NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Metro Nashville's growth has spurred an economic boom, but it's now placing pressure on the city to address the housing demand.
New data shows land used by colleges, universities, churches and health care institutions could help in the housing shortage.
To meet housing demands, the city’s Affordable Housing Task Force estimates that Nashville must add over 53,000 new housing units by 2030, 18,000 of which would need to be affordable to households earning below 80% of the area median income.
Investors and developers are responding to the challenge by pouring money into new affordable housing, but Urban.org released a report to consider another option that Nashville could pursue to make more land available for affordable housing: facilitating housing development on land belonging to institutional landowners like churches, higher learning institutions and health care institutions.
Their data shows between those three groups up to about 5,500 units could be constructed on parcels under current land availability and zoning laws. If those were subdivided, they could accommodate over 14,000 new units.
Over 10,000 would come from land owned by faith-based institutions.
Researchers say something has to be done to address housing needs as Nashville faces state preemption on affordable housing efforts, which limits its ability to apply policy tools and incentives like inclusionary zoning.
We could see this affordable housing issue grow as the Midstate continues to grow.
