- Mayors across America have identified housing as their top priority, both in blue and red cities nationwide.
- The major presidential candidates both support platforms to increase housing supply, but they approach the problem differently.
- Nashville provides a case study for making some incremental progress. However, residents must consider changing attitudes about zoning policies that keep too many middle class people out.
Municipal mayors across America say housing is the most pressing problem facing their cities today.
There has been some progress over the years with public-private partnerships to create more affordable options and one presidential candidate pledges to build millions more units of new housing.
The problem cannot be solved, however, without a mindset change about the United States' traditional and steadfast acceptance of exclusionary housing.
In short, Americans tend not to want neighbors living next to them who cannot afford the present cost of homes in their communities.
But here’s a reality check: Those costs have gone haywire.
The last four years have dealt a blow to residents’ aspirations of achieving the American dream.
A pandemic, inflation and 23-year-high federal interest rates have erased many citizens’ chances at entering the housing market.
Consider: Zillow, the technology real estate company, reported that in 2020, a household making $59,000 a year could afford the average U.S. house. Today, that has jumped to $106,000 – a 79% hike. Meanwhile, the median income dropped by 2% to $74,580 from 2020 to 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
At the same time, digital real estate company Redfin recently reported that Nashville households need to make $124,000 annually to afford the average home in the region. The median income in Nashville is $71,767.
That means that for all but the affluent, home ownership is out of reach.
The stakes are high for even existing homeowners
Middle class Americans who were able to buy a house before 2020 are stuck in their homes because, for many, selling would mean giving up a low interest rate and perhaps not making enough money from the sale to afford another home in the same or a similar neighborhood.
They bought what former Metro Nashville Council Member Nancy VanReece called “pre-existing affordable housing” during a July 9 community meeting about Nashville-Davidson County’s Unified Housing Strategy.
This has implications for a diverse group of people, among them:
- employers trying to retain and recruit talent to the workforce, competing against more affordable cities
- retirees and empty nesters looking to downsize
- young adults who are extending their time living with parents to scrape enough money to live on their own
- every-day Americans contending with lower credit scores, high college debt, and other expenses or barriers that limit how much they can spend
- people struggling to live paycheck to paycheck who may be one emergency away from homelessness.
A record number of Americans have experienced homelessness in 2023, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Government officials can enact and execute policies from the top-down, but it takes community buy-in.
Reread:'Costs of Growth and Change in Nashville' series
Neighbors need to agree that there is a benefit to building different types and prices of homes in neighborhoods near jobs, transportation options, and a decent quality of life.
And then they need to tell and encourage their local officials to act.
Mayors want the next president to making housing a top priority
On Aug. 19, at the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the U.S. Conference of Mayors held a news conference about the housing crisis.
"Our goal is to try to have whoever the next president is act within their first hundred days,” said Columbus, Ohio Mayor and U.S. Conference of Mayors Chairman Andrew Ginther. “[The proposed legislation] will ask for a direct federal investment into local communities to dramatically increase the amount of supply of housing units in cities across America.”
Asked by The Tennessean for his response, Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell released this statement:
“We know that the greatest challenge of creating affordable housing is cost – materials, labor, infrastructure. And the overall cost of living that goes alongside it once someone is in a home – healthcare, childcare, groceries, transportation.
"When our federal partners jump in to help us with any type of supply, subsidy, or support for people being in a home, we strengthen the tools in our toolkit that let us build housing that's more attainable for Nashvillians," he added.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors event took place just a few days after Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris released details about her economic agenda during at a rally in North Carolina.
On the housing front, that includes $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time home buyers and creating a $40 billion pot of money to incent builders to construct 3 million units of housing a year – about double the current annual production, per U.S. Census records.
The Republican Party Platform, which former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump adopted as his campaign's platform, also calls for lowering the costs of housing. The proposal includes reducing mortgage rates, opening limited portions of federal land to housing construction, creating tax incentives for first-time home buyers and cutting "unnecessary" regulations.
Amazon's affordable-housing development:Amazon Housing Equity Fund opens for developer applications in Nashville
Housing production slowed after the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and much of the multifamily construction focused on the luxury market – 93% of new apartments in Nashville were luxury builds, for example.
Divisive NEST rollout still leads to a zoning reform change
More housing supply is needed, but the question is, where will it go?
An effort to change the conversation on housing took place earlier in 2024 with the introduction in the Metro Council of the Nashville’s Essential Structures for Togetherness legislation.
NEST, a series of ordinances which sought to update the zoning code, received angry pushback from vocal residents who do not want, for example, duplexes or triplexes in neighborhoods zoned as single-family only. Critics felt city leaders were moving too fast.
NEST proved divisive in its initial execution. The group Save Our Nashville Neighborhood recently formed to fight back against NEST out of fears that the legislation will return.
Local elected leaders are now acting more slowly and deliberately to advance measures related to spurring housing supply growth.
On July 18, the Metro Council passed, by a vote of 27-7, one of the most significant housing bills in the last two decades.
BL2024-187 allows for residences to be built in commercial business and shopping districts.
“The impetus is the housing crisis in the city,” District 20 Council Member Rollin Horton said in an interview. “We’re not building near enough housing in the city.”
Horton was one of the bill sponsors and a longtime proponent of amending the city’s zoning code.
