In October 2025, Relèven convened the Waterloo Faith Properties Roundtable at St. Matthew’s Centre in Kitchener, bringing together municipalities, faith leaders, non-profit builders, funders, planners, and community organizations. The Roundtable explored how under-utilized faith properties across the Region of Waterloo can be reimagined as affordable housing and vibrant community places.
The gathering formed part of a national initiative funded by the CMHC Solutions Lab, focused on turning data, collaboration, and local leadership into practical pathways for housing and community impact.
Why This Matters in the Region of Waterloo
The Waterloo Roundtable responded to two converging challenges facing communities across the region and the country.
The National Trust for Canada estimates that one-third of Canadian religious properties may close this decade. Between 2009 and 2018 alone, more than 4,300 congregations closed nationwide, representing a shift of over $15 billion in land value. Many of the remaining congregations now face sustained financial pressure and aging infrastructure.
At the same time, the Region of Waterloo is experiencing an acute need for affordable housing and community-serving space—particularly in locations close to transit, services, and employment. Faith properties, often centrally located and deeply embedded in neighbourhood life, represent a rare opportunity to address both realities at once.
About the Waterloo Roundtable
The Waterloo Roundtable was designed as a working convening rather than a conference. Its purpose was to bring key stakeholders into the same room, share local data, and surface the real opportunities and constraints involved in developing housing and community uses on faith lands.
Hosted at St. Matthew’s Centre, itself an example of adaptive reuse and placemaking, the Roundtable created space for candid conversation across sectors that do not often collaborate early in the development process.
A Data-Informed Foundation
The Roundtable was grounded in research conducted through the AI Faith Properties Solutions Lab, a CMHC-funded collaboration between Relèven and Affordable360. The project combines CRA data, municipal planning information, and geospatial analysis to identify faith properties that may be at risk and assess their potential for redevelopment.
In the Region of Waterloo, the analysis:
Reviewed 558 faith charities and identified 312 confirmed faith properties
Found that 43% of property-owning faith organizations reported expenses exceeding income
Identified dozens of sites located near major transit and within land-use frameworks already supportive of housing
Highlighted the scale of opportunity: over 967 acres of faith-owned land and more than 600,000 square feet of potential buildable space
This data helped ground discussions in local realities and move the conversation from abstraction to actionable insight.
Who Was at the Table
The Waterloo Roundtable convened a broad cross-section of leaders and practitioners, including:
Municipal and regional elected officials and staff
Faith leaders and denominational representatives
Non-profit housing providers and developers
Community foundations and philanthropic partners
Planning, heritage, and design professionals
Social service and community organizations
This diversity reflected a core insight of the Roundtable: housing on faith lands cannot be delivered by any single sector alone.
Key Learnings
Several consistent insights emerged from the Waterloo Roundtable:
Early municipal engagement is critical to clarify pathways, reduce risk, and avoid stalled projects later in the process
Data must be paired with deep engagement; analytics alone are not sufficient without trust-building and dialogue
Mission-first framing matters for faith communities navigating complex and emotionally charged property decisions
Surfacing tensions early—around heritage, finances, and identity—builds stronger, more resilient projects
Faith-literate facilitation helps translate between theological, planning, and development worlds
These learnings echo insights from similar roundtables in other Canadian cities, while reflecting the specific context of Waterloo Region.
From Roundtable to Ongoing Work
The Waterloo Roundtable was not an endpoint, but a catalyst. The relationships, insights, and shared understanding developed through the convening continue to inform site-level conversations, municipal collaboration, and future housing initiatives.
Together with municipal partners, faith communities, and housing providers, Relèven is working to ensure that faith-owned land and buildings remain assets for community well-being—supporting housing, belonging, and social impact for generations to come.
