no secret that this is about punishing his political enemies and has nothing to do with the actual work that these employees perform,” Kelley added. “Data provided by the administration under court order illustrates how vast and unlawful these intended firings are and validates our union’s determination to challenge this illegal action.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report. 

Community Medical Services (CMS) on Milwaukee's South Side. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

When patients struggling with opioid addiction walk into the newly opened Community Medical Services (CMS) clinic on Milwaukee’s South Side, “we want them to feel that this is a space for healing and growth,” said Amanda Maria De Leon, regional community impact manager for CMS. The clinic provides therapy and medication-assisted treatment for people working to stabilize their lives after addiction.

Medication-assisted treatment involves medications like Methadone to control opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Together with therapy, medication-assisted treatment allows patients to begin to stabilize and repair their lives. Although studies have associated medication-assisted treatment with reductions in overdoses and other improved recovery outcomes, its use also carries stigma. Confronting that social disapproval, while also providing a comfortable environment for patients, is part of the mission of CMS. 

Walking into the clinic, patients are met with an open waiting room and ample seating. There is a small area with toys for young children in one corner, and across the room nurses sit at a desk waiting to check in patients. Hanging over the small play area is a plaque dedicated to a young girl who spoke at one of the city zoning hearings in favor of the clinic opening. De Leon explained that the girl, who was 8 years old at the time, had befriended a local unhoused man to whom she’d given food. “She knew he needed treatment,” De Leon told the Wisconsin Examiner, saying the girl told the zoning board, “I want them to open this clinic for my friend.” 

Around a corner from the lobby, behind a set of protective glass windows, nurses dispense liquid methadone into small cups for patients on a daily basis. Walls and therapy rooms throughout the facility are painted calming  blues and  greens, and feature art or motivational messages. Small, decorative coffee tables sit between two small couches large enough for one or two people to sit facing each other. 

“We create a space like this intentionally, because we don’t want a patient to feel like it’s a transaction,” De Leon told the Examiner. She said that the facility is designed to be therapeutic both to the patients and the staff, to mitigate burnout. 

Dr. Dan Lemieux, one of the medical doctors at CMS, said that he’s “used to the hustle and bustle” of a clinic. His background began in family medicine, where Lemieux was used to seeing 20-25 patients each day. Over time he also began working in Suboxone treatment programs. “I think about eight years ago I kind of pulled back on family medicine a little bit and did a little more time in addiction,” Lemieux told the Wisconsin Examiner. “I found it more gratifying, enjoyed helping people a little bit more.” Lemieux began working at methadone clinics after the COVID-19 pandemic and found his way to CMS, where he has worked for about two years. 

Lemieux has worked as the medical director of CMS clinics in West Allis, Madison, Fond du Lac, and now the Southside Milwaukee Clinic. Recalling the workload at West Allis, Lemieux told the the Examiner, “I think the counselors are really good at just keeping the flow going, and the front desk staff. So it never seemed overwhelming or busy, and the clients are always very appreciative.” Lemieux said he likes the highly focused sessions in recovery work, because “you can really spend your time kind of helping the client with those particular issues.” 

Overdose deaths driven by the synthetic opioid fentanyl began skyrocketing in Milwaukee County around 2016, claiming hundreds of lives annually. New records for overdose deaths were set and broken every year from 2018 to 2022, when the death toll peaked at 674 lives lost. Nearly 5,800 non-fatal overdoses occurred that same year, according to the county’s overdose dashboard. 

Recently, as new programs and services were established to stem the tide, overdoses began to decline. Last year there were 450 overdose deaths in Milwaukee, so far there have been fewer than half that number this year. CMS is  one of the many organizations on the frontlines of the crisis, both as a treatment clinic and as a harm-reduction advocacy organization. 

De Leon showcased a storage room full of boxes of hygiene kits, testing strips for both fentanyl and the tranquilizer xylazine (a more recent trend in the drug market), and Narcan (used to reverse an overdose), all of which are either used or distributed by the CMS outreach team. Sometimes staff visit homeless encampments and food pantries, other times they hold pop-up events in areas with high overdose rates. The team even organized a sober tailgate at American Family Field at a Milwaukee Brewers game and distributed over 1,200 tickets. 

