THE MOST COMMON refrain from officials and experts looking for answers to the state’s infamous housing crunch is that there are no silver bullets. But there may be a divine opportunity.

Religious institutions across the state own thousands of acres of land – a massive reservoir of potential housing – and if just half of the developable parcels were built out at higher density, researchers estimate it could create a striking half a million new housing units. That generous estimate would be more than twice the state target of 222,000 new units that officials say is needed by 2035.

Faith-based organizations control approximately 4,860 developable parcels totaling more than 20,000 acres across the Commonwealth, according to an analysis by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Center for Geospatial Solutions commissioned by the Lynch Foundation.

“We do not have another option here in Massachusetts,” said Katie Everett, executive director of the Boston-based Lynch Foundation, which focuses on a range of issues, including housing and homelessness, driven by Catholic principles. “We are not getting any bigger. In fact, we’re probably getting smaller due to environmental challenges” that put areas of the state off limits for new development. “This is it.”

The 2025 findings – the second year of a comprehensive Bay State survey of religious land ownership through the partnership – were released as a cohort of state lawmakers and advocates push for legislation that would streamline housing development on religious properties. The so-called YIGBY bill, short for “Yes in God’s Back Yard” and a twist on the pro-housing slogan YIMBY or “Yes in My Back Yard,” would reduce local zoning barriers for parcels owned by religious communities that currently prevent or slow housing construction.

Though the nearly 5,000 developable parcels are just a small proportion of land statewide, their strategic location and size make them uniquely valuable for development. About 63 percent sit near transit stops, 65 percent already have water and sewer access, and 54 percent are in areas with above-average walkability, according to the report. The average parcel spans four acres, large enough for substantial housing projects, and is assessed at just over $2 million.

The land does not just consist of large parcels where churches and other faith congregations are based.

“What we were struck by, when we started looking at the parcel data for faith-based institutions, is everyone immediately thinks about the places of worship,” said Reina Chano Murray, associate director at the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “But we found that there were a fair number of residential parcels that appeared to have been willed or gifted to congregations by their parishioners.”

The inventory found 39 percent of developable religious parcels are owned by non-Catholic Christian denominations, 33 percent by Catholic institutions, 20 percent by non-denominational organizations, 5 percent by Jewish congregations, and 3 percent by other faiths. Almost 83 percent of it is zoned as residential property – all of it tax-exempt.

This land is spread across the state, but mostly centered around larger urban areas like Boston, Worcester, and Springfield. Proponents of unlocking it for housing point to YIGBY bills that have been passed in California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington that cleared the way for several housing projects on religiously owned land that boasted unit counts near 50.

The Massachusetts YIGBY legislation, proposed by state Sen. Brendan Crighton of Lynn and Rep. Andy Vargas of Haverhill, would allow faith-based organizations to build multi-family housing by right on parcels they’ve owned for at least three years. Developments with 30 units per acre would be required to set aside 20 percent as affordable for households earning up to 80 percent of area median income.

Projects between 30 and 50 units per acre must designate 25 percent affordable for those making 80 percent AMI or below, or 20 percent affordable for households at 60 percent AMI or below.

Unlike most tax-exempt religious property, new developments would pay local property taxes unless municipalities decide to allow exemptions. If just half of the parcels were developed – and using the state’s average residential tax rate – they would generate approximately $61 million in annual municipal revenue, according to the foundation’s estimates.

Buildings within half a mile of transit could not face parking requirements.

“We’re looking for every tool possible in our housing production toolbox,” Crighton said. Massachusetts has approved roughly 14,000 housing permits annually in recent years, far short of the 222,000 units needed by 2035, according to state estimates.

According to the Lynch Foundation, which supports the YIGBY bill, depending on the level of density and amount of land developed, between 60,000 and 500,000 units of housing could be built.

This is the first year that YIGBY legislation has been filed in Massachusetts, and there is no clear opposition organized at this point. But that may change if the bill gets more traction.

Statewide zoning mandates often draw stiff resistance from communities, which insist on local control over land use. The bill carries some echoes of the MBTA Communities housing law, which requires zoning for new multi-family housing near transit stops and has faced strong opposition from some communities.

