Tennessee Voices, Episode 339: Marshall Crawford, Terri Skipper, Mark Wright, affordable housing
The affordable housing crisis plagues the United States nationwide.
Major cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago have been out of reach to many buyers and renters for a long time, but in recent years Sunbelt and other mid-sized cities joined the club.
The Urban Land Institute designated two "supernova" cities that are growing rapidly but also widening the prosperity gap: Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee.
There are still many folks on ground, however, who have not given up on finding solutions to attainable housing.
Among them: Marshall E. Crawford Jr., president and CEO of The Housing Fund; Terri Skipper, executive director of New Level Community Development Corporation; and Mark Wright, executive director of Be a Helping Hand.
On this episode of the Tennessee Voices video podcast, they talked about the scope of the problem and how they have pooled their resources to make a difference.
The groups recently announced that they jointly purchased 54 acres in Antioch to develop a 150-unit housing development that will offer both market and affordable options.
They received funding from Pinnacle Bank and Amazon, in addition to other sources.
This collaborative model may be the future for preserving, building and sustaining affordable housing to prevent people from being forced out of their communities.
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About Tennessee Voices
The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee. He is of Colombian and Cuban descent, has studied or worked in several Spanish-speaking countries, and was the founding editor of Gaceta Tropical in Southwest Florida. He has lived in Tennessee since 2014. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him at dplazas@tennessean.com or tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Video podcast: Affordable housing leaders on solving the crisis