“We just deliver a little hope,” said De Leon. “Hopefully when you’re feeling a little better you’ll walk into a door of a treatment center. We don’t care where you walk into.” CMS also works with numerous partner organizations including the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative (MORI), various fire departments, the West Allis overdose response team and other nodes along an evolving network. 

De Leon said the network has become bigger and more collaborative. At an open house CMS held at  the new clinic, dozens of people showed up, she said, including community members, firefighters and police officers from multiple departments, probation and parole representatives and treatment providers. “I was speechless,” said De Leon. “We had over 70 people show up to our open house…That would have never happened in a methadone treatment world 20 years ago.” 

“We’re breaking down silos, we’re educating people,” she added. Today, people have easier access to methadone treatment programs. In Milwaukee County, both the jail and the Community Reintegration Center (formerly known as the House of Corrections) have medication-assisted treatment programs. De Leon stressed that when people are taken to correctional facilities they should tell staff whether they need medication-assisted treatment in order to access those programs. 

The West Allis Fire Department became the first to carry Buprenorphine, which is given to people after reviving them from an overdose to stop sudden withdrawal symptoms. Bipartisan legislation at the state level legalized both fentanyl and xylazine testing strips.

Nevertheless, stigma associated with both addiction and medication-assisted treatment creates barriers to progress. Although CMS has clinics in the cities of West Allis and South Milwaukee, its new clinic is the first it has been able to open in the city of Milwaukee itself. The opening marked an end to years of contentious meetings with the city’s zoning board and local residents. Now, patients living near the South Side won’t need to travel far, and the new clinic could also lighten patient loads at other clinics. 

Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic, who represents the district where the new CMS clinic is located, said she supports the treatment center opening. “I strongly supported this facility opening in our community,” Dimitrijevic told the  Examiner. “Providing residents with nearby access to needed health care and harm reduction tools makes us all safer and healthier. I am proud to have led by example on this issue by welcoming CMS to our community and am grateful for their work serving our residents.” 

Another clinic is expected to open up on Milwaukee’s North Side in early 2026. But many people are not sold on medication-assisted treatment, fentanyl testing strips and overdose-reversing medications. In 2023, when the city of Milwaukee’s zoning board approved the North Side clinic, reactions from the community were split. Leadership from the fire departments of Milwaukee and West Allis spoke in favor of CMS opening a clinic, stressing the dire need for relief and treatment access across Milwaukee County. 

Others called treatment centers “predatory” and expressed concerns about the clinic’s   for-profit business model. 

At least one 2014 study, which analyzed self-reported services from disease testing to psychiatric care, found that for-profit providers “were significantly less likely than nonprofit and public programs to offer comprehensive services”. The study said that “interventions to increase the offering of comprehensive services are needed, particularly among for-profit programs.” 

Other objections to the new clinic came from neighbors who  argued that opening the clinic would hurt their property values and quality of life. A corporate representative and a real estate attorney from the Vin Baker Treatment Center, a facility named for a Milwaukee Bucks player that is located on N. 76th Street in Milwaukee, said that CMS would disrupt its business, jeopardizing a $3 million investment into the Vin Baker center. Ald. Lamont Westmoreland, who represents a North Side district, also opposed CMS,  referring to city planning documents which recommended against opening social service businesses in the area. “I support treatment facilities, just not at this particular location,” Westmoreland said before the center opened. 

John Koch, national director of community and public relations at CMS, explained that CMS is a for-profit entity with private equity backing. Koch said that the private equity investment, coupled with grants, has allowed the clinic to scale up to address the overdose crisis. opening new treatment centers, providing grants to extend clinic hours and embedding staff with local fire departments and homeless outreach programs for harm reduction. CMS bills Medicaid and other patient insurance to cover  patient care, “and 90% of our people are on Medicaid”, Koch told the Examiner. “We work very heavily with Medicaid. And then outside of that we receive grants to open new projects.” 

