Amid land use anxieties, churches seek to hold and transform rather than sell off property
“If I could, I’d burn it all down and start over,” jokes the Rev. Tamara Connors, a deacon in the diocese of Ottawa.
Connors is talking about the Anglican Church of Canada’s countless properties and church buildings. She’s mostly kidding, she clarifies—flames don’t loom in her future—but she is expressing something real. Underlying her joke, Connors says, are the same anxiety, frustration and “trapped” feeling that pervade much of her thinking about how to use and steward the church’s land assets.
“The buildings hold us back,” she says. For some parishes, she adds, the time, money and mental energy that go into maintaining buildings is the very thing preventing these parishes from forming new bonds with the communities outside their walls.
“We keep wanting people to come to us, and people aren’t coming to us. We need to go to them,” Connors says.
Fixing the value of real estate held across the Anglican Church of Canada is difficult, partly because of the different legalities of ownership that apply across the church’s dioceses. The fact, however, that the diocese of New Westminster alone sold off $17.8 million worth of land in 2018, suggests both how much of the church’s wealth is tied up in real estate and how quickly some parts of it are downsizing. As membership continues to shrink across the country, many parishes are left with the costs of caring for their buildings without the donations they once counted on.
Some church leaders, like Connors, might be happy to sell the properties off, turn the money to mission and embrace a future where faith need not be tied to bricks and mortar. But others are searching for solutions that will let the church turn its land to new missional purposes and free some of the wealth tied up in its property without giving it up entirely. In the midst of a national housing crises, many in the church have considered redevelopment into affordable housing the obvious solution—using the land to provide a social good. On April 15, for example, the diocese of Huron announced a plan to convert an office building on the property of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Ont. into 94 units of apartment housing, partnering with Homes Unlimited (London) and the building’s owner, Sifton Properties, which will donate it to the church for the cause. Elsewhere in London, the diocese has called for proposals to redevelop the parish of Holy Trinity St Stephens, announcing it would even consider proposals that involve demolishing the church, though the diocese would retain ownership of the land. And the diocese of Ottawa this spring opened three new deeply affordable housing projects, totaling 109 units. (Meanwhile, Cornerstone, its emergency shelter ministry, is moving to a larger location that will increase its capacity from 61 to 150 beds.)
Still, while housing may work for some parishes, some in the church caution it isn’t viable everywhere.
Kindred Works is an affordable housing social enterprise created in 2022 by the United Church of Canada with a mandate to help parishes redevelop their land into housing. Its target is for one-third of all units it produces to be classified affordable (defined as costing less than 30% of household income for tenants of moderate income) or deeply affordable (affordable to those with low or very low income). Since its founding, Kindred has begun planning or implementing projects across the United Church and in the Anglican dioceses of Niagara and Toronto. So far, its upcoming and underway projects total 3,650 housing units, with a goal to build 8,000 by 2029. This year, it made Fast Company magazine’s list of 2024’s most innovative companies. Kindred Works also counts environmental responsibility and UN sustainable development goals among its aims, but CEO Tim Blair says the core of the business, and the impetus behind it, was the United Church’s desire to give churches looking to develop housing more of a hand in their property’s future.
“They were seeing communities of faith either partner with developers or the properties were just being sold. And really both the common good was being lost, and an opportunity to think about property in a way that can continue to deliver impact in the communities […] for decades to come,” he says. Rather than sell property outright and wait to see whether the redevelopment works out, Kindred offers churches a deal: retain ownership of the land, work together with Kindred to develop the property and share the proceeds.
Kindred projects often focus on what developers call gentle densification, building low-rise buildings or townhouses on unused land or in low-density areas. Stuart Hutcheson, chair of the Anglican diocese of Toronto’s property committee, says the main draw of that model is that it fits the diocese’s preference that the church retain control over redeveloped property, allowing it to continue to use it for mission or to change direction if needs shift in the future. That’s why in 2023, his diocese signed a partnership with Kindred Works for the company to provide feasibility studies for Toronto parishes that ask for its help redeveloping their land.
While some parishes may be seeing their membership shrink even to the point of bringing their viability into question, he says, they still have a mission to carry out. “So we feel compelled to say, how can we continue to serve our mandate, Christ’s mandate, to support those less fortunate, but not by selling [property] to a developer who’s trying to make money off of it.” Any money made by simply selling land means just a one-time payout for the church, he says. “We have the money, but the money will be used once and that’s it. If we can turn it into something that has ongoing viability, then we feel we’re doing a better job of supporting that mission.”
