Nashville Unveils Housing Plan to ‘Keep Homeowners in Their Homes’ as Mayor Freddie O’Connell Plans Reported 30 Percent Property Tax Hike

The Metro Nashville government on Tuesday released its Unified Housing Strategy (UHS), which the city described as “a comprehensive roadmap” plan for local governments, nonprofits, and developers to build and expand “safe, stable, and affordable housing for all Nashvillians.”

The culmination of a process that began in 2021, city documents explain its UHS contains seven strategies, including realigning “Nashville’s housing ecosystem” to meet the city’s needs, increased support for affordable housing, the creation of new affordable housing, offering permanent housing options to homeless people, keeping housing affordable, and keeping “homeowners in their home” while creating “more opportunities for sustainable home ownership and growth.”

To keep more Nashvillians in their homes and expand the number of those able to own their own, the UHS calls for Nashville to relax its restrictions on land use and allow developers to build and sell homes on public land. Should a home buyer seek to purchase one of these homes, they would then be required to undergo “pre- and post-purchase counseling” to understand the process.

The UHS also calls for partnerships to be identified in order to “promote estate planning for Nashvillians with a focus on marginalized populations,” and to offer additional support to programs that help homeowners pay for repairs.

Property taxes are only mentioned briefly in the UHS, which states that the plan will “[s]upport homeowners struggling to pay property taxes.”

Nashville’s housing plan was released as Mayor Freddie O’Connell reportedly plans to announce a 30 percent hike to the city’s property taxes on Thursday, just five years after the city saw its largest increase to the property tax rate in its history in 2020, when it was raised by 34 percent.

Ben Cunningham, the founder of the Nashville Tea Party, recently warned that the forthcoming tax hike, combined with the recent sales tax surcharge for the mayor’s Choose How You Move transportation plan, could “hollow out” the city.

“This will do to Nashville what the Democrats have done to every other major urban area – it will hollow it out so that the only people that can afford to live are the super rich while the super poor won’t afford to move out so they’re going to be burdened by this property tax increase,” said Cunningham during a recent appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.

He told Michael Patrick Leahy, the editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star, “The mayor right now is saying, ‘We are not going to cut the metro government budget, we’re going to force you to cut your family budgets by raising your property taxes.’ That’s his calculus, and that’s what’s going to happen unless we push back.”

Conservative groups have scheduled a rally in opposition to the property tax increase just one hour before O’Connell is expected to deliver his State of Metro address.

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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Nashville Neighborhood” by Andrew Jameson. CC BY-SA 3.0.