A Few Questions With

A Few Questions With Councilmember Sean Parker, District 5

BY JUDITH TACKETT

Sean Parker, who represents District 5, which is northeast of the Cumberland River adjacent to downtown, has quickly made a name for himself as a politically savvy first-term Metro councilmember.

Parker often hears from folks in his district about unsafe driving with people speeding around the neighborhoods and affordable housing, which can be anything from rents escalating to property taxes going up to no one being able to purchase a home anymore.

“District 5 is the western half of East Nashville,” Parker says. “It has traditionally been a mixed-income, racially mixed, culturally diverse community. It’s definitely trending more white and toward the upper income spectrum. We’ve still got old-time folks over here, which makes it a fun and exciting place to be.”

The Contributor talked with Parker as part of a series called A Few Questions With where we interview council members about their district’s most pressing issues.

The current District 5 includes a portion of the East Bank development. What does the future District 5 look like, and what would you like to see happen on that piece of property?

On the redistricting, District 5 will shift a little to the north and no longer include the East Bank study area. There will be a good bit less influence from the East Nashville community and the East Nashville council members on how the East Bank development moves forward as of the next Metro Council term. But we’re currently engaged in an extensive training process for the East Bank.

We have a wonderful entertainment district downtown, and I think it would be a missed opportunity to try to recreate or expand that. So, I’m pushing for a lot of housing on the East Bank, and I’m pushing for affordable housing on the East Bank. It’s a tremendous piece of public land. It’s a tremendous public asset, and it’s near jobs, it’s near transit, it’s close to great schools. It’s an opportunity to develop dense housing that’s accessible to more than just new folks coming to town who make $100,000 or more.

You chair the Metro Council’s Affordable Housing Committee, and you helped lead efforts to secure unprecedented funding for the Barnes Housing Trust Fund. What are some highlights of the last year and some opportunities the city still needs to pursue?

I’m really proud of those investments. It was a big collaborative effort between the Metro Council, the ARP (American Rescue Plan) committee and administration. We also established a new Catalyst Fund that I’m very excited to see how that gets utilized. It has a lot of flexibility. It’s sort of a revolving fund; so, it gets something off the ground and then when they are able to stabilize the rents and refinance the project, they can put the money back into that Catalyst Fund. Especially with this changing economic climate, the public sector helping sustain development of affordable housing is a great opportunity.

Right now, housing production is geared toward luxury and vacation rental units. That’s not even adding supply in the places where we need it. I sometimes say, we don’t have an affordable lodging crisis, we have an affordable housing crisis.

Housing is the number one dinner table issue for Nashvillians. Just a decade ago, in most of the city you could live pretty affordably. Now, outside of a very few pockets it’s very challenging. And it’s connected to a number of other issues that people are very concerned about. One way to put it is, when rents go up, tents go up. I’m looking for the next term to be a break or make moment for Nashville on housing.

What is the sustainability of the funding that’s in place right now?

The Catalyst Fund is a revolving fund. If we make the right investments, that is a self-sustaining fund. Hopefully we can grow that.

With the Barnes funding, we get a tremendous return on our investment in terms of how many units of housing we get per million dollars we put in. With that program, we’re still not capturing the full value of those investments. We’re still subsidizing a nonprofit affordable housing development model. I think it’s good, and we should continue doing that. But there are other approaches that are more sustainable and more scalable when you are capturing the value, you’re creating with seed investments rather than just subsidize another entity. That’s the direction that I’m trying to push things toward because I see that as more scalable.

As member of the Metro Council Planning and Zoning Committee, what zoning changes do you think would help spur the development of low-income housing?

I look at this from two directions.

One, low-income housing like SROs – Single Rental Occupancy buildings. Maybe it’s not dream housing, but it can be safe, secure, and private. We’re not building housing like that anymore. One of the things I’m hoping to look at before this term is done, is figuring out what exactly all the barriers are to building that today.

Similarly, when the supply of housing is so low that the moderate-income folks are pushed into what used to be a lower-income type housing, there is just nowhere left for the low-income folks.

I think we need to increase housing production across the spectrum. That can be through zoning reforms. One of the things we’ve done in District 5 is to allow more detached accessory dwelling units, so these are smaller apartments that can be constructed. If you have a single-family lot, you can build something like a garage with an apartment on top. People are not building these and renting them out to low-income people, but they are renting them out to moderate-income people and that takes some pressure off the market generally and gives folks more choices.

What are some solutions you’d like to see happen to address homelessness?

I know there is a tremendous number of things that need to happen. But there needs to be housing units and supportive services for folks that are out on the streets right now. That’s the bottom line. It’s my understanding that there just aren’t enough units and not enough folks to help get people into those units.

Do the housing and homelessness questions need to be closer together?

I don’t think you can separate the two. I was talking to a business owner a few weeks ago who was very concerned about folks that have been hanging around his property, and he asked it is it going to get better. I said, probably not in the near term because there has been a tremendous amount of real estate speculation in Nashville. A lot of the affordable and modest housing stock has been [wiped out]. When property owners call me, they’re concerned about visible homelessness. Sometimes I remind them that the lack of housing and the lack of affordable housing is a bigger issue than just the folks that you’re seeing outside, and I’m afraid that the non-visible homelessness population is much, much bigger than any of us are comfortable thinking about.