5 minute read
SHARING A WALL
Lenore Street, with James A. Cayce Homes at left and Envision Cayce at right
City, private developers move toward high-density, mixedincome options on prime land
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BY HANNAH HERNER
ith a growing demand in Nashville W for both a ordable housing and new apartments close to the city center, some developers are converting low-density housing projects into higher-density mixed-income developments in an e ort to satisfy both needs.
One example is Envision Cayce, planning for which started in 2013 with construction getting underway in 2015. Upon completion, the East Nashville site of the largest public housing development in the city will house up to 2,000 families with mixed incomes, compared to 716 low-income families under the former model. e mixed-income project includes a slot for each of the families that lived there prior to the redevelopment. us far, the Metro Development and Housing Agency has completed 507 units (considered about one-third of the way completed) and housed more than half of current Cayce families. It has 96 units under construction, with plans to break ground on three additional developments in 2023.
“As we have made a commitment to that onefor-one replacement for all existing units, if we’re going to be bringing in new a ordable [units], new workforce [units] and new market-rate [units], we are going to be increasing the density,” says MHDA spokesperson Jamie Berry.
It will take 10 or more years before the project is completed, depending on funding and how quickly the organization can move, Berry says. ough in the meantime, the organization’s new executive director Troy White hopes to be able to start redevelopments in the Napier and Sudekum public housing communities.
On its quest to eventually redevelop each public housing community in the city, MDHA will have to watch that it doesn’t compete against itself for funding. Given the deed to each of the communities by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, MDHA can borrow against the land value. Its latest completed property, Red
Oak Flats, utilized HUD rental subsidies, low-income housing tax credits, a community investment tax credit loan from Pinnacle Financial Partners and funds from a home investment partnership program, according to Berry.
Matthew Wiltshire, a former MDHA executive who worked on Envision Cayce, notes the value of the land MDHA owns, near neighborhoods with rising housing costs such as Germantown, e Nations, 12South and Wedgewood-Houston.
“MDHA has an incredible asset,” he says. “It has dirt, … and most of the properties are located in very attractive places.” e “Envision” process is di erent from what happened at MDHA’s John Henry Hale Apartments, where a mixed-income model was introduced with fewer a ordable units than before, e ectively displacing the families there — temporarily for construction or permanently to another a ordable rental opportunity. It was part of HUD’s Hope 6 program along with four other MDHA properties that were redone between 1999 and 2010. ose properties have around 13 percent market rate tenants with the rest of the residents paying subsidized rents. e process of reducing density isn’t viable in urban centers like Nashville, where demand for housing is high, Wiltshire says.
A similar process to that at John Henry Hale is currently underway at RiverChase Apartments, where tenants were forced to leave with the promise of some a ordable units to be available on the land in the future. e Envision Cayce process, on the other hand, is gradual, moving families within the complex rst, while their original apartments are demolished, and then inviting them to move into a new unit. e breakdown of the Envision Cayce complexes is 30 to 40 percent a ordable units, 20 percent “workforce” units (for those making 80 to 120 percent of the area median income) and 30 to 40 percent market-rate apartments. ere are reassurances, though not necessarily guarantees, that the a ordable units will remain affordable inde nitely. A ordability is guaranteed for the rst 40 years from completion of each project, thanks to a 20-year contract with HUD that will be automatically renewed.
“If it is MDHA doing it, the mission of that agency is to provide a ordable housing and so, if there were any other entity that were doing it, I think you could rightfully question the long-term viability of it,” Wiltshire adds. “But with MDHA doing it, I think you can have a higher degree of con dence in long-term a ordability as opposed to other sectors.”
District 6 Metro Councilmember Brett Withers’ term ends in 2023, and his successor, if serving two terms, would wrap up in 2031. He hopes that by the time his successor is nished, the project in his district will be mostly completed.
Both Withers and Wiltshire have noticed an increased interest among private developers in the mixed-income model.
“We’re nding we have some private developers who are also trying a very similar model,” Withers says. “We have, let’s say, about 40 percent a ordable, about 40 percent market and about 20 percent workforce. It’s just been such a compelling story, and it’s really been very successful. We’re starting to see that private development is trying to emulate that, and I think that’s a really good thing for our city.”
Berry says a key to making high-density mixed-income housing like that of Envision Cayce work is to make the units identical, regardless of income level.
“We wanted to make sure that you were not able to tell who was paying what based on the amenities inside their units,” Berry says. “Everybody deserves to have market-rate amenities, and that’s the way this community is set up.”
People were already buying high-dollar houses right on the border of the Cayce neighborhood, but Envision Cayce takes mixed-income housing to the next level.
“You’re going to share a wall with a family that has a di erent income and background than you. at’s really exciting,” Withers says. “My hope is that people who move into the new Cayce housing really see it as part of a positive social transformation rather than as just … ‘this is the apartment that I could nd in East Nashville.’”
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