At the Lewis Center Sustainability Forum—held May 4, 2026, during ULI’s Spring Meeting in Nashville—a panel of local leaders explored how faith-based organizations are helping to unlock underused land for affordable housing.
Moderated by Adriane Harris, principal and owner of HarCo Coaching & Consulting, the session focused on partnerships among congregations, developers, and local government—an increasingly important model in cities where land costs, zoning barriers, and financing gaps make affordable housing difficult to deliver.
The panelists were Brian Hockett, senior pastor at Born Again Church; Jennifer Horne, CEO and managing partner at Urban Campus and Core; Mick Nelson, founder and managing principal of Nelson Community Partners; and Angie Hubbard, housing director at the Metro Nashville Planning Department.
The discussion revolved around a practical question: How can churches and other mission-based institutions use land they already own to meet urgent housing needs without losing sight of their core purpose?
From Congregation to Capital Stack: How Church Land Becomes Housing
For Born Again Church, the answer began with listening. Hockett said that in 2017 the church held a community charrette, which brought residents together to discuss what they wanted—and did not want—as development pressure increased around them.
“We weren’t trying to go into debt to do something else and put this burden on our membership,” Hockett said. Instead, the church asked how it could connect with the city and development partners to help implement a solution together.
That process eventually led to Northview Housing Development, a 55-plus active senior community being developed with Urban Campus and Core and The Clear Blue Co. The project is designed to serve seniors across a range of income levels and reflects a broader need Horne saw in Nashville neighborhoods undergoing rapid change.
Horne, a Nashville native, said she began thinking about seniors in the community—“aunts and uncles,” as she put it—who were being left out of the conversation as neighborhoods changed around them. The goal, she said, was not simply to build housing but also to create a development rooted in the needs of the community.
Doing so required a different kind of development process. Horne said that successful partnerships with faith-based organizations depend on listening first, rather than on arriving with a prepackaged proposal.
“It’s one thing to come and just be throwing solutions at somebody,” Hockett added. “It makes a big difference when you’re actually trying to come to the table, not take the table over.”
Nelson described a different faith-based development model involving InSpiritus, a nonprofit affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. His firm responded to a request for proposals for church-owned land in Nashville’s Germantown/Salemtown area, where a congregation was no longer active but the property still held community value.
The result is a senior affordable housing project that received federal Section 202 funding, including a capital advance and rental subsidy for 80 units. Nelson said that the project also illustrates the complexity of turning a vision into construction—initial conversations began in 2019, with building starting years later.
“These projects are risky for everybody involved,” Nelson said. Having a clear reason to act—such as deferred maintenance, insurance concerns, or a mission-driven need—can help move a congregation or nonprofit from discussion to implementation.
Barriers and Breakthroughs in Financing and Land Use
Hubbard, on the public-sector side, said that Nashville is trying to support these efforts through new tools and programs. Metro Nashville’s dedicated housing office, created in 2022, has focused not only on funding but also on removing barriers.
Affordable land, Hubbard said, remains one of the city’s biggest constraints. Nashville is consolidated with Davidson County and cannot annex additional land, and much of the publicly owned land that appears available is limited by existing restrictions, flooding, or topography.
That reality has made faith-owned land especially important. Hubbard said that Metro received federal Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing grant funding in support of efforts connecting congregations with developers and technical assistance.
Still, legal and regulatory questions remain. Federal and state protections for religious institutions can intersect in complex ways with zoning, tax credit financing, and private development partnerships.
Panelists also emphasized that affordable housing often costs more—not less—to build than market-rate housing does, given layered financing, regulatory requirements, and long-term affordability commitments.
Sustainability was another theme. Horne said that Northview was designed with energy efficiency, indoor air quality, aging-in-place considerations, and future solar infrastructure in mind. Nelson’s project includes solar panels, a green roof, community garden space, and backup power planning.
A Playbook for Congregations: From Vision to Execution
After the panel, Aron Thompson, vice president of housing and economic development and executive director of R.E.D. Academy at the Urban League of Middle Tennessee, outlined a practical framework designed to help faith-based institutions move from interest to implementation. Developed with partners including Think Tennessee, Urban Housing Solutions, and Hawkins Partners, the group’s housing resource guides break the development process into three stages—101, 201, and 301.
The 101 guide introduces core concepts—development terminology, zoning, land use, and financing tools, by way of helping congregations understand what is possible on their property. The 201 guide focuses on feasibility and offers tools to evaluate site conditions, development potential, and neighborhood context before engaging a partner. The 301 guide turns to execution by helping institutions align internally, assess readiness, and approach partnerships with clarity.
The intent, Thompson said, is not to push churches into deals but instead to equip them with enough knowledge to engage from a position of strength. Many congregations own land but lack development expertise and are frequently approached by outside parties. The guides aim to shift that dynamic by grounding decisions in education and due diligence.
“The last thing you want to do is try to sell,” Thompson said. “If they’re educated, they’ll ask the right questions—and when they’re ready, they’ll come back.”
Aligning Mission, Risk, and Opportunity
For Hockett, the work ultimately comes back to mission. “For us, it’s just another building if it’s not meeting the people,” he said.
The lesson for developers, public agencies, and faith-based organizations was clear: Land alone is not enough. These projects require trust, patience, financing, creativity, legal clarity, and partners willing to align around both risk and purpose. In Nashville, that alignment is beginning to produce models that other cities may be able to adapt and scale.