Tennessee’s low-cost rental properties tend to be old and deteriorating, according to a study out Friday from the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, which oversees 38,000 affordable housing units across the state.
Most of the state’s deeply subsidized properties — like public housing or Section 8 units — were built more than 30 years ago, with 9 percent built in the 1960s.
Declining federal funding hasn’t helped them keep up with repairs. And researchers say this is happening at the same time that cities are feeling pressure to shift money away from maintenance and toward building new affordable housing.
In Davidson County, 77 percent of renters who earn $20,000 or less pay more than 30 percent of their income toward rent and housing expenses (considered “cost-burdened”).
Across Middle Tennessee, nearly 70 percent of low-income residents live in a property built before 1980.
The study paints a grim outlook because of more anticipated spending cuts to federal programs.
On top of those factors, THDA says the trend has already been for property owners to get out of the low-income business, because housing markets are lucrative and Section 8 contracts aren’t being renewed.
The agency says 2,117 affordable units have disappeared since 2001 — and in the next five years, one-third of the remaining THDA units, or 11,000 affordable places to live, could go the same route.
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