When Paul Young was running for mayor, some citizens questioned his qualifications. Prior to Monday, he had never held elected office, and he had little experience with public safety, in an election where that was the top issue in debates and advertisements.
But there’s at least one arena in which Young has far more experience than the candidates he bested in October — housing. As president of the Downtown Memphis Commission from April 2021 through December 2023, he was in charge of helping draw apartments and other new developments Downtown. Before then, he led the City of Memphis’ Division of Housing and Community Development. He’s also worked at the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning & Development and holds a master’s degree in city planning.
Young told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism that this résumé separates him not just from Floyd Bonner or Van Turner but also from any previous Memphis mayor he’s heard of.
“We haven’t had a housing guy as the mayor before,” Young said. “I want to leverage the experience and knowledge that I have and turn it into results.”
So how does he plan to deliver those results? The new Memphis mayor told MLK50 he’s hoping to create more financial incentives for developers to build housing, make additional investments into code enforcement and convince the Tennessee General Assembly to improve the state’s housing laws. He also has ideas for bringing investment to low-income neighborhoods and developing affordable apartments in white neighborhoods, something that’s not really done here.
Many of his proposed solutions fall along similar lines as those attempted by his predecessor, Jim Strickland. But Young believes that having a “housing guy” behind the mayor’s desk will make a difference and that he’ll be able to greatly improve the housing conditions in a city where they are all too often inadequate.
The following Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. This interview was conducted Dec. 18.
Obviously, you have extensive housing knowledge. But who else do you expect to lean on for advice when it comes to housing?
I mean, Ashley Cash will be the primary point person as the director of Housing and Community Development. However, there are a number of industry professionals, groups like the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, the Memphis Area Association of Realtors, the West Tennessee Home Builders Association; we want to rely on some of their expertise and insight as well. Also, the community development circles, the corporations and the nonprofits that are working in that space. My goal is to make sure that I’m listening to them and understanding the market so we can cater our programs to meet the market needs.
DEFINITIONS
Infill development: Infill development is building new homes or commercial buildings on pieces of vacant or underused land within established urban neighborhoods.
Incentivize: When a city incentivizes the construction of housing, it is helping cover some of the developer’s costs. This can be done through tax breaks, grants, low-interest loans or covering necessary infrastructure costs, such as sewage or roadway improvements.
Upzoning: Changing the way a neighborhood or property is zoned so that more types of buildings can be built there. This can make it possible to build apartments in a neighborhood where only single-family homes exist, which increases the supply of housing.
Screening: In development, “screening” usually refers to using trees or other things that are nice to look at to block the views of a new building that neighbors may not want to see.
How are you hoping to increase the supply of housing to decrease the cost?
One focus for me is going to be more development of housing in the core city and figuring out how we can get more infill development. Building in the inner city is hard because the lots are disparately located; you have a vacant lot next to a house, next to a house, next to three vacant lots. So we want to find programs that allow us to incentivize that kind of development. And it ultimately comes down to infrastructure dollars, and it comes down to grants and low-interest loans.
In the core city, you have some pretty high-intensity zoning Downtown and along corridors like Union Avenue, Madison Avenue and Poplar Avenue. But there’s still a lot of single-family zoning throughout Midtown and other places. Are you hoping to utilize upzoning in some places to try to get more housing built?
I mean, we certainly want to build up density in the core. And in the areas where the zoning won’t allow for the density we’re looking to build, we certainly are going to have those discussions. But I think because of a lot of work that was done with the Unified Development Code and Memphis 3.0, I don’t know that there will be an intense need for zoning changes.
But we’re certainly not opposed to doing upzoning. I know the community has different thoughts around it but I think we can address many of those concerns with appropriate screening and making sure the developers minimize the impact on the neighborhood.
Outside of the core city, you have neighborhoods like Parkway Village and Frayser that have not seen investment in so long. How are you hoping to drive investment in some of those areas?
