Nashville's Housing Affordability Crisis

"The affordable housing crisis has grown more severe in Nashville over the last year," reports David Plazas, who is covering the housing beat in Nashville for the ongoing "Costs of Growth and Change" series for the Tennessean.

The latest article serves as kind of a summary for what Plazas has learned while covering housing for the newspaper.

Despite public outcry, investment and good intentions by area leaders, a confluence of events has created an even more acute problem for those left out of Music City’s prosperity.

Scarcer inventory of homes; rising interest rates; population growth that is inflating home prices and rents; and relatively stagnant wages, especially among lower-income residents, are at the heart of the problem.

In addition, some people are still recovering from the effects of the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis, while newer factors such as tariffs on lumber, worker shortages and rising costs of supplies are exacerbating the issue.

The feature length article goes into detail on some of the specifics in Nashville, places the city's situation in context of national research like the recently released State of Housing report by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies.