Chattanooga, Tenn. (Tuesday, Sept. 12) – Chattanooga’s Chief Housing Officer, Nicole Heyman and Reinvestment Fund’s Policy President, Ira Goldstein today presented results from the 2023 Market Value Analysis during a meeting of the Chattanooga City Council’s Affordable Housing Committee. The Market Value Analysis (MVA) is a tool to help residents and policymakers identify and understand the elements of their local real estate markets so that public officials and private actors can more precisely target housing intervention strategies. The MVA is a critical component of the Kelly Administration’s game plan to advance solutions to Chattanooga’s affordable housing challenges.
“Our Housing Needs Assessment helped us understand what our most pressing housing needs are, the Housing Action Plan gives us policy and programmatic recommendations on how to address those needs, and the Market Value Analysis shows us where help is needed most,” said Mayor Tim Kelly. “The MVA underscores the reality of two Chattanoogas and reinforces the need to bridge that divide, which is the central idea behind my One Chattanooga plan and a primary focus of my administration. Now that we have all three pieces of our housing triad in place – the Needs Assessment, the HAP, and now the MVA – we’re prepared to take strategic, informed, and maximally effective action to do everything we can to prevent a full-blown affordable housing crisis in Chattanooga.”
The MVA divides Chattanooga into distinct real estate markets within the city’s footprint: Purple markets have high home values and low levels of financial distress; blue markets have more affordable home prices and mix of owner and renter neighborhoods, yellow markets have below-average home prices, modest home-ownership rates, and the second greatest share of subsidized renters; orange markets have the lowest housing prices, low levels of development, and high rates of financial stress, vacancy, and property code violates. Orange markets are majority renter neighborhoods and have the highest presence of subsidized renters.
Some key data points among the MVA’s various findings:
- 75% of permitted new housing units have been built in the strongest markets since 2018
- New, multi-family units are concentrated in the strongest markets
- 66% of white, non-hispanic residents live in the strongest three markets
- 64% of black, non-hispanic residents live in the weakest four markets
- Identified positive rates of integration between the middle markets
- Identified areas with rapid increases in resident displacement risk ratios
The Market Value Analysis presentation to the City Council can be viewed below. The full report will be completed later this week and will be made available online at that point.
About Reinvestment Fund
Reinvestment Fund is a mission-driven financial institution committed to making communities work for all people. We bring financial and analytical tools to partnerships that work to ensure that everyone has access to essential opportunities: affordable places to live, access to nutritious food and health care, schools where their children can flourish, and strong, local businesses that support jobs. We use data to understand markets, communities, and impediments to opportunity—and how investment and policy decisions can have the most powerful impact. Since our inception in 1985, Reinvestment Fund has provided over $2.7 billion in financing to strengthen neighborhoods, scale social enterprises, and build resilient communities.
About the Market Value Analysis
The MVA is a data-based, field-validated examination of a city or region’s residential real estate market – a process informed by local stakeholders and subject-matter experts. Completed principally with administrative data reflective of the housing market (e.g., home sales, building permitting, vacant properties, subsidized rentals, etc.), the MVA is used by communities across the country to make data-based investment and programmatic decisions. It provides MVA users with a common understanding of a community’s residential market types that allows public, nonprofit, and community organizations to engage in productive dialogue around the creation of a coordinated investment and service-delivery strategy. The MVA also provides a baseline against which community change over time can be measured. Since Reinvestment Funds’ first in Philadelphia in 2000, the group has completed nearly 50 new (and updated) MVAs for city, county and state governments and philanthropic partners in places ranging from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, PA; New Orleans, LA; St. Louis and Kansas City, MO; Jacksonville, FL; the state of Delaware; Nashville, TN; Houston and Dallas, TX and Selma, AL.
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