How fixing up forgotten churches can make a divine intervention in the housing crisis

The UK has officially moved to a more secular society and losing our religion has left a number of churches and faith-owned spaces laying empty – could they offer a solution to the housing crisis?

That’s the question researchers at the Welsh think tank the Bevan Foundation asked alongside Housing Justice Cymru.

Their research found an estimated 7,000 homes could be created either by redeveloping unused places of worship and associated buildings or releasing faith-owned land holdings.

The Welsh government is targeting building 20,000 new social rent homes by 2026 and the idea could offer a quick fix to tackling a housing crisis that has seen one in every 215 households in Wales living in temporary accommodation.

But there are challenges to overcome, Wendy Dearden, senior policy and research officer at the Bevan Foundation told the Big Issue. Dearden urged the Welsh government to step in to support groups looking at redevelopment as well as providing a strategic approach to get other projects off the ground.

“Far too often these opportunities to redevelop important community buildings get put in the ‘too difficult to do’ box,” said Dearden. “With the shortage of social homes and sites upon which to develop them, we must be looking at every opportunity. Our recommendations aim to find a way through the barriers to their potential being harnessed.”

The 2021 Census demonstrated a definitive shift away from religion in England and Wales.

It was the first time that less than half of the population described themselves as Christian with 46% of people associating with the religion representing a drop of 13.1% since 2011.

Meanwhile, no religion was the second most common response, up 12% in a decade to cover 37% of the population.

That has seen churches and other religious buildings that were once at the centre of the community being left to rot.

More than 3,500 churches have closed in the UK over the last decade, the National Churches Trust reported last year.

That leaves the difficult scenario of what to do with places of worship, particularly at a time when the housing crisis is leaving ever-increasing numbers of people facing homelessness.

The Most Revd John Davies, former Archbishop of Wales and chair of Housing Justice Cymru, said: “There can come a time, a sad time, when a place of worship that has been much loved over the years, comes to the end of its viable life. The least attractive option for that building is that it closes and becomes a ruin. There are occasions when the clearance of the site and the construction of new facilities is a feasible option.”

Building new genuinely affordable homes is not always a quick process with planning permission and construction taking time.

Many sites planned for development are either not suitable, not in high-demand areas, or not being made available by their owners while high land costs also make many housing projects unfeasible.

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Dearden told the Big Issue that the faith-owned spaces are ideally placed at the heart of communities and that turning disused buildings into homes can even have benefits for religious properties on the same site.

For example, Dearden shares the example of Albany Road Baptist Church in Cardiff where Cadwyn Housing Association are currently refurbishing the former church school building to the rear of the site.

The development will provide 12 one-bedroom social rented apartments to the first and second floors. The ground floor will be used for community facilities and a café which will be leased back to the church with the goal of using hiring fees to support maintenance of the main place of worship.

Wales has been leading the way in bringing churches back into use.

Housing Justice Cymru launched the Faith in Affordable Housing project alongside the Church of Wales back in 2016.

Housing Justice extended the project to England in 2021 but the two countries require differing approaches, according to the charity’s project lead Rebecca Kentfield.

England is a “bigger beast”, Kentfield said, requiring work with individual dioceses before heading up the pecking order.

“It’s an ongoing conversation,” she said. “What we’re doing right now which is really exciting is creating an ecumenical guide that will hopefully serve the whole of the UK. What we’re looking at in terms of next steps is supporting all the denominations on how they can consider their line of buildings to social housing or other community or social purposes.”

The Church of England announced its own intentions to tackle the housing crisis last year.

Last year the church released Homes for All: A Vision for England’s Housing System calling for less short-termism and piecemeal, party political decisions to tackle the housing crisis.

That meant calls for better quality and more affordable homes and or homelessness to be “all but eradicated”, urging politicians across all parties to create a long-term housing strategy.

Working on that strategic level, showing congregations and trustees how they can transform buildings that would otherwise be left to rot, can play a part in creating the social housing that is essential to tackle the long-running housing crisis.

“There’s always going to be that case-by-case, situation-by-situation relationship,” added Kentfield. 

“But I think at Faith in Affordable Housing we’ve realised that we cannot continue to work on that micro level for the foreseeable future, we’ve identified what could unlock these buildings being available for social housing at a broader scale and that’s what we’re hoping to do next.”

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