The Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE) hosted its fourth Church Properties conference on September 16 – 17, bringing together innovative leaders facing the toughest church property questions from a wide range of angles. This year, the fruits of those years of cross-pollination were on full display in a program that featured numerous brand-new initiatives.

Across four plenaries, twenty breakouts, two site visits, four in-depth workshops, one keynote, and countless informal conversations, seeds were sown this year for future efforts to leverage the Church’s real assets to serve her mission in the world. At the opening of the first day of the conference, Mary Tichy, Managing Director of the Conference for Catholic Facility Management, greeted attendees and underscored the urgency of the questions currently facing church property stewards. That evening, the Most Reverend Paul D. Etienne, Archbishop of Seattle, delivered a keynote address centered on the Catholic doctrine of the universal call to holiness: that the life of the Church is lived out not only in pastoral ministry, but also in faith-filled service in domains like real estate development, environmental stewardship, and care for the most vulnerable.

Attendees encountered many invitations to live out this call. New additions to this year’s program included two site visits, one to St. Adalbert’s, a historic parish in South Bend’s West Side undertaking a monumental restoration; and another to the Sustainable Farm at St. Mary’s College, a project that is rooting land more deeply in the Catholic vision of integral ecology. Back on campus, a panel featured a project in France working to repurpose medieval monasteries as anchors for radical Christian solidarity, while one breakout session reported on groundbreaking research into property ownership patterns conducted by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. Christopher Vallace ‘92, a partner with M3 Investment Group, led a conversation with Malcolm Johnson ‘98, Founder and CEO of Langdon Park Capital, on the role of private capital in creating and sustaining housing that reflects human dignity. Expert-led workshops explored geothermal financing solutions, GIS tools, legal scenarios, and public funding sources, while working papers addressed the meaning of sacred space and the potential for new ownership and management structures for church property.

Patricia Gathers is President and CEO of The Carmelite System and Carith Ministries, and has attended multiple Church properties conferences hosted by FIRE. Her leadership of Carith Ministries is a recent addition to her resume. “Carith's launch was fueled by attendance at the 2023 FIRE Church Properties conference where the Carmelite System was connected with leading experts in law, adaptive reuse, and church governance,” Gathers said. “Carith Ministries is currently working to implement the first Catholic acquisition of post-acute care healthcare facilities from another Catholic entity by acquiring a network of twelve post-acute care facilities in danger of closing. Moving forward, Carith will work with religious congregations, Catholic health care entities, and dioceses to strengthen their ministries, apply best practices, and most impactfully use Church patrimony.” Gathers and colleagues shared their innovations at this year’s conference.

A presentation from Amy Anderson, Executive Director of Our Lady Queen of Angeles Housing Alliance, a nonprofit recently created in collaboration with Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, followed up on another conversation opened at last year’s conference. In fall 2023, data scientist Quinn Underriner presented research from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation on the potential impact of new California legislation that would expand the potential for affordable housing to be developed on faith-based property. A year later the bill, passed as the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act and known as SB (Senate Bill) 4, is already starting to have an effect.

Anderson, who served as Chief Housing Officer under former Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, presented on Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing Alliance’s inaugural project, Willow Brook. The 70-unit project is planned for land currently used by Catholic Charities and aims to serve youth aging out of foster care and community college students. “The development will leverage a range of new and evolving laws, policies and programs initiated by philanthropy, government agencies, elected officials and other institutions to ease Los Angeles out of its housing affordability crisis,” Anderson said. “Willow Brook is an unprecedented opportunity to help test these novel approaches.”

Explore the full conference program here, and view past session videos on FIRE’s YouTube channel.