Nashville Is Booming. Locals Fret About Their Future in Music City.

[Continential]

https://www.wsj.com/economy/nashville-oracle-music-city-boom-2ec2e3d2
https://archive.is/HZOb8

NASHVILLE, Tennessee—Remacia Smith watches her children play in a grassy park by the Cumberland River, not far from where software giant Oracle said last week it would base its new headquarters. It is bittersweet—her hometown is thriving, but it has reached a point where it no longer works for her.

With skyrocketing housing prices in the city, Smith recently fled to the suburbs. It is where she could find a home she could afford for her and five children.

“It almost doesn’t look like Nashville anymore,” she said, as she watched her children frolic in the same park where she played as a child. “Whew Lord, I wish people would stop moving here.”

That is unlikely.

Oracle’s move from trendy Austin, Texas, marks the latest corporate win for Middle Tennessee, a booming region with Nashville at its heart. The area has spent decades trying to draw major corporations and workers to the area. Now, many Nashvillians, from political leaders to residents, are talking more about how to grapple with all of its success.

Looking forward to a Democratic Tennessee

[Progressive Pessimist]

Don't get your hopes up.

Maybe Ogles could lose at best.

[Yoda]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

[omar04]

I'm skeptical that Nashville suburbs will push Tennessee left in the short or medium term. There's a current thread in the demographics forum discussing this:

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=590554.0

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

It’s happening everywhere. Here too. Charleston and Nashville has a lot of similarities except Nashville is bigger and has more country music. A lot of our restaurants here have opened locations in Nashville.

Also like Nashville, we are facing poor infrastructure, a huge housing shortage, skyrocketing rents near the levels of cities like New York and Chicago, but our state government does nothing about it. Oh well.

[dead0man]

I worry for the day I read this story about Omaha.  Thankfully the cold (or at the least idea of it) keeps most of the weak away.

[Del Tachi]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

[Del Tachi]

I worry for the day I read this story about Omaha.  Thankfully the cold (or at the least idea of it) keeps most of the weak away.

I'm thankful this will never happen in New Orleans. It is simply too difficult to live here!

[Tintrlvr]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Because there are very strong and influential anti-development forces at work that will always win out until the pressure from rising prices is too great for politicians to stop siding with them.

[dead0man]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do. 

to be fair, sometimes local govts do waste a lot of money putting a small dent in the problem.  New affordable housing community coming to downtown Lincoln.  $52.7 mil for 187 units ($282k per unit), which seems really high per unit according to this unless they are HUGE apartments, but then that begs the question, why are poor people getting abnormally huge apartments?  So they are either way over paying (the answer and we all know it) or they are making way too big of units (highly unlikely and with it's own problems).

So yeah, they can, they just shouldn't, 'cause they're bad at it.

[Pres Mike]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

And private developers have little incentive to build affordable housing unless they are given government subsidies. Far more profit in building McMansion for retiring boomers than starter homes

[MasterJedi]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

And private developers have little incentive to build affordable housing unless they are given government subsidies. Far more profit in building McMansion for retiring boomers than starter homes

Along with the NIMBY “think of the traffic and bringing those people into my area”

[Del Tachi]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

And private developers have little incentive to build affordable housing unless they are given government subsidies. Far more profit in building McMansion for retiring boomers than starter homes

Private developers build McMansions because that is where most Americans would prefer to live.  A dense city is a very unfriendly environment for (normal) people.

[Pres Mike]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

And private developers have little incentive to build affordable housing unless they are given government subsidies. Far more profit in building McMansion for retiring boomers than starter homes

Along with the NIMBY “think of the traffic and bringing those people into my area”

I know too well. In my community a developer wanted to build some an apartment complex. A high end one. There was a lot of pushback and it wasn't approved

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

And private developers have little incentive to build affordable housing unless they are given government subsidies. Far more profit in building McMansion for retiring boomers than starter homes

Private developers build McMansions because that is where most Americans would prefer to live.  A dense city is a very unfriendly environment for (normal) people.

Want to live, but can't afford. We need more starter homes for millennials and gen z