The private equity backing allows for “continuous investment back into the company to address the opioid epidemic as it’s needed,” said Koch. “If we were Ma and Popping it and just growing non-profit style, it’s so much slower and we would never be able to match the need.” CMS has opened seven clinics across Wisconsin, with over 70 clinics operating nationwide. “What we’ve been able to do is be innovative with our money, and meet people where they’re at,” said Koch. “So that’s our secret sauce, is using funds to just continue to provide more access to treatment. If we did not have private equity backing, we would never have been able to be this big, or be treating 30,000 people…That’s what’s allowed us to beat the opioid epidemic.”

Koch knows firsthand how treatment access can be the feather on the scale deciding life or death. In 2013, he was living on the streets of Chicago struggling with a heroin addiction. One night, not long after completing his second adult prison sentence, Koch encountered a police officer who saw that he needed help and gave him the number to a treatment center. Koch went the next day to begin recovery, which also included medication-assisted treatment. Today Koch is raising a family  and works to give people the second chance he got years ago. 

Despite such success stories, there is still public skepticism about medication-assisted treatment. De Leon recalled a conversation she had after making a presentation on harm reduction at a national conference. “This guy came up to me and said, ‘You know, you really changed my thinking,’” she said. He mentioned that in some cases people on probation or parole are expected to get off methadone in order to be fully released from supervision, despite the fact that he’s seen it significantly improve people’s lives. 

De Leon asked why people were being forced to get off methadone and the man replied, “Well, nobody should be on these medications for the rest of their life.” She countered that if someone is finally stable after decades of addiction then, “Why not?…Would you tell me to get off of my insulin?” The man said no. “Then why would you tell somebody to get off of lifesaving medication that has him the most stable he’s ever been?” People are free to work on tapering off if they choose, but the priority should be stabilizing and saving a life, she argued. 

Dr. Lemieux said that he’s also seen medication-assisted treatment make a difference. “It’s always a tough conversation to try and change minds,” Lemieux told the Examiner. “Just the data that comes out shows that people in recovery are getting jobs, they’re reuniting with family, they’re working more, crime goes down, and it’s just a win. They’re getting their lives back, and just being a part of that is very rewarding and amazing. I just hope that more people see this, realize this, and reducing deaths is just another huge point, too.”

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St. John's Lutheran Church in Madison, Wis., is being converted into a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments. Lawmakers see the potential for much-needed housing on church-owned land, but opponents worry local communities could lose their authority over neighborhood development. (Video screenshot courtesy of St. John's Lutheran Church)

Growing up in a religious family, Florida Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud has seen how many church communities are no longer anchored to a single building in the way they used to be. Her small prayer groups take place over chats these days, not necessarily in person or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in pews.

With churches in her Miami-Dade County district grappling with shrinking membership and aging buildings, Calatayud thinks those institutions can do good with their unused land, by acting as anchors of new housing rather than as bystanders in neighborhood redevelopment.

“When you look at someone sitting on a small church, on a 10-acre property with a dwindling congregation, the question becomes, ‘How can this entity continue to be the beating heart of the community?’” Calatayud said in an interview.

“I think it’s to create a village, where we can create more housing and even centralize other needs in the community on that land.”

This year, Florida enacted a measure, sponsored by Calatayud, allowing multifamily residential development on land that is both owned by a religious institution and occupied by a house of worship, so long as at least 10% of the new units are affordable. Some housing advocates believe the zoning override has the potential to unlock roughly 30,000 parcels statewide.

Florida’s new law is part of a growing movement known as YIGBY — Yes in God’s Backyard. Touted by many faith leaders, lawmakers and developers, the movement imagines a connection between a religious mission to serve and the very real hurdles of building affordable housing.

If the U.S. is to meet the nation’s demand for new apartments, developers are going to need land, experts say, and parcels owned by faith-based organizations are starting to become a part of the solution for some states. At the same time, some skeptics question whether the movement could strip local communities of having a say in neighborhood development.

