We are accustomed to asking what a housing proposal will cost a community if approved. We are much less accustomed to asking what it will cost the people who need it if the answer is no.

The first set of questions has a well-worn place in public debate. We ask about traffic, schools, wastewater, public safety and property values. We commission studies, retain experts, and fill hearing rooms. Those questions deserve thoughtful answers. As an attorney and developer, I have spent much of my professional life helping to work through them.

The second set of questions rarely receives the same attention.

What happens to the family that cannot find an apartment it can afford? To the older resident whose rent keeps rising? To the person waiting for a rental voucher or a place to sleep safely – if only for tonight? Their circumstances don’t show up on a site plan, nor are they accounted for in a zoning bylaw, but they are part of the decision just the same.

When a proposal is defeated, neighbors claim victory and the land may remain as it was. The people who needed the housing do not remain untouched.

Defeated proposal upon defeated proposal, a housing shortage becomes a moral injustice.

The people with the greatest ability to influence a decision typically already have a place to live. People who need a home often stand on unequal footing by comparison.  They may be working when the hearing takes place, caring for their children or elderly parents, or simply unaware that a decision affecting their family’s future is being made. Some do not yet live in the community and are therefore not local voters to whom elected officials are beholden. They have no nearby property, do not own businesses, and consequently no civic association email alerts in their inbox. As a result, there is often no one in the room speaking on their behalf.

Their absence makes it easier to overlook the consequences for them. It does not make those consequences less real.

A recent debate on Cape Cod (MA) over relocating a homeless shelter run by a religious organization brought this tension into sharp focus. The move was only a mile and a half within the same village, but from a building with bunk beds spread out over three floors for an increasingly elderly population to a single-floor facility with ample room for a day program and on-site health care services.  Improvements that would make a world of difference to Cape Codders whose life circumstances left them seeking shelter in a facility of last resort. Town residents – including some who lived miles away from either the old or new locations – raised concerns about what the shelter would mean for the surrounding neighborhood. On their face, both perspectives concerned the safety and well-being of human beings.

A fair discussion – and a fair hearing by the local zoning board of appeals – would have taken the shelter guests’ needs as seriously as the concerns of people who already lived nearby. It did not. Instead, the men and women sheltering at the facility were reduced to labels and discussed as undesirable categories to be excluded.

That obligation for fair consideration of sometimes contending needs extends well beyond homeless shelters and whether faith communities may use their property to house people. It applies whenever we decide whether and where to allow apartments or duplexes, preserve existing affordable homes, approve local funding to subsidize workforce residences, or raise or lower the bar for attaining housing.

None of this means that every proposal deserves approval. Any housing professional or objective observer who has seen enough proposals will acknowledge that some need substantial changes and others should not be built. Responsible development requires careful attention to both the needs of people who will live in a building and the concerns of people who will live around it. A developer’s assurances should not be accepted as a substitute for a sound plan, nor should the volume of objections compensate for deficits in substance.

Instead, an objection should begin a conversation about how to address a problem. Too often, it ends the conversation altogether. “Somewhere else” can sound like a reasonable solution until we recognize that the people somewhere else may offer precisely the same answer. The resulting unmet need is made of people – not numbers, not labels – and they are left knocking on the door of neighborhoods unwilling to acknowledge their presence.

For people of faith and goodwill, that should be unsettling.

The obligation to care for a neighbor cannot depend entirely on whether caring for that person leaves our own circumstances unchanged.

In the Good Samaritan’s story, responding to another person’s need required time, expense and continuing responsibility. In the Hebrew Scriptures, care for the stranger and the poor is woven into the obligations of community. This same call to the needs of the stranger is found too in the Quran – praising the people of Medina who welcomed migrants, placing the needs of newcomers above their own. Across faith traditions, these teachings ask the same thing of those who have the ability to help – to meet the unmet need of others.

Indeed, just a few days ago at the Maison Bakhita Support and Social Integration Centre in Paris on September 26^th, Pope Leo XIV observed that “the history of the Church and humanity is not written by those who give the impression of winning by imposing themselves and ‘dominating the room,’ but by those who ‘make room,’ initiate the process of peace, build trust and encourage life.”

Housing gives that obligation a particularly demanding form because it often requires us to share common spaces that we have come to consider our own. Here, the temptation to protect, to win, to dominate the room and the debate is strong. We may readily contribute to an organization that serves people in need – especially when that need is “not in my back yard.” Supporting affordable apartments, homeless shelters, or merely zoning changes to allow homes on smaller lots along the streets we walk – to literally “make room” – can require a more searching examination of our willingness to accept those same people as neighbors.

I do not think the useful response is to question anyone’s faith or presume to know their motives. But it is fair to ask whether our decisions are consistent with the concern for others that we profess, whether we have given the people affected a fair hearing, and whether we are bringing local solutions – or only local objections – to the table.

Elsewhere on Cape Cod, abutting neighbors showed what that approach can accomplish. When 46 affordable homes were proposed in Wellfleet in 2021, neighbors had legitimate concerns about traffic, lighting, trees and wastewater. They also recognized the unmet need for affordable housing and organized a gathering with the town’s housing task force to work through those concerns. The town planned a shared wastewater system for the housing and nearby public buildings, designed to reduce nitrogen pollution. The zoning board allowed a taller building to preserve more trees. Neighbors and local officials helped identify a pathway to “yes in my back yard.” By September 2026, all 46 affordable and attainable apartments were occupied. Seventy-two percent went to Cape Cod residents, and the new community includes 35 children. Those are people whose needs might otherwise have remained unmet. Existing neighbors helped make room for them by bringing a willingness to solve problems to the table.

We can all bring that YIMBY spirit into public decisions about housing. Attend a hearing with the intention of understanding both the proposal and the need it is meant to serve. Ask how concerns can be resolved and do the hard work of finding or forging a path to “yes.” Support a sound proposal publicly. If a particular project cannot work, ask what credible alternatives can meet the need, help identify options in a neighborhood where you are a stakeholder, and recognize that the interests of those in need are often not represented.

Within our faith communities, we can make housing a sustained part of our service and advocacy. We can listen to people facing housing insecurity, support organizations that provide homes, and examine whether our own land, buildings or professional skills might help. We can also look honestly at whether the positions we take as residents support the work we fund as donors.

Saying no may sometimes be the right decision. It should never allow us to stop thinking about the person who still needs a place to call home. If we believe shelter is a fundamental human right, inseparable from community and dignity, then our responsibility cannot end with an objection. We owe a serious effort to help answer the need. Our starting position should be Yes in My Back Yard.

Rob Brennan is a real estate and land use lawyer at Smolak & Vaughan LLP. His career has included work as a developer and as an in-house attorney and executive with a nonprofit affordable housing organization.