Dear Council Members,

We wanted to make sure you saw a recent article in The Nashville Scene, which we hope can provide valuable context on the history of a developer that is requesting rezoning to demolish the RiverChase Apartments in East Nashville and build a mixed-use development that would drastically increase the number of residential units from 212 to 1,150 (BL2022-1140, BL2022-1141, BL2022-1142). Hundreds of our most vulnerable residents, primarily Black and Immigrant working-class families, have already been displaced on the heels of a pandemic and in the midst of a housing crisis.

READ STORY HERE

As some of you might know, Stand Up Nashville (SUN) and our member organizations – including NOAH, The Equity Alliance, SEIU Local 205 and the Southeast Laborers District Council – spent many months negotiating Nashville’s second-ever Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) at RiverChase Apartments, with Texas-based developer Cypress Real Estate Advisors (CREA). In early June 2022, CREA and SUN reached an impasse in negotiations.  “According to Kay Bowers of NOAH, the impasse occurred after CREA and the nonprofit organizations involved failed to agree on what the project’s affordable housing component should look like, including what metrics would be used to determine resident qualifications and how the units would be incorporated with the rest of the development.” 

(For historical context, our community’s first-ever CBA was negotiated by SUN with Nashville Soccer Holdings.)

Some highlights from the article:

• Over 200 Nashville families were displaced as a result of this project. Some residents reported being given “24 hours to leave or the lights would be cut off. I don’t know why they are telling us we have to move in 24 hours and we don’t have nowhere to move to.”

• Riverchase residents were promised funding to assist with the move, but residents like Jackie Amos “said she was still waiting for the rest of the moving assistance money CREA told her she would be given.”

• CREA has a history of these practices. “In 2015, the agency targeted a low-income Austin, Texas, apartment complex, Lakeview Apartments. In 2016, Lakeview tenants sued CREA, saying they were rushed off the property, locked out of their apartments, and intimidated off the property.”

 
SUN knows what’s been happening because we have been on the front line talking and offering support to the RiverChase residents since 2019.  Here is a document with a timeline of our coalition’s involvement advocating on behalf of the residents at RiverChase, which dates back to over two years before CREA even purchased the property. 

Ultimately, SUN and CREA hit an impasse over affordability. As CREA’s representative stated in negotiations, eligible displaced RiverChase residents would “qualify” to return to the newly built development; “they just wouldn’t have the money” to afford the new rents.

Simply put, Stand Up Nashville could not sign a CBA that does not guarantee displaced residents can afford to return to their neighborhood. And having to make $75,000 a year for a family of four to afford a unit, which was as low as CREA was willing to go for units they built, is not attainable for the displaced residents or many Nashvillians. 

Rezoning at RiverChase, already unpopular with the neighbors, would not be fair to the evicted residents of RiverChase. We cannot continue rewarding development that pushes out long-term Nashville residents during a housing crisis – we’d be signaling to developers across the country that Nashville is a place that tolerates these practices.  We need to send a strong message that Nashville is for all Nashvillians, especially our most vulnerable residents.

Until CREA enters into a legally binding Community Benefits Agreement with genuine community engagement and PROVEN methods of accountability, we ask that you defer the public hearing and rezoning. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.