As with the MBTA Communities law, there is a danger of overpromising and panicking municipalities that express alarm at overdevelopment. While half a million units is an astonishing amount of potential housing, experts generally caution that the highest estimates are often a dramatic overstatement of any housing policy’s impact. If roughly 10 percent of the religiously owned developable parcels were built out, the Lynch Foundation estimates more like 80,000 new units could come online – still potentially meaningful progress as the state slogs toward its 222,000 unit goal.

Several churches already are eagerly working to find ways to convert their parcels into affordable housing as congregations shrink. The Archdiocese of Boston, through its Planning Office of Urban Affairs, has developed almost 3,000 units since 1975 from Boston to Brockton to Wrentham. The archdiocese did not make planning office officials available to discuss its land inventory or project identification process for this story, but told CBS Boston in August that nearly a dozen properties have been converted into affordable or mixed-use housing.

“When we are having conversations with parishes, with pastors, it’s about how can we continue to preserve our legacy of service and help to continue to meet the needs of the community. An effective way to do that is to look at the property and to see how it can be repurposed for affordable mixed-income housing,” Bill Grogan, the president of the archdiocese planning office, told the station.

Kurt Lang, pastor at the East Coast International Church in Lynn, testified in support of the YIGBY bill during a hearing in July.

“As an expression of our church’s desire to bring housing to the unhoused,” he said, the Lynn church owns 40 units, mostly affordable rentals as well as nine transitional housing units in which the residents don’t pay rent while they look for more permanent housing. There is no requirement that residents be part of the congregation, he said.

Lang noted that even small congregations can tie up substantial developable space if developing the land for housing doesn’t seem feasible. “Many other religious groups would begin to create affordable and working-class housing if the opportunity and a path was created for them,” he said.

In his testimony, Lang told lawmakers about a Protestant church inside Route 128 that he said has just 12 people attending but owns 45 acres of land. The church met with him and expressed interest in turning the land into housing.

“They quickly retreated upon learning about the zoning challenges,” Lang said.

A small religious college in Boston, looking to offload 25 acres of land to a real estate management company for conservation, told the Boston Globe last week that it had considered developing the forested area but chose conservation instead after considering the myriad “zoning, regulatory, and community hurdles that would take years to address and may have never been resolved.”

Faith communities trying to build housing without YIGBY options have faced years of delays and expensive rezoning battles. Hartford Street Presbyterian Church in Natick has spent 40 years attempting to build housing and recently sheltered migrant families in its basement while seeking zoning relief.

The Lynch Foundation says there have been redevelopment successes, pointing to the mixed-use Overlook at St. Gabriel’s in Brighton, which converted a former monastery campus into 555 apartments, including 83 affordable units.

Even identifying religiously owned parcels ripe for development is not a simple matter.

Assessors’ records varied wildly in quality for tax-exempt properties, according to Chano Murray at the Center for Geospatial Solutions. Some parcels listed deceased clergy as owners, their deaths never recorded. Others used inconsistent abbreviations like “Rom Catholic Arch” that required algorithms to identify.

Religious organizations may not know their full portfolios. Ownership can be complicated by distinctions between diocese-owned versus congregation-owned property, or parcels held in clergy names for administrative purposes.

Proponents of the YIGBY legislation include religiously centered advocacy groups like the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), housing groups like Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, real estate developers, chambers of commerce, and faith leaders across denominations.

In written testimony, JALSA president Cindy Rowe grounded support in Jewish teachings: “On Yom Kippur, our most sacred holiday, we read in Isaiah, ‘take the poor into your homes,'” she said. She noted that Massachusetts has the third-highest median home price and highest median rent nationally, with prices increasing $300,000 on average from 2014 to 2024.

“We must take every step that we can to make housing available to all,” she wrote. “Upholding human dignity, the fundamental Jewish value of Kavod HaBriyot, demands that we ensure housing for all.”

Crighton still shakes his head over a local project that stalled out several years ago while he was on the Lynn city council.

“This was a vacant plot of land, not being used, in an area that already had multi-family housing,” he said. “So it wouldn’t drastically alter the character of the neighborhood or anything.” But the religious group trying to build affordable housing on a parcel it owned couldn’t get the support they needed on the council, he said.

“It got scrapped. And a decade later, I drive by this parcel,” he said. “It’s still just sitting there, and to think that families could have been living there for the past decade, you know, it was incredibly frustrating. That wouldn’t happen under the updated zoning. The legislation simply creates incentives to develop for housing rather than leave parcels vacant.”