Now Nashville Plans to Tackle its Housing Affordability Challenges

The Metro Nashville Affordable Housing Task Force, formed by Mayor John Cooper in January of 2021, has published a report detailing nine priority actions for addressing the rising cost of housing and shrinking supply of affordable housing in the city. The report aims to achieve significant progress on the city's housing affordability challenges by 2024.

"Nashville must quadruple its current annual affordable housing production by 2030 to meet projected needs and address the city's existing affordable housing deficit, the task force estimates," according to an article by Cassandra Stephenson that shares the news of the new report's findings.

The report suggests that local, state, and federal resources will be required to fix the shortage of affordable housing in the city, but there's plenty the city can do, like "creating a dedicated affordable housing department to track affordable units in the city; better using publicly-owned land and pursuing new revenue sources like increased sales tax in the tourism zone, increased hotel tax and higher short term rental fees."

According to a press release from the Mayor Cooper's office, the city has already acted on five of the report's nine recommendations, "including a plan to triple the number of dollars allocated to affordable housing in Nashville for the coming year."

The "Affordable Housing Task Force Report" [pdf] is available to read online.