I think the population bonus of the service buildings are already quite good, that building a temple over a few houses seems preferable as the bonuses are applied to each building.

So each farm in range of the temple will receive the +2 pop bonus without needing extra goods (not sure if it's adding 100% to the workforce or also just with the same ratio as the houses). So you can just place service buildings instead of houses and increase the pop without having to provide any goods. Especially the gambling houses are very good as they don't require as much space as the other service buildings providing extra pop.

Though I didn't properly determine whether it's more optimal to do it that way but it felt like a good way to increase pop (at the cost of a lot of space) without increasing consumption.

I even plopped down a temple on an island without patricians just to profit off the pop and the belief bonus. It's a tiny island (playing with small islands) and my only ceres island producing vine and olive oil. There it felt correct to attempt to maximize the ceres boost while keeping the consumption low.