In Silicon Valley’s unaffordable real estate market, even God could use a tax break

Choosing a religion is a matter of the spirit, but finding a place to worship is very much a matter of this world — and in Silicon Valley, that means contending with a notoriously brutal real estate market that can tax even churches’ coffers.

But religious groups that own or lease land — everyone from Anglicans to Zoroastrians — get a significant break: they don’t have to pay property taxes. In the valley, those groups got more than $1.4 billion in tax exemptions for 838 parcels of land in 2019...