The costs of growth and change in Nashville

Editor's note: This is Part I of the "Costs of Growth and Change in Nashville" series on the affordable housing crisis, which runs on the last Sunday of the month.

Nashville is growing and changing fast, and the nation has taken notice.

There are more and trendier restaurants, an abundance of things to do and a vibrant jobs market that allows people to move up or to reinvent themselves.

But for people who can no longer afford to live in Nashville because of the hot real estate market, the “it city" dream is elusive.

The displacement of people is a consequence of progress, but it is especially troubling in historically African-American neighborhoods near downtown where more affluent buyers and renters who can afford newer, more expensive and denser housing are moving in.

In neighborhoods such as Edgehill, East Nashville, Germantown, 12South and now Bordeaux, longtime property owners have been selling their homes, leading to the development of greater numbers of more expensive units on the land — yielding higher rents and home prices in now desirable areas of town.

Affordable housing for lower-income families is now in the suburbs, in places such as Antioch, Bellevue and Madison. In some cases, that is causing a concentration of poverty in outlying areas of the city.

Change and growth have been synonymous with the emergence of the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County Government, the union of city and county in 1962, which helped set Nashville apart from other cities in the post-World War II boom.

In an interview with author Andrew Maraniss for The Tennessean, former Mayor Karl Dean, who co-wrote with Michael Cass the 2016 book “Nashville: The South’s New Metropolis,” said:

“Nashvillians, if you look over the last 50 years, have periodically had to make big decisions, and we almost always make the decision to go forward. … And Nashville is a city that is being born all the time. And that’s what gives it its energy, its zest. And that means the best days are ahead.”

Growth patterns have changed over time with government policies and business investments affecting development of suburban areas and renewal of the urban core.

However, it should not be forgotten that Nashville was legally segregated during the Jim Crow era, limiting housing and schooling choices for black residents.

Inequality and inequity in Nashville are topics tackled by Columbia University assistant professor of history and education Ansley T. Erickson in her 2016 book “Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits.”

“The city hasn't learned from this long history,” she said in a telephone interview. “There's still been more investment in the idea of growth than in trying to address inequality. It's clear that there’s discrimination in urban Nashville.”

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry is developing a comprehensive strategy for affordable housing, which is a top priority for her administration.

"Government has to have the component of a safety net for the most vulnerable, but we also have to make sure that developers are building along transit lines, are building density that will include affordable and workforce housing, and I think that's where government has a role,” Barry said in an interview in her office.

While property rights limit government's ability to regulate development, the city can influence patterns of growth through incentives like the money from the Barnes Affordable Housing Trust Fund for nonprofit developers to create affordable housing options.

More than 100 affordable housing units have been built with help from the Barnes fund, far below 20,000 units requested by anti-poverty grass-roots organizations such as Nashville Organized for Action and Hope.

Illustrating the dire need for affordable housing is the number of proposals submitted recently for money from the $10 million available in the latest round of Barnes funding. About $30 million in requests were made to build, refurbish, rehab or acquire affordable units.

Clearly, the demand is high for housing that people can afford in Nashville.

Residents around Davidson County have been pressured by offers to sell their valuable land — in some cases, incessantly.

Sallie Dowell, 80, who has owned her Southside Avenue home in Edgehill for 45 years, has placed a sign on her house reading "This house is not for sale."

Dowell has received numerous offers by real estate agents to get her to sell her house.

"They don't want the homes anyway; they just want the property," she said. "That's all they want."

She will not budge. This is her home that she struggled for and the community that she treasures.

"I'm not going anywhere, but you don't have to sell your home if you don't want to. And I don't want to and I'm not going to," she said. "Where am I going? I'm too old to be trying to move. I worked too hard for this house.

"I'm not going anywhere until God comes to get me," Dowell said.

Meanwhile, Janice Key, who lives a quarter of a mile away from Dowell in a home she has owned since 1992 on Archer Street, is just waiting for the right offer.

"Buyers, investors, builders or just single people want to buy my home because of the area — because of the view," Key said.