Places of worship are found in every corner of the United States. Land owned by faith-based organizations makes up 84 million square feet in New York City, for example, with enough land for 22,000 units on just the vacant lots and surface parking lots of those organizations, according to the Furman Center of New York University. Elsewhere, HousingForward Virginia says faith-based organizations own 74,000 acres in the state, nearly twice the size of Richmond.

California enacted what is considered the first statewide YIGBY law in 2023. It cleared the way for churches and other places of worship, as well as nonprofit universities, to create affordable housing on their land. It allows landowners to bypass public hearings, discretionary votes by city councils or planning boards, and certain environmental reviews so long as they meet affordability requirements, with at least 75% of the homes affordable for low-income households.

Several states — Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Texas — have considered YIGBY legislation this year, though none has passed. And a bill filed last month in Congress would allow rental properties to be built on currently unused church land with federal assistance.

Opponents of the Colorado bill frame it as state overreach on local zoning decisions and worry about a potential pathway for religious landowners to bypass Fair Housing Act protections for housing applicants who may not share that faith, according to a position paper opposing Colorado’s YIGBY legislation.

Beverly Stables, a lobbyist for the Colorado Municipal League, told Stateline that local governments worry YIGBY bills could undermine constitutional home-rule authority and saddle towns with unfunded state mandates.

“Our members have worked successfully with schools and churches on housing projects already,” she said. “The question is, what problem are we really trying to solve?”

The Rev. Patrick Reidy, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame who has studied the relationship between housing and faith-based organizations, says states and cities are eager to partner with faith-based organizations to use their land.

It’s not an easy decision for faith leaders to switch the purpose of their land from a devoted congregation space to housing, he said.

“The decision to change the way church land has been used historically for decades or even centuries is not easy for a place of worship to make, so lawmakers should meet faith communities where they are,” said Reidy, who also is co-director of Notre Dame’s Church Properties Initiative.

“It’s more an understanding that the way places of worship approach housing is from a moral mission to serve, so things like financing, zoning and legal know-how to create housing requires some walk-through for faith-based organizations,” Reidy said.

“The real challenge is learning to speak each other’s language.”

‘Right in the middle’

Every afternoon at 3:22, members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin, pause what they are doing and pray. Whether they are working, at home, watching baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers or sitting in a temporary worship space, they pray at that exact time.

It isn’t random: “322” is the address where the German Lutheran church has stood downtown at East Washington Avenue and North Hancock Street — just a block from the state Capitol — for 170 years, the Rev. Peter Beeson said.

Congregation members no longer worship there because the site could be set for the biggest transformation in its history: trading in stained-glass windows and church pews for a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments.

Beeson told Stateline that the congregation moved out of the building in the fall of 2023 for a groundbreaking later that same year.

“Our current building was built in 1905, and was nearing the end of its useful life, with many additions and renovations over the years,” Beeson said. “And it made sense to sacrifice our existing building to build affordable housing plus worship and community space as a way of serving our mission — providing much needed affordable housing for 130 or so families, and providing a home for the congregation for the next 150 years.”

The congregation, founded in 1856 by German Lutherans, has evolved with the needs of its community.

The church hosted a men’s homeless shelter for more than 20 years, ran a drop-in center for people with mental illness and offered small-scale aid for residents seeking anything from bus tickets to steel-toed work boots to child care, Beeson said.

Before construction could get underway on the housing project, though, Beeson and the church ran into a familiar issue that constrained housing across the country in 2023 — rapidly increasing construction costs and skyrocketing interest rates.

Beeson said he isn’t deterred. Other projects have taken 10 to 15 years to break ground, he said. “So keeping that timeline in mind, we are right in the middle.”

He believes the project, which has received sizable donations from community members via GoFundMe, is a God-ordained mission to provide a service for its community.

“We are continuing to move forward with the project. There have been setbacks and challenges along the way,” Beeson said. “However, like God led the Israelites through the wilderness with a pillar of fire by day and a pillar of clouds by night, God continues to open doors and pave pathways to bring this project to completion.”

