Why is it so hard to find an affordable place to live?

Affordable housing has been an issue that we have been involved in for many years. We have two songs on our Welcome Home album that talk about housing: the title cut Welcome Home and Displacement Blues. Both were written about the housing crisis from the vantage point of living in rapidly gentrifying Nashville but they could have been written about any major city in the USA. According to what we are reading, rent costs are going up rapidly because 1) many people cannot afford to buy houses because the cost is skyrocketing and Wall Street investors have jumped into the market with cash offers that make if next to impossible for regular folks to match. This is pushing up the price of housing across the board. Every week we hear from someone who wants to buy our property. For the record: We not selling. 2) If regular folks can no longer afford to buy a house, they must find an apartment so rent is also going up a lot. 3) Wages have not kept up with real cost of living in a place like Nashville these days, not to mention places like California where the homeless population is shamefully large. What’s the solution? It’s complicated. We will discuss some of the options being discussed in future blogs. Right now, we are lobbying our City Council and our Mayor to make investments in affordable housing. Real investments. A lot of $$ because we’re not California but land ain’t cheap here in Music City anymore.