YIGBY Bill: Connecticut's Answer to Housing Crisis
Connecticut's YIGBY bill would let religious institutions build affordable housing on idle land, tackling a shortage of up to 380,000 units statewide.
A mother of two in her mid-30s, known here as “Sam,” spent months trying to find a safe apartment after fleeing an abusive relationship. Landlord after landlord turned her away. The reason, she told Dr. Tricia Lewis in an interview, was straightforward: “The rents are so high [and] because a lot of landlords want cash on the spot. And if you don’t have the cash on the spot, they don’t want to deal with you.”
Sam had a housing voucher. That should have helped. Instead, it made her a liability in the eyes of too many landlords, and the search stretched on while her children waited.
Her story is not unusual in Connecticut. The state faces a housing shortage of up to 380,000 units. The average renter earns $22.69 per hour, well short of the $35.42 per hour required to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. Zillow data shows rents and property prices climbing steadily, squeezing middle- and lower-income families who have no cushion left to absorb the pressure.
A bill moving through the General Assembly this spring aims to chip away at that shortage by unlocking a resource that has long sat idle: land owned by religious institutions.
House Bill 5396, known as YIGBY, short for “Yes in God’s Backyard,” would make it easier for churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations to build affordable housing on their own properties. Many of these parcels sit undeveloped in established neighborhoods with existing infrastructure, schools, and transit access. No new land acquisition required. No lengthy fights over where to find a development site.
The logic is practical. Religious organizations are often already oriented toward serving their surrounding communities. YIGBY gives them a clearer legal pathway to do that in a concrete, lasting way. Zoning barriers that currently complicate or block residential construction on religious land would be reduced under the bill, allowing congregations that want to act to actually do so.
The housing shortage is not just an economic problem. Researchers and public health officials have spent years documenting what happens to families when housing costs consume more than half of household income. Chronic stress increases. Rates of heart disease and hypertension rise. Preventative care gets skipped because there is no money and no bandwidth. Children living in housing instability carry what researchers call “toxic stress,” a physiological burden that affects brain development and academic performance for years.
Stable housing, by contrast, allows adults to hold jobs, maintain routines, and access services. It allows children to stay in the same school. It is, in the most direct sense, a foundation.
Connecticut has tried to address its housing crisis through various channels for years, with limited results. The economics of new construction are punishing. Developers need land, financing, and community approval, and any one of those can stall a project indefinitely. YIGBY does not solve all of those problems, but it reduces one of the most stubborn: where to build.
Critics of housing bills in Connecticut often point to neighborhood character and local control. Those concerns are real and deserve honest engagement. But it is also worth asking what kind of neighborhood character is preserved when working families are priced out, when parents like Sam spend months in shelters trying to find something safe for their children, and when the health consequences of housing instability pile up quietly in emergency rooms and pediatric offices across the state.
Religious institutions building affordable housing on their own land is not a radical idea. Versions of YIGBY legislation have gained traction in other states as a commonsense complement to broader housing strategies. Connecticut, with its particular mix of affluent suburbs and struggling cities, is precisely the kind of place where this approach could make a meaningful difference.
The bill does not require any religious organization to build anything. It simply removes barriers for those that want to. For a state facing a shortage of 380,000 units, that kind of voluntary, community-rooted expansion of supply is exactly the direction the conversation needs to go.
Sam eventually found an apartment. Many others are still looking.