- We don't know.

You're not to do that tonight on television.

(calm hip-hop music) (audience applauds and cheers) Hello and welcome to another episode of "A Slice of the Community."

I'm your host, Jerome Moore.

Today we're live in studio.

Joined with our audience is Reverend Davie Tucker, executive director of the Metro Human Relations Commission, and Dr.

Kenneth Chilton, professor of Public Administration at TSU, Tennessee State University.

How y'all doing?

- Good.

Thanks for having me.

- Good.

Great.

- Nah, it is good to see y'all in here in the flesh and really have this conversation, doing this collaboration with "A Slice of the Community" and our "Aging Matters" documentary.

We're gonna talk a little bit about housing and how faith-based organizations and academia can be a part of that conversation and try to combat that crises.

And so this is a question for both of you all, just boots on the ground, like if you can give a real blunt answer of like, what really does our affordable housing crisis kind of look like every day here in Nashville, in our communities, in our neighborhoods.

And just for everyday people.

And I'll start with you Reverend Tucker.

- Oh, I don't really know how to concisely say that.

'Cause it trickles down.

You see it at its lowest level in some of the homeless people.

You see it at its highest level of people being moved out of Nashville, people being trapped into their homes.

So I guess I would, and then you got everything kind of in between.

- Dr.

Chilton.

- I don't know if I can use the word for what it's like on public television, but on the ground you're looking at about the average house or the income needed to buy a house in Nashville is about a 125, $127,000.

That excludes about 68% of households from buying a home that's affordable.

On the rental side, about 50% of households are burdened, which means a third of their income is spent on rent.

And if you get into the lower tiers of that, the lower income households, you're looking at about 75 to 85% of those households are rent burdened.

So it's really challenging environment for people who are trying to either buy or rent in Nashville at the moment.

- Well, what I wanna do to really contextualize it, we're gonna roll a clip from one of our "Aging Matters" documentaries that really dig into affordable housing and homelessness.

And so we roll that clip for everybody to see.

(calm music) - I think it's amazing that they have places like this that help people.

Number one, having a place where I can shower and clean myself every day.

Being able to cook and go to the grocery store and have real food.

- The Village at Glencliff is a nonprofit organization and we are 12 tiny homes on the campus of Glencliff United Methodist Church.

And we provide a safe place for our friends experiencing homelessness who've been in a hospital and they are ready to be discharged, but they need medical respite care.

And when they come here, we provide a place of rest and also empowerment so that we can help them with their medical and housing navigation to help them get into permanent housing.

- Before I came here, I was staying on the street.

The first time I went to the hospital, my leg was hurt real bad.

And I told the hospital people that I didn't have nowhere to go and I couldn't stay at the mission no more 'cause I was injured.

So they send me out here and I'm thankful for that.

And that's why I ain't in the street no more.

- And so that was real life situations that are happening right here in Nashville.

But you see the Village of Glencliff, a faith-based organization, tackling the problem right on.

So Reverend Tucker, this is a question for you.

We talking about just faith-based organizations, churches in this moment right now.

Why is this a good moment for faith-based organizations, churches, to possibly get involved in affordable housing and combating that crisis and being able to help our community members?

- Well, I think it's always been a good moment.

I think it's even more imperative now that the church look at that.

My friend and colleague, Reverend McIntyre is the pastor there at Glencliff.

And I guess they've probably been open now three or four years or so, but it took them five or six years to go through all the hurdles to even construct those home on the church property.

But I think with the effects of gentrification, and you have a lot of urban core churches whose populations have dwindled and they have properties.

And that this creates a way for them to continue to live and to continue to actually contribute to that community in a very, very real way.

So this is a upside, but I also think churches as a whole may need to, this may be something for another show, but I think lot- - Let's get into it.

Come on, you straighten up, you sitting up, come on, get into it.

- I think a whole lot of churches are directed more inside.

They don't see the outside - [Jerome] Break that down.

Unpack that for us.

- If they are providing service, they provide it to their members.

If they are spending funds for somebody not doing well, they're providing it to their members.

- So let me go a little deeper and give you a hypothetical.

So this take a Christian Church, Christianity church, right?

Maybe I'm not a Christian.

Maybe would they have a problem, if they have affordable housing on that land with me being able to live in one of those units?

Is that what you mean by maybe doing for their own and looking internal?

- No, it's even well before that, that the theology or the emphasis around ministry of a church may not even think that way.

Or they may have a preconceived thought that the idea of affordable housing for some people can be a dog whistle that means something that it doesn't mean.

- You have anything to add to that Dr.

Chilton?

- On the academic side?

- On the academic side, yeah.

- On any side.

- Yeah.

Or any side.

- Yeah.

You know, yeah.

- I worked as- - Whatever side did you choose to pick at this particular moment.

- I worked as a local consultant for the Urban Institute on a report they published that looked at this as an option and they estimated various densities on all the land.

They categorized it.

And you're looking at anywhere from 5,000 or 5,200 to over 10,000 housing units, depending on the density levels that churches and the region could provide in terms of affordable housing units, which is an amazing number given the fact that we're only producing anywhere from 14 to 1800 using the Barnes Housing Trust.

So it's an option.

And given the severity of the issue, I think we need to be creative and innovative in how we think about community partnerships.

Universities have land, now, universities also are insular, just like churches.

And we think all of that land should just be for students and we want to grow our enrollments.

However, there are certain trends just as church membership might be declining in some neighborhoods.

The demographic cliff, when you look at education starting this year, the number of high school graduates are starting to go down projected over the next 10 years, universities will have extra land.

Now you've got a variety of private and public universities in the Nashville region that could contribute, but they've never been challenged to think that way before.

- And so we're talking about barriers at this point, on both ends.

How do we overcome those barriers and maybe what role do community members play that our community members that are maybe part of universities or faith organizations or not?

I go with you Reverend.

- Well, again, I'll say something about the church again and then I'll say something about the community.

I think the church can not only be a place to provide this land that could be profitable over the long haul to the church also.

But I also think the church is going to have to be part of the conversation to help the community understand how critical housing is.

And in my own family, my grandkids and their mother was displaced all the way to Gallatin just because she could not afford to rent a place here.

So I think the church can help the community understand that it's gonna take a multiplicity of things.

There's not one civil bullet.

The church cannot, 'cause one study says that we're about 90,000 units down or something.

And so the church is not gonna be able with that available space there to do that.

Yes, there needs to be affordable housing, but there also needs to be attainable housing, inside of America one of the greatest wealth builders is to own a home.

So when you're, as Dr.

Chilton just said, when it takes 125 grand to go and buy a house, then that knocks a whole lot of people out.

And as we progress through life, it's that generation of wealth that often helps determine how we do age and the choices we have when we do age.

And so there are groups of folks that are on that low end of home ownership.

And I think not only can the government, but public private partnerships can not only address housing, but inside of housing the idea of home ownership also.

- Dr.

Chilton?

- Yeah.

Universities are similar.

I serve or work with different groups in the community, but I'm usually seen as a resource, "Okay, can you get me some data?

What's going on in other communities about affordable housing?"

That type of thing.

But the people who have control over the purse strings, the presidents and vice presidents at the universities aren't involved in these conversations.

So I think we need to broaden the parameters of who's sitting at the table.

And in Nashville, we got a lot of groups who are doing incredible work, but they're kind of on the margins pushing back and people in power or who have more control of the money, who are needed to make those big decisions about- - [Jerome] Decision makers.

Yeah.

- What does this look like for my university?

Or what does this look like for Vanderbilt?

They need to be at the table helping form the policies that can help generate more housing units.

- Right.

And so where we see maybe hesitancy from faith-based organizations or even institutions, university, is it barriers from from human beings or is it policy, is it zoning?

Is it, "Hey, I know that we need affordable housing or attainable housing units, but I just don't want it here."

You know?

Right.

Like, "I know we need it.

I agree with you, but here, maybe in this area on my land or in my neighborhood, maybe not so."

- I think something that universities are missing out on is the fact they're aware of it, but they're not doing much about it.

Maybe it's because of limited resources.

Our students used to rent a lot of the units near TSU's campus, and I would assume this is true for Vanderbilt and Belmont and Lipscomb and others.

Now you can't do that.

They've been gentrified.

The rents have gone up three or four fold over a 10 year period and students can't access that affordable housing outside of dorm living in their communities anymore.

And that's a real challenge.

There's other priorities, like I said, increasing enrollments, getting more money from the state, and those things kind of drive the agenda.

But we have an opportunity, I think, to be community partners expanding the the number of institutions and people at the table, so to speak.

To kind of come up with solutions that involve people or organizations that traditionally weren't part of the solution.

- Right, and Reverend Tucker, can you, you didn't get a chance to really speak on that community part of it, that community role, if you can dig into that a little bit.

- Well, oftentimes we claim to belong to community and we really just have a crew.

- [Jerome] A clique.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And this idea of what do we owe each other?

Just as being humans, what do we owe each other?

Because the middle is contingent upon the bottom.

They're all connected.

So if we are not concerned about all within the community, even that group that we are seeking to protect, which is our own group, it's suddenly at risk, if the bottom, say the bottom, and we're talking about socioeconomic issues, if the bottom lowers, there's not just a gap created, the middle slides down.

So there's this interconnectivity that we have that politics and all this other stuff often stands in the way of us capitalizing on meaning that it has to be a win-win for everyone.

And when it's a win-win for everyone, the number one requirement is, we're all gonna have to make some type of compromise.

But we've gotten so used to the have and have nots.

And that tends to be the way that we approach working things out.

And that's where the community, I think could do a whole lot better.

- I wanna offer this opportunity to anybody in the audience who wanna take this moment now to come ask a question to one of our guests, you can do so, we're gonna continue the conversation, but please just come to the mic, it's on and be brief with your question and give other people time they may want to ask a question.

Come on up.

Yep, sure.

- Thank you.

I do have a question.

In my experience with any giant issue, where do you get started?, right?

I mean, it's just how do you even start to make progress?

So what I'm wondering is, are there models around the country or around the world for that matter that we could look at as a template or something like that?

Thank you.

- Yeah, that's a good question.

Not a lot of good models.

I do think housing is such an important issue right now.

Used to be kind of an urban problem.

And now it's also a rural problem.

Across the state of Tennessee, the income needed to buy a house in Nashville, given the incomes it's similar in rural communities.

So there is an opportunity, a unique opportunity right now, I think, for people who disagree on a lot of cultural and social issues.

They all agree that housing is unaffordable for too many people and that home ownership is such a part of the American dream that if you work hard, you go to school, you stay outta trouble, you should be able to buy a home, create that wealth that we just discussed.

And I think we've missed that opportunity.

But it's a bipartisan issue.

Parties might disagree on the means to the end, but it's a unique opportunity right now while people are talking about it, that perhaps different groups can come together across the table and work on that compromise.

I know that's a little bit preachy, but- - Well, we have a reverend here.

We need a little preachy, take on over.

- Well I'll say, you just get in where you fit in, that there's so many different ways, right now most would agree that the land becomes one of the really barriers to building new housing.

But then you have different options.

You have shared equity where someone shares the equity in the house with you, thereby reducing your cost.

You've got various programs that will, based on your income level, maybe even reduce the 20% required down payment, you have, now that's just around home ownership.

But then you have these other thoughts that whoever came up with this name or the name that it gets, it often gets co-opted.

It's called social housing and just the name in certain circles creates a pushback.

But there are interesting models that are out that different types of public, private partnerships.

But even at the base level, when you take Nashville, Nashville's going to have to redo its entire zoning.

Not to build housing today, but to just create options for different types of housing across Davidson County that is not available now.

Like you take a area like Madison, which has 11, 12, 1300 square foot houses on acre lots that you cannot even do a DADU there.

You can do a garage, but you can't do a garage where someone can live in it.

You have other parts of town that are more exclusive where you have a 80 foot setback from the road.

Now you come into the urban core, you see where they'll build it all the way out to the sidewalk and they'll build it up as high to where there's no sun.

The neighbors flowers and bushes have all died.

So there is, you have the public policy piece, you have the development piece, you have the financial piece and then the greatest of all for me is the political will, sometimes to act in the best interest of the common good, which means that some people are not gonna like it.

- You have another question?

- My name is Ming Wang.

I have a question that on the worldwide scale philanthropy is only about $300 billion or so, but the private investment is 400 trillion or something.

So what drive the world is private enterprise.

Is there a model or example of social entrepreneurship where using private money that can actually make it profitable for the investors, perhaps a little bit less profitable but yet doing so much good?

Is that such a case in housing area using private investment?

You mentioned about the churches that they're not willing to have housing on their premise and they just want to cater to their own members.

Understandably so.

We're human being right, self-centered, selfish.

However, if you make a case that is, as you mentioned briefly, that if they make money for the church, they're more willing to do it.

So can you name one example of successful social entrepreneurship using private money to help solving the affordable housing public problem?

- Let me back up.

Wang.

Did you say Mr.

Wang?

- [Ming] Yeah.

Ming Wang.

- Let me back up.

If what you say about the church is true, the church gets farther off track, if you have to convince the church that it's profitable.

That's the other side, that some things that are right are not profitable.

And that's where I think the church's voice is needed in regard to the moral and ethical responsibilities that we have to everyone.

And so if the church doesn't want to do it, if they are convinced to do it because it's profitable, to me, they're still doing it for the wrong reasons.

To address the issue around private investment, that's a lot of what's driving it now.

But the first go-to is, who's gonna make the money?

So we're gonna do this only because it's profitable.

Some situations that I think governments are more suited to address do not have that profit driving element in it.

I'm part of what some studies say is that last generation were, that did better than their parents.

So there's two after me that are not doing as well as their parents are.

So it becomes, as you say, a global issue that I think that they're more than just the money thing that has to fix it.

I think it has to be a people thing.

If you read some of the commentary when social security was being debated and FDR and all that, you would not have thought that it would've passed.

But if you were a domestic or a farm worker, you didn't qualify, but that's something else.

But now it doesn't matter your social status per se.

Social security is an integral part of the American experience.

We all depend on that.

And so I think over time we have to think outside of the box that profitability, to me it should not be the main primary consideration about whether or not we do something or not.

- Yeah.

And and I would throw in one of the issues that's going on in most cities that are growing fast is how it's playing out now with investors is more speculation.

You've got private equity companies, real estate investment trusts that are buying homes, converting them to rental housing and taking workforce, housing off the market for people who wanna buy it, which kind of drops up prices.

If you look at New York City, which is kind of our capital city in terms of finances.

And then Seattle, they just elected social democrat mayors and largely related towards the issue of affordable housing.

So in those communities that have that financial backing and that tech support and even they're struggling to come up with a business model that provides housing for everyone and not everyone needs affordable housing, obviously it's created a lot of wealth as well.

But a lot of people don't realize that in Nashville you've got thousands of units that are off the market for residents because they're VRBO and short term rentals.

And you have 16 to 18,000 single family homes that are now owned by out of town corporations that you can't buy as someone who wants to live here and raise a family.

So it's a problem.

- And so I want to ask, 'cause we run out time unfortunately, that if Nashville did follow a model where you kind of lead with academia and faith-based organizations, kind of leading this new age of attainable and affordable housing, what does that look like for Nashville in the next five to 10 years?

- Well, I would say we need more people at the table.

That it's gonna take more people to make this happen.

You are always gonna need the developers.

You are always gonna need the money, you're always gonna need the political apparatus.

You're gonna need those things.

And I think at various points and various processes, the academy becomes more important.

I think when going forward, if you watch some of these council meetings and these discussions about these zoning changes, I think the church is gonna have to help folk understand this idea of how we treat each other.

- Dr.

Chilton real quick, we have, we have 15 seconds, - If you wanna know a community's priorities, look at their budgets.

And we can come up with billions of dollars of tax money to help build stadiums.

We can't come up with $50 million to build affordable housing.

- Well, look, I appreciate y'all both and I appreciate everybody at home watching another episode "A Slice of the Community."

If you'd like to see more episodes like this, please download the PBS app or the national PBS app and check us out on our YouTube channel.

Thank you.

(calm hip hop music)