Nadia A. Mian and Helen Ketema recently contributed expertise to a panel at CPI’s 2026 conference. New publications from their respective research groups are making data and insights on faith-based affordable housing and land use reform more accessible than ever.

Nadia A. Mian is Senior Program Director of the Ralph W. Voorhees Center for Civic Engagement and a Lecturer at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. She holds a Ph.D. from The New School, and a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University in Toronto, Canada, where she specialized in urban planning. A collaborator with the Church Properties Initiative since its launch, Nadia recently presented her research at the 2026 Church Properties conference. Just before the conference, Nadia’s team launched a new resource to help researchers and the public better understand the landscape of affordable housing and faith land.

The Affordable Housing and Shelter on Faith Land Database is an online searchable database cataloguing affordable housing developments and shelters built on religious property in the United States between 2015-2025. The database is searchable by project characteristics including location, size of the project, denomination, and aims to be a useful tool for anyone interested in affordable housing on faith land. Each entry attempts to showcase an image and provide as much detail about each project as possible including project descriptions, professionals involved, and financing. The data is all public knowledge and aggregated from publicly accessible websites.

The Affordable Housing and Shelter Built on Faith Land in the United States, 2015-2025 report accompanies the database and examines trends and patterns that emerge from the data. Analyzing 200 development projects, the report examines which religions and denominations are building affordable housing and shelters, where they have been built, historic properties, the types of housing, size, and financing.

Helen Ketema is the State Housing and Land Use Policy Fellow at the NYU Furman Center. She holds a Masters of Arts from the Faculty of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto and a B.A in International Development Studies from the University of Toronto. Helen joined Nadia Mian, Jennifer Dickson of the Archdiocese of New York, and Rev. Patrick E. Reidy, C.S.C., of Notre Dame Law School for a panel titled “Perspectives on an Emerging Policy Movement” at CPI’s 2026 conference.

Just after the conference, the NYU Furman Center launched a new resource, the Land Use Reform Tracker, designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the land use policy landscape is changing across the nation. Across the nation, state legislators and governors are enacting a variety of new laws to allow more housing to be built to meet the critical shortage of affordable housing. The Land Use Reform Tracker provides structured data on enacted bills, including summaries of bill text, analysis of how legislation compares to other states, and information on the different types of land use reform for researchers, state lawmakers, and city officials, the media, and others looking to navigate this evolving national policy landscape.

To learn more about the Tracker, register here for a webinar on Tuesday, April 14, at 2 PM ET. The NYU Furman Center will provide an online presentation on the database and resource bank, then turn to an expert panel to discuss emerging land use reform trends. Policymakers from around the country will also discuss how they are tackling the biggest questions around policy implementation in their respective states.

Complementing these resources, the Church Properties Initiative’s Redevelopment Tracker, launched in 2024, compiles over 200 cases of church property adaptation in a searchable online database. The Tracker allows users to filter cases by confession, location, original use, new use, and other characteristics, shedding light on the wide range of possible outcomes for repurposed church properties.