I think a lot of it goes to what I talked about with the assembly of land. In areas like Oakhaven, where I grew up, Frayser and Raleigh there are a lot of scattered, vacant properties. The biggest thing is finding significant enough amounts of aggregated land in all of these communities such that we can have reasonable development opportunities.
Obviously, a lot of the issues in these areas are results of white flight, even as recently as Hickory Hill and parts of Cordova. How do you hope to stop this cycle?
For one, I think we should rebrand it from white flight to economic flight. Many years ago, they were one and the same because the wealth was in the white community. Now, I think what you see is economic flight. People with means are going to places with more means.
In our core city neighborhoods, we don’t have a good mix of housing types. More housing types available would lead to more people coming to those areas. And I don’t think it would be relegated to a single race.
So I guess your hope is the constant economic flight eastward would stop if we improve housing options in existing neighborhoods?
Yes. My fundamental point is we have to diversify housing types in all of our neighborhoods. We shouldn’t just build affordable housing in South Memphis. Because if all we build is affordable housing in South Memphis, then you don’t have an economic mix. You’ve got to build housing with garages and granite countertops amongst affordable housing options. Because when you can diversify housing types, you diversify the economic mix in the community and you bring stronger commercial opportunities to the neighborhood as well.
To that point, low-income apartments mostly get built in places like South Memphis recently. That’s where land is cheap and the community development folks want it. But the fair housing folks and researchers say that as best we can we should actually be building it in middle-class or upper-class neighborhoods, because residents will have more economic opportunities. Are you going to try to get more affordable housing built in areas with opportunity?
I think the approach to doing that is similar to the approach we have in Downtown Memphis, where we tell developers to have 20% of their units affordable. Having affordable units in developments with higher income ranges is the way to get them in places of opportunity.
It drives home the need to have subsidies available in places that aren’t already in low-income situations and finding ways to make a developer’s numbers work while including low-income units. We just have to be able to articulate how that’s benefiting the affordable housing challenge we have.
“Subsidies available in (more) places” Some local tax subsidies can only be granted Downtown and others can only be granted in low-income areas. Young said he would like to see tax breaks available for apartment developers working in higher income neighborhoods. These tax breaks would come with requirements that the apartment complexes include some affordable units.
Cost being no issue, if you could place 300 units of affordable housing anywhere in the city, would you choose a high-opportunity area like East Memphis or use them to try to get people to move back into a neighborhood like Orange Mound?
I would spread them out. I wouldn’t put 300 in one place. Because what we have done in the past is we have concentrated poverty. We’ve built housing projects and affordable housing complexes with 600 or 700 units that become de facto public housing. We have poverty concentrated behind gates, and it breeds more challenges in those communities.
When you can spread it out, and have 20 or 30 affordable units amongst people of other means, you have more social capital for the low-income residents.
We’re not just an economically segregated city; we’re also a very racially segregated city. Some people tend to say, just improve Black neighborhoods; don’t worry about getting Black folks to move to white areas or white folks to move to Black areas. Others would say, no, we do need to focus on integration. How do you think about that issue?
For one, I don’t think you have to encourage Black people to move to white neighborhoods, because those neighborhoods have become synonymous with wealth and opportunities. I think you’ll find African Americans, Hispanics and others will go to those neighborhoods.
I do feel like our focus should be growing the economies in Black and brown communities. That’s the biggest challenge to me in these neighborhoods is not that it’s all Black folks or Hispanic folks, it’s that it’s all poverty. When you have all poverty, the commercial opportunities are limited because the grocery stores aren’t coming. I think the effort has to be around growing the economy and not so much racially.
What you will hear is, “Once you see more white people riding bikes or jogging in the neighborhood, it’s gentrifying and they’re trying to kick us out.” I hear that all the time. My goal is to make sure that as we are growing these neighborhoods and communities, the people who were there during the down years are able to be there during the up years. But, we should make no apologies about trying to grow the economies in our neighborhoods because we got to have it.