"With the offers they are offering, I would like to see them make an offer that would help me — that I would benefit from to relocate so I can feel comfortable in my new place," she said.

Key is willing to move, but not to the suburbs where she will be away from the community she knows and treasures.

"My house is up for sale, but please look at my side of it," she said. "Make me an offer that I will feel comfortable in uprooting and moving somewhere else," she said.

"I feel I am being displaced, I am being pushed out by my home. I know property taxes are going to go sky high," she said. "It's going to hurt me and it's going to cost me to move."

Property taxes may force the hands of many longtime residents in Davidson County because 2017 is the quadrennial property reappraisal.

Gentrifying neighborhoods are among Nashville's fastest growing, and property owners in these high-value areas could be hit hard by higher tax bills that reflect today's values and not those of when residents first purchased their homes.

When the tax bill comes in October, they may have no choice but to sell.

In 2015 the Metro Planning Commission approved the NashvilleNext plan, a 25-year vision for the city, developed with community input from more than 18,000 residents.

They told planners that housing affordability was their No. 1 concern, and it was a key issue in the 2015 mayoral election.

In NashvilleNext’s first annual report, Planning Director Doug Sloan wrote: “As Nashville continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, we must be faithful in our actions to protect its unique beauty and culture.”

The declaration of “unprecedented” begs the question of whether fulfilling the promise of affordable housing to all Nashvillians in the midst of such rapid growth is even possible.

Affordability is traditionally defined by the federal government as not paying more than 30 percent of a household’s income in housing costs.

However, soaring housing prices have outpaced anemic wage growth in the post-Great Recession economic recovery.

The census reported that from 2011 to 2015, the average home price in the Nashville area was $167,500. That jumped to $266,408 in December 2016, according to monthly data tracked by the Greater Nashville Realtors.

In fact, Zillow has named Nashville the hottest real estate market in 2017.

Renters have felt the brunt harder with gross monthly rents at $872 between 2011 and 2015, per census data, but escalating to an average $1,396 in December 2016, according to the website RentJungle.

A drop in the poverty rate from 19.9 percent in 2014 to 16.9 percent in 2015 is a sign of displacement, Barry says.

Looking out for the “least among us” is the passion of the Rev. Bill Barnes, for whom the city’s affordable housing trust fund is named. As documented in Erickson’s book, Barnes fought for integration and against further concentration of poverty.

The octogenarian native Nashvillian has fought for fairness and equity in housing for decades, especially in the Edgehill neighborhood where he served as a pastor and neighborhood organizer.

He witnessed previous instances of displacement of low-income black residents, and those are mirrored in the current development boom.

What he sees is the “suburbanization of poverty” and the “homogenization” of neighborhoods, where poorer children have inequitable access to quality schools, transportation and opportunities.

"I think we're losing,” he said in an interview at his home. “We’re penalizing them.”

He laments seeing a racial resegregation of neighborhoods and schools because of the growth.

“We still don't want to be in a neighborhood where people are not like us,” he said.

There is no effort to slow down the pace of development in Nashville.

“There's a real downside to saying, 'I don't want growth,' ” Barry said. “People want neighborhoods to stop changing from the moment they get there.”

She pointed to the 92-year-old Belcourt Theatre in Hillsboro Village, which just recently underwent its first major renovation in almost half a century.

“Here is a piece of Nashville that has grown, changed and reimagined itself to what Nashville is now,” she said. “It's still the Belcourt — it's just adapted to that change. That's what Nashville has to do. We are going to change.”

Photographer George Walker IV contributed to this column.

Reach Opinion Engagement Editor David Plazas at dplazas@tennessean.com or 615-259-8063 and on Twitter at @davidplazas.

This is the first in a series of monthly columns on growth, housing, displacement and the future of Nashville’s neighborhoods.

Opinion Engagement Editor David Plazas and photographer George Walker IV are telling the stories of the community and individual residents.

We welcome topic ideas and are looking to interview people of diverse perspectives on this issue. Email us at dplazas@tennessean.com or gwalker@tennessean.com.