Metro unveils 10-year strategy to ease Nashville's housing crunch
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Nashville needs 90,000 new homes over the next decade to keep pace with its surging growth.
State of play: The colossal need for affordable homes headlined the Unified Housing Strategy, which Mayor Freddie O'Connell unveiled Tuesday.
- Metro leaders billed the report as the city's 10-year road map to address its housing challenges.
The big picture: O'Connell is expected to make an aggressive investment in housing in his upcoming budget proposal this week.
- The city has committed $30 million to housing initiatives in recent budgets, but O'Connell's funding plan is likely to come in north of that figure.
What he's saying: O'Connell lauded the report for quantifying the city's pressing housing needs.
- "There isn't one single approach that is suddenly going to make the starter home in every neighborhood in the city something that is realistic, but we know if we get all of these things right we should start to see the pressure of the housing crisis come down," he said Tuesday at a press event.
Zoom in: The report aims to align all Metro agencies working on housing issues and identify strategies to ease the affordability crisis.
- O'Connell emphasized that the Unified Housing Strategy includes metrics to measure whether the city's approach is successful.
- "The (Unified Housing Strategy) is Metro's first comprehensive housing strategy that looks at the city's housing crisis from all angles — from how much housing needs to be created and preserved to particular challenges residents encounter in their housing journeys," Metro housing director Angie Hubbard said.
By the numbers: The strategy calls for 20,000 homes targeted at residents earning 60% of the area median income, which is $64,140 for a family of four or $44,940 for a single person.
Flashback: Nashville is no stranger to studies and reports about affordable housing. In 2021, the city released the Affordable Housing Task Force report.
- Earlier this year, Metro published the housing and infrastructure study, which showed that the typical Black and Hispanic family in Nashville can't afford the median-valued home in 99% of the city's neighborhoods.
Go deeper: Read the full Unified Housing Strategy.