The Case for Housing: An Interview with Housing Now Nashville
The Case for Housing: An Interview with Housing Now Nashville
"It’s not the character of the neighborhood, it's the characters in the neighborhood that matter."
Later this week, on Thursday, August 3, 2023, Nashvillians will decide who will represent their district on the Metropolitan Council as well as At-Large council seats, the mayor, and vice mayor. Check any of the voting guides from Nashville media outlets and one issue that comes up again and again is housing affordability. I have frequently written about Nashville’s affordable housing crisis and the need to take a look at our land use regulations to make it easier to provide more homes for people in our city and around the country.
Fortunately, a group called Housing Now Nashville has begun to organize and advocate for housing reforms that will make Music City a more welcoming and affordable place to live. I interviewed the two leads for the group, Neil Kornutick and Jason Miller, about their thoughts on the housing crisis in Nashville and how they plan to mobilize for needed reforms.
Without further ado, here is that conversation:
Justin Hayes: It's in the name: Housing Now Nashville wants more housing in Nashville, and you want it now. But what are the benefits of building more housing?
Neil Kornutick: More housing being built helps to stabilize the market. Cities that have built more housing than peers have seen a lower rate of increase in their housing costs. From The Atlantic: “Studies show that when builders construct units in a given place, it reduces rents and sale prices in nearby blocks, as well as in nearby neighborhoods; conversely, restricting construction drives prices up.”
Justin: What do you say to those who think Nashville has had "too much growth" or "uncontrolled growth?"
Jason Miller: Primarily where people feel the growth pains in Nashville is in their bank account. American cities are struggling with a severe housing shortage since the 2008 crash. But we didn’t get here in just 15 years. Despite all of the development in this city, downtown Nashville still has fewer residents today than in 1940. In order to bring down rents and make home ownership in the city attainable, Nashville needs to produce 5000 additional housing units annually to make up for the shortage. Each year, we are failing to do that.
Neil: What Jason said about housing prices is absolutely the priority. We need the housing, and we are also not necessarily unique. Many cities have experienced a boom in population and investment. I will say that, for some, the impact that growth can have is difficult. Some of our newer housing stock has removed smaller, more affordable places and displaced long-term residents. We absolutely need a better plan to protect existing homeowners and tenants so they also get the benefits of growth. Those not displaced might be living next to loud and disruptive construction projects for long periods of time.
Justin: How can we fix zoning in Nashville and the city's overall system for approving more housing projects?
Neil: We actually have a very thoughtful and well-laid-out plan with NashvilleNext and a planning department that can help implement that vision and adapt to changing environments. It is not just dense housing on the pikes. It highlights the benefits of mixed-use projects within neighborhoods and building much more of our missing middle housing stock we so desperately need.
We need to empower our professional staff to do the work and remove the unnecessary veto points that are often created. We can include more form-based zoning across broader areas that would remove individual projects from taking up so much time. Right now we have a process where any rezoning requires first the council member buy-in, then neighborhood meetings, then planning 3 readings at Metro Council. Downtown has made this change, and we need to look hard at expanding it. We also need permitting reform to take the burden off our other departments. Builders are always willing to save time, and we should give them a path of hiring professional engineers to help with reviews.
Justin: If you could push a button (or let's say at-most 3 buttons) to enact policies to fix Nashville's affordable housing crisis immediately, what would you change, and why?
Jason: Fixing Nashville’s affordability crisis will take a concerted effort employing numerous remedies. In most of the county, housing options that are affordable for Nashville families and young people are banned. Legalizing these traditional, missing middle-density housing options county-wide is crucial. While simultaneously fighting the climate crisis, significantly increasing housing on our transit corridors is key to meeting the city’s new housing need and providing increased opportunity for Nashville’s working class to remain in Nashville, particularly as costs associated with commuting by car break people’s budgets. Meanwhile, Wall Street has turned standardized single-family homes into bundled financial products. Diversifying our housing stock will work to stabilize home prices and rents in Nashville and allow residents to finally come up for air.
Neil: Agree that there will be no one button to push. We each have different needs and wants. I think recognizing that is how we can help build more homes. For some specific policy ideas:
Legalize ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) in the UZO (Urban Zoning Overlay)
Upzone the entirety of the UZO to allow for more missing middle homes
Work with the state to allow for inclusionary zoning bonuses
Justin: What is Missing Middle Housing? Why do we need more of it?
Jason: Missing Middle Housing is a term that refers to a whole host of housing styles which were lost beginning in the 1940s as urban renewal, highway expansion, and post-WW2 suburban development radically reshaped cities. Much of America’s traditional buildings and homes have been lost to the bulldozer, and the city then added restrictive housing policies. Missing middle homes range from duplexes, triplexes, and quadruplexes to townhomes, courtyard and cottage homes, shotgun homes, small apartment buildings, and row buildings with apartments above local shops.
Legalizing our traditional styles of housing provides us with the opportunity to build a housing stock in Nashville that is attuned to the needs of working people, which raises city revenues without raising taxes on individual residents and helps to create the conditions for walkable and transit-oriented neighborhoods.
Neil: We are good at building single-family homes and large multi-family homes. We need to expand the portfolio of what can be built.
Justin: What are the most common objections to housing that you hear from Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) groups. Why are those arguments incorrect or misguided?
