4 things every Nashville homeowner must know about proposed zoning

Article by Chris Remke, AIA (ret) • 4 minute read

Here are the four essential points every single-family and low-density homeowner should pay attention to:

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• Your street could be rezoned to allow apartment buildings and dense multi-unit rentals to be built right next to your home. The new plans aim to fundamentally change the character of single-family neighborhoods by allowing commercial-scale density (institutional owners).

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• Similar policies have a 15-year track record in Nashville of creating property tax explosions. The influx of dense, high-cost development drives up land values and tax assessments, increasing the financial burden on long-term residents and potentially pricing them out of their own homes. Historically, without subsidies for renters, the Missing Middle offers no affordability gain or improvement in Nashville or elsewhere.

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• The Missing Middle, as offered in the Housing and Infrastructure plan, is being sold as a "modest" solution for affordability, but the underlying zoning allows for commercial-scale development. Officials may talk about duplexes, but the actual legislation being pushed (RM40) permits up to 40 units per acre, a policy that primarily benefits developers, not working families.

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• The entire plan is justified by an exaggerated population forecast, putting every neighborhood "in play" for developers. This massive, city-wide "overzoning" creates constant speculative pressure on homeowners and destabilizes the future of your street, even before a single project is built. 

What is Metro Nashville’s Housing and Infrastructure Study?

• It is a marketing effort to sell Nashville on the "Missing Middle" housing concept, a national movement that consistently fails to deliver on its promise of affordability.

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• Its Core Flaw: 

  • Do we begin with a design solution or an economic strategy? Today’s “Missing Middle” cure-all wrongly applies a simple design concept to a complex economic problem.

  • The DADU Paradox, consider the "gentle density" of a backyard cottage, also known as a DADU (Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit). This design solution has the direct economic consequence of making homeownership more expensive. The policy primarily benefits the current property owner, who becomes a landlord, while the dream of homeownership moves further out of reach for average families. It proves, even at the most minor scale, that these policies make housing as an asset more expensive.

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• Nashville's 15-Year Experience: Since similar zoning reforms began in 2010, this strategy has produced negative results, including:

  • A property tax explosion for homeowners.

  • Widespread gentrification.

  • A glut of high-end apartments doesn't help working families.

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• The Current Danger: This isn't just a Nashville issue; it's a national playbook. In city after city, this same 'supply-side' story has been used to advance projects with the same empty promises. But we don't need to guess how this story ends, because we have 15 years of our own evidence right here in Nashville. Nashville's history demonstrates that this strategy leads to a property tax explosion, rapid gentrification, and an oversupply of luxury housing, rather than increased affordability. The most dangerous thing we can do is ignore our own lived experience and fall for the same slick marketing that has failed communities nationwide.

Broken down: 

• The Problem: Elected officials are pushing an affordability narrative that serves as a cover for introducing commercial-scale developers to your neighborhood. It's a system that facts show serves the top of the housing ladder and no one else.

The Housing and Infrastructure Study claims that mass-producing living units would create affordability for all. If that were the case, Nashville would have the cheapest prices in the country, given our decade of record-setting housing production.

After 15 years of record-breaking construction and building diversification, the only result is a glut of high-end living units.

• The Concern for Neighbors: Downtown is experiencing a glut; now, the way to create affordability is to add to it through the addition of multifamily housing to your neighborhood. So the Missing Middle solution is to bring that same top-of-the-market development to our single-family street, but it just doesn't pass the common-sense test. It's not a solution for affordability; it's a threat to our community's character.

• The Proof that this is about commercial scale, not modest affordability. They discuss duplexes, but the actual legislation they're advocating for is for RM40 zoning—the example is the live proposals in Council Districts 16 and 20. The "modest" rezoning provides a base of up to 40 units per acre. That's not a duplex; that's an apartment complex. A bait-and-switch is happening right now in places like District 16, and it serves as the blueprint for the entire city. In District 16, the proposal is to do nothing on the corridors but jump right into the neighborhoods. 

• What do Planners Say? They promise to provide 'design rules' to protect us, but those rules aren't even written yet, and that was also the promise in 2015. can say "tall skinny." They want us to trust bureaucrats to decide if a developer's application fits our street. This zone first and perfect later implementation targets the wrong problems and is more of the last 15 years. 

• So, what should leaders do? FULL STOP: Nashville needs to abandon this failed 'build-anything-anywhere' strategy. First, actually, engage and listen to your communities; the current process is a sales pitch dressed up as engagement. Put the right leaders in place; if leaders have to hire a consultant to help them engage, something is wrong. Listening to their constituents should be a minimum price of admission for elected officials. They need to focus on real solutions that create affordable for-sale homes and rentals for working families, not more luxury for-sale homes and rentals. 

• We urge everyone to explore our website and read the foundational information about the results of using the "Supply Side and zoning reform" Missing Middle template. While the consultant presentations feature attractive visuals, the actual results in the real world do not support the narrative.  

Appendix: 

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Conceptually, the H&I document proposes that all neighborhoods should experience a diverse range of housing types. Many homeowners live in T3-T4 areas; examples from the report are shown below.

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See https://publicinput.com/Customer/File/Full/3b191418-915a-4741-9911-98419b69cdb0 for the documents and more details.