On April 9th, ThinkTennessee had the privilege of convening mayors and planning staff from eight cities for a special roundtable discussion on housing and infrastructure challenges in Tennessee.
Seven Tennessee mayors participated in the initiative, including Mayor Freddie O’Connell of Nashville, Mayor Indya Kincannon of Knoxville, Mayor Paul Young of Memphis, Mayor Ken Moore of Franklin, Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Mayor Scott Conger of Jackson, and Mayor Paul Montgomery of Kingsport, as well as their accompanying staff.
The collaborative forum offered mayors an opportunity to identify common barriers, as well as share innovative strategies they are using in their communities to address the housing shortage and support their growing populations.
The mayors each shared a bright spot and a challenge happening in their respective communities. It was not surprising to hear that nearly all of them are excited about the growth occurring in their cities, but they are struggling to ensure that all residents are benefiting from that growth and preserving an affordable cost of living and high quality of life is particularly challenging.
Each mayor also had an opportunity to share a housing case study, and it was inspiring to hear the breadth and depth of innovative ideas and best practices being implemented across the state. From innovative, municipally funded housing production funds, task forces and roundtables with city officials and representatives from the home building industry to identify and address barriers, collaboration on adaptive reuse of large vacant properties, zoning and code reform for missing middle housing, programs to support faith-based institutional landowners in creating affordable housing, to municipal bonds to construct and preserve senior affordable housing, cities are working hard to build more housing for their communities. ThinkTN will be sharing these case studies soon as part of our new Case Study Catalog.
The event highlighted the value of ThinkTennessee’s commitment to bringing together stakeholders from across the state to address pressing policy issues facing Tennesseans, and we look forward to providing more of these opportunities for collaboration in the future. It is clear we agree on more than we disagree, and we can work together to solve the state’s most pressing challenges.
Later the same afternoon, ThinkTennessee also hosted “Breaking Ground: A Policy Discussion on Housing & Infrastructure” with a slate of experts who discussed potential policies and strategies to build more housing across the state. This event drew a diverse audience eager to address the state’s housing challenges. Dhathri Chunduru, Director of Research and Planning at the Tennessee Housing Development Agency (THDA) opened the event with an overview of the current housing market in Tennessee, laying out the challenges homeowners and renters are facing across the state.
Her presentation was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Adriane Harris, ThinkTennessee’s senior advisor on housing policy, where experts explored the biggest barriers to building more housing, addressing NIMBY-ism, and (differing) views on how to best fund the needed infrastructure to support new housing. In the 12 counties represented at the Mayors’ Roundtable, TACIR estimates $17.1 billion in needed transportation infrastructure from 2023-2028, let alone other infrastructure needed to support housing development. This issue will continue to be a hot topic for discussion.
We look forward to hosting similar events on other pressing policy topics in the future and continuing our mission to bring evidence-based pragmatic solutions to Tennessee’s most important challenges.
