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TACIR panel hears rural and municipal leaders blame land, fees and financing for Tennessee housing crunch
Summary
Panelists at the TACIR hearing said Tennessee’s housing shortage is driven by land-price spikes, limited local infrastructure, higher interest rates and fragmented funding; speakers proposed land banking, revolving low‑interest construction loans and expanded flexible state funding to spur entry‑level housing.
A Tennessee advisory commission on state and local intergovernmental issues on Aug. 1 convened a panel of six housing experts and local officials who described a housing shortage across the state driven by high land costs, infrastructure limits and development fees.
"Housing is a workforce recruitment and workforce retention issue," said Ryan Egley, president and CEO of the Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce, testifying for rural communities. Egley said Lawrence County’s median existing-home price rose from about $158,000 in August 2019 to about $300,000 in August 2023 and that the county built roughly 800 housing units in the past decade, none in the entry‑level category.
Hunter McDonald, a commercial and residential broker and first vice president of the Middle Tennessee Association of Realtors, told commissioners that governmental fees…
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