Questionable Data Undergirds Metro's Approach to Housing Concerns
🏘️ Metro vastly overestimates anticipated growth · Anti-establishment Kid · Oracle's new campus · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone. Metro is approaching the housing affordability "crisis" with bad data... Pearson gears up for his run against Steve Cohen in Memphis... Dreamy renderings of Oracle's East Bank campus... And much more!
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Chris Remke takes a pickaxe to Metro's claim that we need 90,000 new housing units by 2034. As Chris reveals, the city's Unified Housing Strategy vastly overestimates population growth over the next ten years and thus, anticipated housing needs.
The UHS projection anticipates an additional 175,000 people moving to Nashville between 2020 and 2034 – that comes out to 12,500 residents moving to town per year. In actuality, over the past four years, the city has added only 13,621 residents, which translates to approximately 3,205 residents per year.
Read the whole story from Chris below and finish it over on his Substack.
Nashville’s housing debate has turned into a numbers game. Big projections, big promises, and bigger development pipelines dominate the conversation. Yet behind the spreadsheets and zoning maps lies a much simpler truth: the supply is there — the affordability is not.
For fifteen years, the city has chased the idea that if we build enough market-rate housing, affordability will follow. That theory, once plausible, now collapses under its own data. The Unified Housing Strategy (UHS) and the Housing & Infrastructure Study (H&I) — the two cornerstone planning documents guiding Metro’s decisions — do not tell the same story. In fact, they reveal the gap at the center of Nashville’s housing crisis.
Nashville is still shell-shocked from a decade of runaway growth. The roads, schools, and storm drains tell the story better than any policy brief. People see it, feel it, and no longer buy the idea that “more growth will fix what growth broke.” Until Metro leaders face the reality that the problem is not a shortage of rooftops but a shortage of affordability and infrastructure, the public will keep tuning them out. Voters have learned the difference between building a city and just building on one — and they are done being told that the cure for congestion, displacement, and rising costs is simply to build more of the same.
🖋️ Edited by Megan Podsiedlik.
🗳️ Pearson Wants To Go To D.C. Tennessee state Representative Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) hopes to oust longtime Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen in the 2026 9th District primaries. Pearson gained national attention after being expelled from the state legislature for helping lead a protest from the House floor during session. Cohen, who has held the position for almost two decades, stood up for Pearson as the drama unfolded across the country.
Regardless, the tension is already building between the two. According to News3 (Memphis), Pearson says Cohen reminds him of his Republican colleagues in the statehouse. “He was very condescending, very arrogant,” Pearson told the publication. “And he spoke to me in a way that was unbecoming of any leader, but especially our United States Congressman. But that’s alright. He won’t be there for long.”
In an official Facebook post, Cohen made clear that he’s ready to take on the “ambitious young candidate.” He all but dismissed the challenge from within the Democratic Party as a distraction and instead emphasized the need “to work with the incoming Democratic House Majority to put a stop to this runaway administration.”
📣 The Anti-establishment Kid After losing the nod as the 7th Congressional District Republican nominee earlier this week, state Representative Jody Barret proclaimed his lack of desire to navigate the D.C. swamp and doubled down on his longstanding reputation as the little guy who pushes back against establishment giants. “My campaign manager smacked me upside the head a couple of times for saying this: I didn't really want to win this thing anyway,” Barret told reporters earlier this week.
Instead, the grassroots candidate said he was compelled to take up the challenge. “I never wanted to run for an office in D.C., but this was an opportunity that opened up, and a lot of people came and lifted me up and kind of pushed me to take a run at this,” said Barrett.
“I’m just a little redneck kid from Dickson County, grown up with most of you guys here playing ball,” he continued. “And I just went up against $2 million from the D.C. establishment money, the president of the United States. And we had them scared to death.”
🏙️ Tech Giant About To Break Ground In Nashville Oracle released new renderings of its planned campus on Nashville's East Bank, featuring a pedestrian bridge connecting to Germantown, expanded public greenspace, and a partnership to develop a Nobu restaurant and hotel on site. Construction can’t begin until the Metro Council approves legislation to rezone the industrial-use land. The bill is currently on its second reading, which includes a public hearing during tonight’s council meeting.
According to the Tennessean, construction won't be complete for at least another six years and the company plans to establish the 70-acre campus as its new global headquarters in 2030. Oracle has also partnered with Nashville's health technology sector through deals with Ascension Saint Thomas for Oracle Health services and Meharry Medical School for an innovation center, clinic, and wellness facility on the campus.
DEVELOPMENT
- Christie Cookie Co. returns to Nashville with new retail location (NBJ)
- SRM Concrete lands naming rights at Vanderbilt stadium (Post)
- SoBro hotel project proposal progresses (Post)
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
✨ Electric Nashville @ The Eighth Room, 7p, $18.66, Info
+ feat. The Penn Jones Conspiracy, Digyphus, and Saylor Twift
🎸 Modest Mouse @ The Pinnacle, 8p, $60+, Info
🪕 Bluegrass on 3rd Presents The Kody Norris Show @ 3rd and Lindsley, 12p, $18.33, Info
🎸 Black Moth Super Rainbow @ Eastside Bowl, 8p, $20, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Davis Hunt, Megan Podsiedlik and Camelia Brennan.