Q&A WITH ASHLEY BROWN: FROM HARMONY TO HOUSING

BY HANNAH HERNER

In her last job, Ashley Brown worked to make deciding who got arts grants a more transparent process, and bring more diversity to the barbershop quartet world. Now the grant expert seeks to become an affordable housing expert.

As the city’s affordable housing program manager, she’ll also be the grant manager for the Barnes Affordable Housing Fund. This fund gives grants to nonprofit organizations and developers that build or preserve affordable housing units

The 27-year-old Nashville native looks to expand the fund in more ways than one.

Can you tell me about your responsibilities in your new role?

A lot of my job right now is focused on understanding how they have run their process in the past, and getting accustomed to just all the different requirements of the government as it relates to grant funds. Then in the future what I’ll be focused on is growing the fund and expanding the processes and procedures to help developers and those folks that are actually out in the world doing the affordable housing work better understand the application process and the reporting process; grow our measurement and evaluation, grow the fund and look at how we can expand on how we’re contributing to affordable housing as a whole in Nashville.

How much money is allotted to the Barnes Fund changes from mayor to mayor. Are you looking to get more outside funds in the future?

There is a lot of benefit of having buy-in from the executive level of the mayor and the council and those kinds of things to make sure that we’re stewarding affordable housing from the highest level of government in our municipality. So I think that there’s a lot of benefits to still using capital dollars and taxpayer dollars that way. But I think that there is a way to grow the fund that includes having more for-profit partners and getting other funds that diversify our pool from which we’re funding.

We just received some funds from the Regions Bank Foundation. That was the first time The Barnes Fund had ever received dollars outside of the operating budget dollars for the city. So we’re looking at, what are the opportunities there? How can we grow that?

What are some of the things you picked up from your former role at Barbershop Harmony Society that you will bring to this role?

It is a wonderful organization. I managed their grant fund, which was a significantly less amount of money. It was about $100,000 per year versus now, which is between $5-10 million.

I created executive summaries for every single applicant. I made our review criteria public. The review criteria for Barnes fund is actually public, so that’s something you can already look at, but things like that, which are not as common in the arts world, I tried to align those processes a little bit more to what’s from a government perspective.

I was also their diversity, equity and inclusion program manager. So I was managing all the projects related to equity in that role. It was just a need that needed to be filled in that organization, and they knew I had a passion for DEAI work. I did a lot of learning and I still have a lot of learning left to do, but one of the great things about doing all of that work is that it’s now ingrained into what I want to do in every job.

Every single thing, if we’re always thinking from an equity lens, then we’re making correct decisions.

As a Nashville native, what’s your take on the housing crisis here?

I grew up on a farm in Nashville, off of McCrory Lane. When I tell people that they’re like, ‘where was there a farm in Nashville?’ And I was like, ‘Well, Nashville used to be all farms.’

I haven’t even seen as much change as my dad has, for instance. But this is a totally different place than how I grew up. I’ve personally been pushed out of neighborhoods. I lived in Green Hills for a while, obviously a renter situation because I was still in college at the time. Then the landlord sold that house so that they could build two houses on the same lot that it was in. So they bulldozed the house and I got pushed out.

I’m very blessed and privileged to have the safety of housing every day and know that my shelter needs are met. But I also recognize that it’s something that a lot of my friends and loved ones have experienced where like they have been pushed out to farther suburbs and farther suburbs to where their commutes if they were going to work downtown would be 45 minutes to an hour because it just wasn’t realistic for them to be able to live within Metro.

I know that the housing crisis here is significant.

What else would you like to add?

I guess the last thing I would say is, I’m not a housing expert. I come from the land of arts and culture, and really my basis of understanding of what affordable housing is has only really come from doing my own homework. I have so much more to learn. I definitely want to just come from a place of humility and I feel really encouraged by the housing community already and how kind everyone has been.

I really care about affordable housing and about Nashville and about the culture of Nashville. I love my home here. I love Nashville. My family has been here since like the 1800s. So I feel very committed to this work and to make Nashville a great place.