He said the legislation allows for expanding the footprint of housing construction, creates residences close to commercial amenities, and does not affect residential zoning districts.
Residents across America can only ignore housing needs for so long
In March, the National Housing Conference held a board retreat in Nashville to discuss its future housing policy strategy over the next three years. Among its Board of Governors members is Ralph M. Perrey, executive director of the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, who serves as vice chair.
At that time, I spoke with NHC President and CEO David M. Dworkin who said housing accessibility is an issue unifying Democrats and Republicans alike because both blue and red communities are struggling with the rising cost of living.
“Restrictive zoning is the last bastion of bipartisan politics,” Dworkin said. “You see it as much in red cities as in blues: ‘We support affordable housing, but not in my neighborhood’.”
While NHC is involved in federal policy pushes, the organization is also urging local communities to take meaningful steps for the sake of their current and future neighbors.
“We are talking about people who work with us,” Dworkin said. “How far do we want them to live? Stop demonizing low-income housing.
“If you don’t want affordable housing in your backyard, you better be prepared for homelessness in your front yard.”
And more and more Nashvillians feel disconnected from the city’s prosperity.
The one-year-old Imagine Nashville community engagement initiative surveyed 10,000 residents to help assess their opinions about the city’s challenges
While nearly two-thirds of Nashvillians are positive about the city, 57% of low-income families feel “left out or excluded from the opportunities and benefits of living here.”
'Imagine Nashville':Uniting residents to create a vision for the city
Forty-six percent of Nashville households earn $50,000 annually or less, which, remember, is half as much as needed to afford the average home in America today.
At the same time, 72% of Imagine Nashville survey respondents said they see “a growing divide between rich and poor” and think leaders do not focus enough on residents’ needs.
Nashville residents say they could not afford their neighborhoods today
When Metro’s Housing Division held its Unified Housing Strategy community meeting at the downtown Nashville Public Library in July, residents, including current and former Metro Council members, shared their stories.
Many talked about being priced out of Nashville, of being “stuck in place” or of being afraid to fall into homelessness.
Others echoed a sentiment I have heard for some time in Nashville – that they could not afford to buy a home in their neighborhoods today.
City leaders are encouraging residents to take a survey to help them in their charge to ensure that “every Nashvillian has housing security.”
The survey originally was set to close on Aug. 31, but the deadline has been extended to Sept. 27. (Print readers can find the survey link in this column on Tennessean.com/opinion).
The meeting was informative in that it showed attendees that state and local laws tie the hands of city officials on issues including zoning requirements, private home sales, rent control, tenant protections and mandatory inclusionary zoning, which would have required developers to build a certain percentage of affordable housing in exchange for zoning variances or changes.
The Tennessee General Assembly has preempted several local ordinances over the years related to housing.
However, earlier this year lawmakers passed and Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a measure that would allow local governments to issue bonds through industrial development boards to create workforce housing projects via public-private partnerships.
Senate Bill 1137/House Bill 1229 was sponsored by two Democratic legislators representing portions of Nashville-Davidson County: Sen. Charlane Oliver of District 19 and Rep. Caleb Hemmer of District 59.
That’s another tool in the box for cities.
So, what can ordinary citizens do?
Attend neighborhood association events, sign up for their council member’s newsletters, go to municipal and community meetings, become more informed, advocate for good policy solutions at the state legislative level, and speak up.
If Nashville wants to continue to be known as a welcoming and inclusive city, it is going to take every-day action by ordinary citizens.
Resources and upcoming community meeting
- Nashville Organized for Action and Hopehosts a community meeting with the city’s housing division on Saturday, Sept. 7, at the chapel of 15thAvenue Baptist Church, 1203 9thAve. N. 37208. Emailacarter@noahtn.orgfor more information.
- Learn about the work of the Alliance for an Affordable Housing, a coalition of partners, including nonprofit developers and lenders, which held a housing summit at Belmont University in May.
- Read about the Barnes Housing Trust Fund, named after the late Rev. Bill Barnes, and started by former Mayor Karl Dean in 2013 with a $2.7 million investment. Over the last 11 years, the Barnes Trust Fund has spent $108 million for nonprofit developers to build and preserve affordable housing and has leveraged its funding to bring in $1 billion of federal and private funding to build nearly 5,000 housing units. Mayor O’Connell added $30 million for the Barnes Fund in the city’s 2024-25 operating budget. In August, his office released a series of accomplishments on the housing front during his first year in office including that:
- The city won a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to partner with faith communities on building and preserving housing
- Metro Council approved an agreement with The Fallon Company to build on the East Bank development 695 affordable units that will remain affordable for 99 years
- The Nashville Catalyst Fund totaling $75 million was created to offer affordable housing developers fast and flexible loans to help build 3,000 more units over the next decade
- This fall, $50 million in Barnes Funds grants will create and preserve more than 1,000 homes for vulnerable residents and for the first Metro-funded housing cooperative
- More than 1,900 unhoused Nashville residents entered into housing
David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee. He isan editorial board member of The Tennessean. He hosts theTennessee Voices videocastand curates theTennessee VoicesandLatino Tennessee Voicesnewsletters. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him atdplazas@tennessean.comor find him on X at@davidplazas