Housing experts on senior leadership team
Young selected a pair of officials with housing backgrounds for his senior leadership team. Mairi Albertson, previously the deputy director of the city’s Division of Housing and Community Development, will be his chief of staff. He appointed Karen Gause, who helped lead the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) Program for Shelby County during the pandemic, as his deputy chief of staff.
Let’s switch topics to code enforcement. One issue I was recently talking about with Robert Knecht (who leads the city division in charge of code enforcement) was code enforcement officers being reactive and not proactive. He told me that they struggle to keep up with the complaints they receive and don’t have the budget to proactively look at slumlord-owned apartment complexes. If it’s a money issue, is that an area you’d like to increase the budget?
I definitely want to see more support going there. I haven’t dug into the budget and what would be needed to grow there. But if we can be more proactive around code enforcement, it’s going to pay dividends for the community. Because the way things physically look affects that neighborhood. It affects the way the young person walking down the street looks and feels and the pride that they have in their community. And so I would love to see more effort there. Code enforcement is going to be a big priority for us. But I don’t want to commit from a budgetary perspective until I dig into the budget.
Do you think we have a chance at a rental registry after the state preempted us from having one?
I’ll have to do some legislative work on it, but I strongly support a rental registry. We don’t want to penalize landlords that are doing a good job, but us having the ability to register a rental unit is really important.
DEFINTIONS
Rental registry: The City of Memphis sometimes has trouble holding out-of-town landlords accountable to city codes. A rental registry would require owners of rental property to name a local contact person, provide their contact information, pay a fee and potentially face regular inspections.
Commercial tax assessments: In Tennessee, property taxes are based on a portion of the value of the property. That portion is 25% for single-family homes and 40% for commercial properties.
Market-rate: In real estate, the term “market-rate housing” can be used to describe most housing that is not subsidized or intentionally affordable. New market-rate apartments will generally have some of the highest rental rates in a given area.
Looking at any part of housing, what is a tangible improvement Memphians can expect in your first term?
More streamlined home repair programs. One of the things that is a significant pain for the citizens is that there are programs for you to be able to repair your home, but you’re unable to use them. We got to figure out a better approach, and I think a lot of that is just procedural.
The other thing is diversifying the mix. I would love for us to be thinking of market-rate and affordable housing in every community.
I’ve heard the city has many different home repair programs and that ends up being a barrier. Is that right?
Yes. At one point when I was at the Division of Housing and Community Development, we were working to have one application for all the programs. We never got there because it was so challenging. But I really believe we should be working to minimize the barriers to individuals. Citizens shouldn’t have to know our bureaucracy. The challenge is that the ways these programs are funded have so many different requirements. It’s not that it can’t be done; it’s just that it’s going to take some intense focus to get it there.
I think it can be done in my first year. I don’t know if it will, but I would certainly say in the first two years.
Are there any housing policies you’re hoping to change in your first or second year, whether passing something at City Council or changing an HCD policy?
I would love for us to look at how some of our large, single-family home rental entities — organizations that have a portfolio of 1000 housing units — are paying single-family taxes. They should be paying commercial tax assessments. I believe that’s really important as we look to grow our budget.
That would require a state law change. A lot of housing law is set at the state level. Are you confident you’ll be able to get stuff done in Nashville?
I feel pretty confident that we’ll be able to get things done. My goal is to be a relationship builder. I’ve already begun building relationships, making trips up to Nashville and meeting with some of the legislature. At the end of the day, my goal is to get the best results for Memphians. In order to do that, it all happens with relationships. That’s all politics is. I want to articulate to the state the impact some of these laws and policies have on our city. I’d like to work with the other cities across the state to get common sense things done.
Is there anything else in housing we haven’t talked about that you’re excited about?
I’m excited that there are projects in the pipeline that are working to address the need for quality, affordable housing units — projects like the Northside High School project.
I think we, as a community, should be thinking about the Winchester corridor, where we have a lot of vacant apartment complexes and think about how we can completely reimagine some of those spaces. Those things excite me.
Jacob Steimer is the housing and development reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism.
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