Neil: You can listen to opposition, and you will almost always hear the same types of arguments. This will cause traffic or flooding; there will be renters (both arguments about them paying too little or paying too much); or it will be too tall and not have infrastructure prebuilt. I look at these and just hope that people will remember they are opposing homes in their backyards. The start of that premise is they already have a home in an area that they clearly value. Saying no isn’t just saying no to some developer or banker, it's to someone who needs or wants a home in that area.
Jason: We know very well at this point that the best arrangement of cities and towns with respect to the climate crisis is one of denser, walkable, transit-oriented street networks. To accommodate the increased need for auto infrastructure that our current development pattern requires, more and more places, homes, and natural areas have to be bulldozed and replaced with more and more lanes and unwalkable neighborhoods with fewer homes. Building this way is detrimental to the environment, city budgets, the independence of elderly residents who no longer drive, the freedom of children to walk to friends’ houses safely, prohibitive for local small businesses, and much more.
Justin: Is there ever a right time to be a NIMBY?
Jason: It is normal to be more critical of construction and development that is taking place right next to where we lay our heads. Certainly, the residents of Murfreesboro have had a compelling argument for their quality of life living next to the biggest landfill in the state and will see it transition to a power plant by capturing the methane gas and burning it to generate energy. Tennessee’s own Rep. Justin Pearson made a big splash leading Memphis Community Against the Pipeline to fight against the Byhalia Pipeline that promised to severely threaten the Memphis Aquifer with contamination, which supplies uniquely clean water to over a million people. These efforts to fight industrial contamination in their backyards are honorable.
Neil: I think it is important to have these discussions on values before individual projects come up. What do you want your city to be known for and what are the things that will help us achieve that. Much of my comments on housing are often around our cities commitments to equity, transit and climate change. The movement of organized neighbors against things or environmental reviews has a real history. Many of our Nashville neighborhoods had a highway built through them instead of those who had the political power to oppose it. Most housing projects are not that, but we can continue to look with a critical eye at projects that pollute or disrupt natural resources.
Justin: Is there a city we should model Nashville after? How so?
Neil: Again, there is no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all policy. We also do not need to reinvent the wheel. A fun thing to do is go look at planning reports or transportation policy initiatives in other cities. They all say the same things because they are often using the same policy consultants. We know how to do all of this stuff, we just need to start implementing the plans we have and then adjusting as we learn more. Cities like Minneapolis or Portland have done a great job on changing their zoning. States have passed broad laws to help nudge cities along. Places like California and Montana are making big strides recently.
Justin: Besides fixing our housing issues, what else can the city do to make it more friendly, inclusive, and modern?
Neil: Many of us came to this path on housing by being in the transportation advocacy space. Transit, walking, and biking are absolutely part of the housing policy discussion. We need to be able to get to the places we live, work, worship, play, and learn safely and efficiently. It helps to have them close by. I do think, as a young parent, we should think through what makes suburbs so attractive and build that into our cities. Where can kids and parents safely go play? How do we create the best neighborhood schools?
Justin: Is promoting more housing a bipartisan issue? If not, should it be?
Both: Every family has a story of struggling to afford rent, living in the same neighborhood as their loved ones, or failing in a bidding war with Wall Street investment firms when buying a home. As our parents and grandparents reach their senior years, they are running headfirst into an unprecedented housing shortage for smaller homes and at the same time, backyard cottages (also known as Granny Flats or Accessory Dwelling Units) are quite rare. Because many of the same barriers for housing have shaped the business environment, there are stories of businesses being denied expansion of their footprint due to minimum parking requirements despite the lot never being full or when they share a lot with a business that has customers at opposite times of the day (i.e., an office next to a pub or a bakery next to a gym). Car-dependent commercial areas made separate from residences have mandated every florist and toymaker become skilled at online marketing or else go bankrupt.
Citizens who are especially concerned about equity and a fair shot at life are surprised that the development patterns with traditional multi-family homes and townhomes in the poorest residential neighborhoods actually subsidize the suburbs with more middle income and affluent residents. Of course, we know which communities get the most amenities. Citizens who are especially concerned with fiscal responsibility are often surprised to learn how wasteful cities are with our tax dollars by permitting these suburbs to be built. This is a glaring liability when our shared infrastructure has deferred maintenance year after year while basic services go underfunded.
Both red and blue states have been making housing a priority. California, New York, Oregon, Montana, Texas and Florida have all passed, or come very close to passing, broad housing reforms. I think we can do this in Tennessee as well. It is a problem that impacts us all and we need solutions from everyone.
Justin: Who is the most pro-housing candidate in Nashville's Mayoral race, and why?
Neil: I have been pleased to hear that most of the major candidates are centering housing affordability, permitting reform and transit in their plans. I think we all have our personal opinion on who would be best but have not as an organization made an endorsement.
Justin: What are Housing Now Nashville's upcoming goals, events, and initiatives?
Neil: Our goals broadly are to help get more housing built and the people involved in that process. We will be scheduling out monthly meetings to include a social meeting, council or planning commission actions, and group meeting.
Justin: Is there anything else readers should know?
Neil: I hope the message is that there is always work to do and problems to solve. Get involved with something in your community. We are here to help welcome new neighbors to Nashville and working to keep those that are already here. It’s not the character of the neighborhood, it's the characters in the neighborhood that matter.
You can become involved with Housing Now Nashville by signing up at HousingNowNash.org or by following along on Twitter (@housingnownash), Instagram (@housing_now_nashville) or Facebook.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.