A litmus test of the housing and Infrastructure (H&I) Study - March 2025

A document prepared for policymakers' consideration

Article by Christopher Remke, AIA [ret] • July 7, 2025 • 4 minute read

Quick guide for content that follows:

The H&I Study Misses the Real Target

The study acknowledges that it will primarily serve higher-income households (100–200% AMI), overlooking the thousands of lower-income families most severely affected by the crisis.

The Flawed Logic of "Outdated Codes"
Nashville’s and Tennessee’s zoning reforms legalized Missing Middle housing in 2010 and 2015, fueling a building boom that is now cited by national upzoning advocates, despite its role in gentrification and missed affordability goals.

The Study’s Core Promise: The Myth of “Filtering”

Filtering does not work in high-demand cities like Nashville; instead, we see upward filtering—displacement and luxury redevelopment, rather than affordability. You know filtering “down” does not work when you get gentrification.

The "Zone First, Remedy Later"

Infrastructure Gamble The plan upzones first and postpones infrastructure improvements, placing the burden on existing residents and risking unsafe conditions.

The Numbers Don’t Justify the “Crisis”

The need for 91,000 units is overstated. Nashville’s actual demand is closer to 40,000, and current zoning already allows for far more.

The Equity Argument is Missing Equity

The plan undermines communities of color who own the majority of single-family neighborhoods, contradicting its own data while claiming equity goals.

Conclusion: A Call for Real Strategy, Not Ideology

The H&I Study began with a politically and nationally popular narrative and attempted to justify its claims. The UHS offers a better path forward—strategic, local, bottom-up, and rooted in real need.

Nashville's great housing misdirection: a solution in search of a problem

Introduction:

Nashville faces a housing affordability crisis, but the proposed Housing and Infrastructure (H&I) Study is not the right solution. Marketed as a plan for affordability, the H&I Study is a developer-focused strategy that ignores the actual crisis among our lowest-income residents, is based on flawed economic theories, and uses misleading data to justify its existence.

The H&I Study misses the real target

Nashville's true housing crisis is for its lowest-income residents. The city's own Unified Housing Strategy (UHS) states that Nashville would benefit from adding "an additional 20,000 homes affordable to households earning 60% of the AMI or below", with the most significant "rental housing gaps are among the lowest-income households earning 30% of the AMI or below." However, the H&I Study explicitly targets the 100% to 200% AMI bracket, leaving the most severe needs unaddressed.

The flawed logic of "outdated codes" and the "missing middle"

A key claim of the H&I Study is that "outdated" zoning codes prevent development. This is contradicted by the fact that Nashville is currently setting national records for housing production. This boom proves our codes are not a barrier to building.

The "Missing Middle" concept is also presented as a new solution, which is misleading. Mid-scale housing was already permitted under Nashville's 2015 general plan. The real issue is not a lack of zoning, but a lack of incentives for developers to build this type of housing instead of more profitable luxury projects.

The myth of "filtering"

The study's core promise—that building expensive housing will cause older homes to "filter down" and become affordable—has been disproven in high-demand cities like Nashville. Over the last 15 years, zoning reforms have led to "upward filtering," also known as gentrification, where older, affordable homes are replaced with luxury units. This outcome is not theoretical; it is documented in the Unified Housing Strategy, which found that Nashville's market has put "pressure on these moderately priced units to become more expensive, removing the primary source of housing for low and moderate-income households."

The "zone first, remedy later" infrastructure gamble

The H&I Study proposes upzoning neighborhoods first, with only a vague promise to address the resulting strain on stormwater, streets, and schools later. This "zone first, remedy later" approach is a gamble with our neighborhoods' quality of life, leaving current residents to bear the costs of inadequate infrastructure.

The numbers do not add up

The study’s headline figure of 91,000 homes in need is not a demographic forecast but a "stress test" scenario based on what the city's own report calls an "aggressive population forecast." This figure is derived from a ten-county area and is based on total job growth, failing to account for the reality that nearly 56% of Nashville's workforce commutes from outside the county. When adjusted for this realistic local demand, the figure drops dramatically, revealing the crisis is not a lack of total projected units, but a mismatch between what is built and what residents need.

Want to see the data?

We tested the math behind the H&I study. When you isolate workforce households, remove speculative supply inflation, and factor in existing zoning capacity, the result changes everything. The full breakdown—including how the real target shifts from 91,000 to 15,756—is available in our companion brief:

For the full breakdown of the adjusted housing projections and a detailed test of the H&I math, see the companion piece Part 2.

The equity argument lacks equity

The H&I Study’s claim to advance equity is directly contradicted by its own data. Figure 18 of the study reveals that neighborhoods with a Black or Hispanic majority have a much higher percentage of their land zoned for single-family use (around 38%) compared to White-majority neighborhoods (19%). This means that a blanket policy to eliminate single-family zoning would not be an equalizing force; instead, it would disproportionately target the land in communities of color for redevelopment pressure. This risk is further exacerbated by the data in the city's other foundational report, the Unified Housing Strategy, which reveals that homeownership rates for Black (39%) and Hispanic (37%) families are already significantly lower than those for white families (62%). Taken together, the data from both reports prove that these communities are uniquely vulnerable, possessing less housing wealth while living on land that would be targeted most intensely by the proposed zoning changes.

Conclusion: a call for real strategy, not ideology

The H&I Study serves as a distraction from the data-driven solutions outlined in the Unified Housing Strategy (UHS). The UHS was a bottom-up, community-led effort, and its findings did not support the one-size-fits-all "Missing Middle" narrative that the H&I study relies on.

The H&I method appears to be a solution in search of a problem, adopted first and then "studied" to validate a preconceived conclusion. The path forward is through the strategic, data-driven methods of the UHS, which can deliver housing for our entire workforce while discouraging gentrification. Continuing with the H&I study's developer-focused approach guarantees failure for those who are most in need.

Permission is granted to Save Our Nashville Neighborhoods, Inc. to reproduce, distribute, and adapt this material for educational and advocacy purposes, with appropriate attribution. All other uses require written permission.

Visit www.sonninc.org to explore how Nashville's current approach to housing and zoning may be benefiting outside investors more than the longtime residents and working families who built our neighborhoods.

SONN offers a local perspective grounded in community voice. Rather than relying on broad, one-size-fits-all zoning reforms, SONN calls for focused, practical steps to preserve affordability and protect existing neighborhoods.

The website offers a neighborhood-level response to the city's Housing & Infrastructure Study, examining the data, claims, and the actual impact on residents.

If you care about what Nashville becomes — and who gets to live here — SONNinc.org is a good place to start.