Chattanooga’s Chief Housing Officer, Nicole Heyman and Reinvestment Fund’s Policy President, Ira Goldstein on Tuesday presented results from the 2023 Market Value Analysis during a meeting of the Chattanooga City Council’s Affordable Housing Committee. The Market Value Analysis 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, said officials.
“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 violations. 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 percent 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 percent of white, non-Hispanic residents live in the strongest three markets
64 percent of black, non-Gispanic 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 here. The full report will be completed later this week and will be made available online at that point.