Policy Expert: Nashville Must Move Urgently, Methodically On Affordable Housing

About 50 of Nashville’s most important players in housing development heard an urgent message last night: The city can’t delay in creating more affordable units. 

But exactly how to do it could require a compromise that’s acceptable among developers, activists, and elected officials. A stakeholder group will hold several discussions that will inform the Metro Planning Department, which must recommended a city policy before a January deadline.

Metro hired
Denver-based planning expert David Schwartz, with Economic and Planning Services (EPS) to study
the affordability of housing in Nashville and he came up with a cascade of statistics. Boil them down: the city is as hot an any he’s seen.

“There are so many people who want to move here it’s placing a tremendous amount of pressure — it’s really burdening the community,” he said. “In some ways, the development community can’t build units fast enough.”

From that starting point, Schwartz explained that home prices are rising much faster than incomes. From 2002 to 2014, the increase in cost of all goods was 37 percent, while incomes rose 28 percent (after dipping for a few years).

More:
View the entire presentation (PDF)

In the next three months, Schwartz and
the 50-member team will discuss how to respond before city planners settle on language..

Technically, the
Metro Council ordered planners to hammer out the specifics of “inclusionary zoning.” That’s a policy that usually forces developers to include some low-cost homes or apartments in every project. The idea has
propelled several community meetings and
factored into the mayor’s race. Mayor Megan Barry, while on the council,
voted in favor of exploring such a policy.

But in the first meeting, Schwartz was cautious about focusing on a single policy.

“No options are really off of the table at the moment,” he said. “Inclusionary zoning is a solution. And there are other solutions.”

He said there’s
widespread agreement that Nashville has an affordability problem, but there could pushback if the government is too hasty to add a requirement on developers. Another option is offering them incentives, so he’ll be studying that as well.

Affordable housing advocates also want a rule that applies to all of Davidson County, but Schwartz wouldn’t commit to that, suggesting that conditions are so varied across the large county that city rules could be more nuanced.

“We’re in the business of finding common ground,” he said.