Without land-use reform, new investment in transit could raise property values along key corridors while preventing new housing supply—exacerbating displacement and driving lower-income residents further from the very services designed to help them.

People’s views of risk weren’t driven primarily by objective statistics, such as FBI crime data. Instead, they were shaped by factors such as media representations, word of mouth and geographic stereotypes.

"We have turned zero problems into two problems. We have both made it too expensive to develop here. That's the first problem. And then to solve that problem, we have created a system where we transfer needed tax revenue to developers... we need to go back to that first problem, get all that stuff out of the way. and then we'll be back to zero problems."

These deals often include tax breaks, infrastructure improvements and other incentives—all paid for with public dollars. And while the pitch is always that the investment will pay off in jobs and economic growth, those returns are rarely guaranteed.

Many congregations own large pieces of land, vacant buildings, or underutilized parking lots that could be turned into housing. Instead of selling to developers, these institutions are stepping into the role of housing providers themselves, partnering with nonprofits and mission-driven builders to create new places for people to live.