Solving Nashville’s housing challenge: a strategy built on evidence, not ideology
Article by Christopoher Remke, AIA [ret] • 0 minute read
Nashville's Planning Department is proposing significant zoning updates that, according to the Housing and Infrastructure (H&I) Study, are intended to affect every neighborhood in the long term. For residents asking the most critical question—"Does this affect me?"—the answer is an unequivocal yes.
At this moment, therefore, we are compelled to ask a more fundamental question. Before we can debate the details of any new zoning plan, we must first agree on the correct strategy. A proper strategy begins not with a predetermined solution, but with an honest, evidence-based diagnosis of the problem.
Fortunately, Nashville has already done this hard work. The city's own Unified Housing Strategy (UHS) is that genuine diagnosis. It is a true, community-based, and place-led strategy, created through a multi-year effort that brought together thousands of residents, local stakeholders, and housing experts. It clearly and definitively identifies Nashville’s crisis: a 20,000-unit deficit for our lowest-income families.
Inexplicably, the "Missing Middle" solutions presented in the Housing & Infrastructure (H&I) Study ignore this foundational strategy. Instead, the H&I Study offers a collection of pre-packaged tactics—an ideology—that, according to its own financial analysis, delivers market-rate housing for households at 100-200% of the Area Median Income. This stands in direct contrast to the UHS, which documents that Nashville's actual crisis is a 20,000-unit deficit for families earning less than 60% AMI. It is a plan of details without an honest strategy, built on the flawed hope that benefits will trickle down to those in need.
Nashville at a Crossroads: A Choice Between Evidence and Ideology
Pitches polished by their benefactors for 20 years have crowded out simpler truths. The following recommendations are not sales slogans. They are the specific, measured principles that emerge from the Unified Housing Strategy—the actions Metro could take today to solve our real crisis, starting where the need is greatest.
1. Start at the bottom
Build and preserve housing for the people most in need first. Our essential low-income families are not the last step in a long chain—they should be the first.
➤️ The current plan starts at the top and hopes benefits will eventually "filter down"—a theory the city's own Unified Housing Strategy (UHS) data debunks, documenting that Nashville instead experiences "upward filtering" that fuels gentrification. Beginning at the bottom, as proposed by the locally developed UHS study, will provide more immediate results for middle- and low-income families.
This 'bottom-up' approach is the core of the UHS—a plan built with local stakeholders to solve Nashville's specific needs. The UHS operates on the principle that this is the most efficient path to results, a belief supported by professional standards, like those from the American Planning Association, which confirm that place-led strategies yield the best outcomes.
2. Protect vulnerable communities
Low-income families, along with Black, Hispanic, and other historically marginalized groups, hold the most significant stake in the single-family neighborhoods targeted. Real equity starts by protecting—not displacing—them.
➤️ Missing Middle policies claim to promote equity, but they actually increase property capacities (densification), resulting in new redevelopment sites and triggering gentrification in the very neighborhoods where these families live. The H&I Study's data shows that Black and Hispanic households have a greater proportional share of land zoned single-family (RS) than their white counterparts.
3. Stop subsidizing what the market already serves
The market already builds for 100–200% AMI households. The city's data shows a surplus of housing in this segment. We do not need more incentives for a market that can help itself—we need policies that address the actual gap for those who need assistance today.
➤️ The proposed rezoning gives windfall value to developers while producing homes priced far above what struggling families can pay.
4. Recognize the "Workforce Housing" Claim is a "Drop in the Bucket
The "Missing Middle" plan is not a true workforce housing solution. According to the city's own data, the whole workforce housing bracket (60-120% of the Area Median Income, or AMI) represents over 92,000 households. The H&I Study's proposals, which begin serving households at 100% AMI, target only the wealthiest 21% of this group. In reality, because these reforms fuel expensive new development in a gentrifying market, they create a windfall of housing for the highest-income residents while leaving the vast majority of our essential workforce behind.
➤️ This is not a serious workforce housing strategy; it is a claim designed to provide political cover for a market-rate development plan.
5. Zoning Changes Must Guarantee Affordability
Zoning is not a moral instrument; misused, it becomes a power structure. Using it to unlock profit without affordability guarantees harms more than it helps.
➤️ In Nashville, the process marketed as "filtering" does not bring prices down—it drives them up. In reality, older affordable homes are flipped, demolished, or replaced by more expensive ones. We call this: gentrification.
6. Use the city's strategy promoted by the Unified Housing Strategy (UHS)
Nashville's Unified Housing Strategy (UHS) already identified the real need: a 20,000-home deficit for households earning 60% of AMI or less. This plan prioritizes those earning under 60% of AMI and shows us exactly where to begin.
➤️ The city paid for the UHS plan, gathered the data, and then ignored it in favor of a political narrative crafted to justify upzoning, rewards for developers, and the advancement of a national ideology at the expense of local needs.