Today’s Field Note is simply to recommend some timely reading about a vital and very large policy issue in Nashville: What to do about the lack of affordable housing across the city.
It’s a column over on Tennessean.com, by David Plazas. It conveys (as most daily news coverage cannot) the Big Picture of what has happened to housing affordability in this time of otherwise booming economic conditions in Tennessee’s capital city.
You will learn the relevant history and, in summary, the “Ten Questions” that, David insists, Mayor John Cooper’s new affordable housing task force must commit itself to answering.
Part of our history is how complexity has often been the enemy of progress. But wise planners can give such a task good order, set firm priorities for the path forward, and indeed “move the needle” on progress that Nashvillians need. That has happened successfully before, when good leadership has been in the mix.
This new opportunity puts me in mind of the “Housing Action Team” that was assembled here during the Mayor Phil Bredesen administration of a generation ago.
Out of that came important visionary work for the city. It included creation of the Nashville Housing Fund (now called The Housing Fund, because its footprint has since grown far beyond the county line). Among other things, the Fund has leveraged literally millions of dollars in furtherance of home ownership for low-income folks.
Keel Hunt is a regular columnist for The Tennessean, frequent photographer and travel aficionado… and recently the author of his second book "Crossing the Aisle: How Bipartisanship Brought Tennessee into the 21st Century and Could Save America," debuting this October.
