mick in nashville

Why Nashville Needs a Housing Trust Fund

2008-01-21T11:27:00.000-06:00

This is something we put together back in '06 but it still covers the main points.

Homelessness and Low-Income Housing

2008-01-09T14:33:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I was generously lent an Urban Economics text book by Prof. Malcolm Getz of the Economics department here at Vanderbilt. I found this interesting tidbit about how the availability of low-income rental housing is directly related to the rate of homelessness:

"a 10% increase in rent on low-quality housing increases the homeless rate by 12.5%." (O'Sullivan, 2003, pg 461)

Basically, as the cost of low-income housing goes up, the homelessness population increases at an even faster rate.

Framed another way, this suggests that if we could lower the cost of Nashville's low-income housing by 10% we could reduce homelessness by 12.5%.

Creating a Housing Trust Fund

2007-10-20T14:08:00.000-05:00

Here is a recent article by Mary Brooks, the national expert on Housing Trust Funds, that was published in Shelterforce. Mary goes over 6 key aspects of a successful HTF campaign. It is certainly worth a look.

Blog about this summer's mayoral forum

2007-10-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

I came across this looking for the video of Dean's closing remarks at the Mayoral Forum.

Powerpoint from Affordable Housing Forum

2007-10-18T17:07:00.000-05:00

Here is the powerpoint presentation given by Loretta Owens at the Mayoral Forum on Affordable Housing.

Renters and Owners in Davidson County

2007-10-18T16:41:00.000-05:00

This is probably my favorite depiction of housing in Nashville. We worked on this for many weeks trying to get it just right.

Action Research Maps

2007-10-18T16:08:00.000-05:00

here is a great bunch of maps and other info that Josh Bazuin, Emanuel Gunn, Daniel Leland, Jill Robinson, & Benjamin Siankam in Prof. Susan Saegert's Action Research graduate seminar put together. They describe it as a work-in-progress; Prof Saegert summarized the early findings this way:

The big picture issues seem to be the increase in the population below the poverty level, the increase in foreign born and Latino populations. On the housing front, units of owner occupied housing have increased more in sync with population increases but rental units have not.

Info Sheet

2007-10-18T15:33:00.000-05:00

Here is the handout that was given out at the Mayoral Forum on Affordable Housing.

Graph "3" with the income distribution of Davidson County tells a pretty interesting story.

Thanks again to Paul and Loretta from the Housing Fund for their support in creating this handout.

Karl Dean on Housing on Camera

2007-10-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

Here is Karl Dean's closing remarks at the Mayoral Forum on Affordable Housing.

Not enough low-income rental units

2007-10-18T14:58:00.000-05:00

This is one of the more powerful graphs I have made. It shows the amount renters at each income level (in the solid orange) and the amount of units available that are affordable at that income level (gross rent=30% of that income level). The dotted gray line represents the amount of units rented in 2000 the solid gray line shows the amount of units in 2005.

Basically, what it shows is that if everyone lived in housing that was just "affordable" to them (they pay exactly 30% of their gross income on housing), that in 2000 there would have been a shortfall of 12,000 units. Further, it shows that things have gotten worse since then. In 2005, there was a projected shortage of over 17,000 affordable rental units. We know that, actually, things are worse than this, because some higher income people are paying less than 30% of their income on housing, further reducing the availability of rental housing for low income families.

Thanks to the Housing Fund, Inc. for their help in refining this graph with me.

This Blog

2007-10-18T14:01:00.001-05:00

I have decided to try and start blogging about housing issues in Nashville. Hopefully this will create a forum to share thoughts and ideas about housing issues, especially about access to housing, as they come up from time to time. I think I will start by putting up some graphs I made, some of these were co-created with The Housing Fund, Inc. over last summer, others were created for fun or for specific projects I have been working on. I hope they are interesting.

Anyway we will see how long this lasts.

Cheers,
Mick