Ceding local control

The economic realities surrounding homebuilding are among many hurdles challenging congregations that want to develop new housing.

In states such as Colorado, local governments worried that a proposed statewide development measure that would give preferential treatment to faith-based organizations could undermine local control and even potentially open the door to religious discrimination.

“Not suggesting it from all entities,” said Stables, of the Colorado Municipal League, “but we were concerned about the potential for discrimination, and potential violations of Fair Housing Act requirements.”

Stables also thinks this year’s legislation was premature, just a year after Colorado lawmakers made sweeping changes to land use rules — including new laws removing parking minimums and encouraging transit-oriented developments and accessory dwelling units — that she said haven’t had time to take effect or be meaningfully implemented locally.

She also said the bill would have stripped local governments of zoning authority while offering no new resources. More than 200 municipalities opted into an affordable housing fund created through a 2022 ballot initiative, Stables said, but the legislature has been sweeping out some of that money for other budgetary needs, leaving cities under-resourced to deliver on those housing goals.

In the end, Colorado’s legislation passed the House but died in the Senate after supporters concluded it didn’t have the votes to pass.

YIGBY supporters elsewhere have had to balance the tension between state goals and local zoning authority. A 2019 Washington law requires cities and counties to offer density bonuses for affordable housing on religious land — an incentive, but not a legal override of zoning laws.

In Minnesota, state Sen. Susan Pha, a Democrat, told Stateline she modeled some aspects of her YIGBY proposal off the California law. She also tailored aspects of her bill — such as a focus on middle-housing options like small studios — to find solutions that work specifically for her state.

Pha said some of her big battles have been around the allowances of small lot sizes, such as 220-square-foot studio units, which she said the state “really needs” in order to make a dent in its housing shortage.

“The obstacle really is zoning,” Pha said. “If we can change some of those zoning requirements, we could produce more affordable housing and leverage the space and the dedicated work these faith-based organizations already do.”

Pha’s bill failed to reach a floor vote.

Other YIGBY-like policies have passed in localities including Atlanta; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Seattle. Atlanta’s program aims for the creation of at least 2,000 units of affordable housing over eight years.

When New York City passed its City of Yes housing initiative in December 2024, it permitted faith-based organizations to convert underused properties into housing by lifting zoning, height and setback requirements.

Unlocking land, a bit at a time

In an interview with Stateline, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens pointed out that some of the city’s historic churches sit on prime land with underused parking lots that at one time were filled by many of the churchgoers’ cars.

Unlike many developers who might flip properties after short-term affordability requirements expire, Dickens said, churches may offer stability, since their mission is to serve “the least, the less and the lost” — meaning they might be less likely to sell off the property due to market pressure.

Atlanta is working with financial partners such as Enterprise and Wells Fargo to guide faith-based institutions that need that help, he said.

“Churches are usually on great corners, and they’re hallmarks of the community with land that’s underutilized, and their mission aligns perfectly with affordable housing,” Dickens said. “We’ve got churches that say, ‘Teach us how to develop. We have no idea what we’re doing.’”

The potential is vast, experts say. California faith-based organizations and nonprofit colleges own about 170,000 acres of land, equivalent in size to the city of Oakland, and much of it could be developed under the state’s YIGBY law, according to a 2023 report by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

In North Carolina, congregations have had small successes. A Presbyterian church in Charlotte turned an unused education wing into 21 units of permanent housing, and an Episcopal church in Chapel Hill built three tiny homes on its property for a trio of formerly homeless residents.

Eli Smith, the director of the nonprofit Faith-Based Housing Initiative, argues that state YIGBY laws should ease affordability requirements for small infill projects such as those in North Carolina and allow them to get built more quickly. Otherwise, he said, small churches’ projects “can’t get off the ground.”

“Think of it as a cottage neighborhood tucked behind a sanctuary — people know each other, it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful,” Smith said. “The future of this movement isn’t in [high-rise apartment] towers; it’s in small, intentional communities that fit their surroundings.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.