So far, the diocese has announced its parish of St. Mary and St. Martha is working with Kindred Works and several others have expressed interest, Hutcheson says. The diocese and Kindred Works have begun exploring feasibility for these, and the diocese has been looking at methods to provide funding, including getting help from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and private investors. None of these projects have yet gone as far as seeking municipal approval, he says. While Kindred charges a flat fee for its services, Hutcheson also tells the Journal the diocese and the parishes are still working out how any proceeds from the redeveloped properties would be split between them.
While some in the church see housing development as the natural way to solve churches’ land dilemmas while also providing a public good, there are others who argue the church will need to look for a wider variety of solutions.
The Rev. Graham Singh is a priest at St. Jax Church in Montreal and founder and CEO of the Trinity Centres Foundation (soon to be renamed Relèven), a nonprofit which also helps parishes rethink
their land use with a less traditional approach. He says some parishes definitely would benefit from redeveloping some of their property into housing, but the question each diocese needs to ask is: how many? Some churches located in big cities may be in a position to turn some of their land into housing, he says—for example, the aforementioned projects at St. Paul’s Cathedral and Holy Trinity St. Stephen’s Memorial Anglican Church in London, which are part of TCF’s work reimagining properties in the diocese of Huron. but many have heritage buildings on their land that can’t be easily converted. Likewise, he adds, zoning approval from the city is not a guarantee and many of the churches that are struggling to maintain their buildings are not located in densifying cities like Toronto and Vancouver but in smaller towns in the Maritimes or the prairies.
“Every diocese in the country needs to ask how many of their properties are likely to deliver housing outcomes, how many are likely to be sustainable as traditional congregations and which of their properties fit into neither category,” says Singh.
That’s what TCF aims to offer parishes with its development model, beginning with a stakeholder consultation process which asks the city government, local nonprofits, parishioners and the church’s neighbouring communities to weigh in on what the area’s development needs are before beginning to work on a project. Housing is one of the things that process may identify, he says, but it also considers a variety of other outcomes.
At Singh’s own parish, St. Jax, the church sold stakes in its property to refugee charity Action Réfugiés Montréal and non-profit circus company Cirque le Monastère. That transformed it into a shared space for several nonprofits as well as a meeting place for the church’s congregation, Singh explains, thereby putting the building at the disposal of not just the church, but also neighbours, circus-goers and all those who benefit from the charities housed inside. In a time when the church is searching for new ways to reach out to non-Christians, he adds, this has proved a vital tool for forming new relationships with even people who are uncomfortable setting foot inside a church.
Since it began in 2018, TCF has served 40 congregations and raised $75 million in financing for its various projects, Singh tells the Journal.
Hutcheson says community relationships are a vital component of the Diocese of Toronto’s thinking about any housing projects as well. When the diocese works with a parish to determine whether the site is right for housing and what they might want to build, he says, they start by asking how the redevelopment would fit into the parish’s mission goals.
“And we’re not looking for the answer that says, ‘Well, there’s a stream of money that will come, that we’ll keep the doors open,’” he says. Instead, they’re looking to hear how that money and the new buildings will help the parish connect with its neighbours, fund a lunch program for a local school or a seniors’ outreach program. That way, he says, any new land use can be a resource to help expand the church’s role in the world, not diminish it.
Likewise, as a landowner responsible for the wellbeing of residential tenants, the church has a chance to form positive relationships and earn trust. “Does that translate into, as we say, bums in seats? I have no idea. But what it would translate to, I hope, is an expansion of the values that we share in terms of taking care of each other and the mission of ‘love thy neighbour.’”
Despite her initial fiery overstatement, says Connors, she doesn’t believe every parish in the Anglican Church of Canada must necessarily give up its land. People still need somewhere to worship, she says, and the church should try to make space for them, even if this means they must drive to the next town.
Presented with descriptions of TCF’s and Kindred Works’ models, she says both give her great hope that there are good options available for churches that find themselves making fateful decisions about their property. She hopes organizations like these may persuade some churches to look for ways to open their doors wider, becoming resources not just to their congregations, but to the whole community.
“For me, that’s really what it’s all about. They need to be spaces where everybody can come in and feel welcome, not just Christians,” she says. “[The land] does weigh us down. So if it can weigh us down and serve us, great. But if it’s just weighing us down, it has to go.”
