The city of Memphis is taking a largely hands-off approach to reaching Mayor Paul Young’s goal of adding 10,000 new or renovated homes to its housing stock by 2030.
Achieving this total would require nearly doubling the number of homes built across the city each year. One expert has called this increase “extremely ambitious.” But since Young announced the goal in his February State of the City address, his administration has clarified that developers will decide most of the details, including unit types, locations and prices.
Officials acknowledge that Memphis needs an estimated 39,000 units of affordable housing to meet the current demand. But they have declined to make any specific commitments about the affordability of these 10,000 new homes.
The mayor’s commitment is “a goal, not a plan,” city development and infrastructure chief John Zeanah said. The city hopes to encourage new construction by changing existing regulations to make them more favorable to developers.
Some of the measures already underway include partnering with Shelby County to make empty lots available to developers, streamlining the city’s Unified Development Code and making zoning changes to allow for more multifamily housing, such as apartment buildings and duplexes.
Other cities like Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Portland, Oregon have had success encouraging development with these types of land-use reforms. But officials haven’t said how much housing they want to see built in which neighborhoods, or how many homes they hope will be affordable.
Rather than dictating the specifics, Zeanah said, the city is “in the business of setting the conditions so that the market can deliver housing in Memphis.”
Can Memphis really add 10,000 new homes by 2030?
Memphis has added around 1,000-1,200 homes per year in recent years, Zeanah estimated. Adding 10,000 more by 2030 will require developers to nearly double their current pace.
“It does seem to me like an extremely ambitious goal,” said Ned Resnikoff, an urban policy analyst and housing fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He thinks the city’s recent measures are likely to encourage housing development — it just may not happen as quickly as officials hope.
“I think that is a reasonable strategy,” he said. “Any intervention that’s going to help turn Memphis around is not going to be instantaneous.”
The city will also be counting newly renovated units towards the 10,000-home goal. Zeanah said these renovations could involve making vacant units habitable and turning existing structures, like empty schools or office buildings, into housing.
Local community development corporations, nonprofits and private property owners are already doing this work — sometimes with the assistance of city funds. Young noted that City Council passed an ordinance last August that sets aside 25% of the tax revenue from new data centers, like the xAI supercomputer in Boxtown, to benefit the communities that surround them.
“A portion of that funding can support housing stability, including home repairs, so the benefits of growth are felt first by the people living closest to that investment,” Young wrote in an email.
There’s currently no way for the public to track the city’s progress towards 10,000 new homes. Zeanah also didn’t say how many units have been built since early 2025, when the measures began rolling out.
“There are a number of units that are in the pipeline,” he said. “Once (a tracking) framework is established, we plan to publish our progress on the city’s website.”
How many new homes in Memphis will be affordable?
City officials haven’t publicly set any specific goals for how many affordable units they hope to see built in the next five years. Instead, it will be up to developers to decide whether building affordable housing is worth the associated challenges.
One barrier is high construction costs, which push many developers to build large houses and “luxury” apartments to make a profit. Pricing new units below market rate generally requires special funding — often through federal government programs. Affordable units are typically reserved for specific populations, like low-income veterans or seniors.
“For very-low-income folks, you’re going to need significant subsidies to build that housing,” said Andrew Murray, the president of Memphis’ Community Redevelopment Agency. “The driver for that (type of project) is going to be the developer.”
While the city can provide some financial assistance to affordable housing projects, the money it has dedicated to its Affordable Housing Trust Fund has been declining for years. City Council approved $5 million for the fund in fiscal year 2024, $3.6 million in FY2025 and just $2.65 million in FY2026.
Another barrier is neighborhood support. Critics of Memphis 3.0’s rezoning plan have objected to duplexes and apartment buildings getting built in Midtown, arguing that it would attract development by absentee landlords. This opposition fits into a longstanding trend of wealthier homeowners fighting proposals that would bring lower-income renters to their neighborhoods.
These factors make it unlikely that a significant number of the new homes built in Memphis by 2030 will be considered affordable by the city. But even when developers build housing that does meet those standards, it can still end up too expensive for many low-income residents.
“In our programs, affordable housing generally means units available to households earning at or below 80% of Area Median Income,” Young said. “A significant portion of housing in Memphis already falls within that range because of market conditions. Our role is to make sure that continues and expands.”
For the fiscal year 2025, 80% of Area Median Income for a family of four in Memphis was $72,900 per year. Experts say households can generally afford to spend up to 30% of their income on housing before becoming burdened by the cost. Using this threshold, this hypothetical family could afford to pay over $1,820 per month in rent or mortgage payments.
If that seems higher than a typical low-income Memphis family can afford, that’s because it is: the federal government calculates AMIs for entire metropolitan areas, including the wealthier suburbs, often skewing them higher than the incomes in urban areas..
In an April 17 newsletter, Young said his administration’s proposed budget “supports… targeted investments in homeownership and middle-income development.” But he didn’t specify how much money will be dedicated towards the 10,000 homes goal, or how it will be used.
How have other cities encouraged affordable housing development?
Some cities have taken more aggressive approaches to boosting affordable housing construction than the measures Memphis is adopting. Montgomery County in Maryland, for instance, offers low-interest loans to developers, on the condition that a certain percentage of the units they build be affordable.
“The reason why that works is because the (government) loans are on more favorable terms than the developers will get from private lenders,” Resnikoff said. “The thing about that, though, is you actually need the money to hand out. In the case of a city (like Memphis) that already has a very poor tax base, raising the capital to do that… becomes a lot more difficult.”
Other cities and states have also adopted bolder reforms than the ones Memphis is rolling out. Washington state adjusted its zoning laws in 2025 to allow for multifamily housing to be built near transit stops, even when the land was zoned for single-family use. Portland, Oregon did the same thing citywide in 2021, while Minneapolis eliminated single-family zoning entirely in 2018.
Memphis’ approach to building population density is more cautious. But while its recent measures may not be the fastest way to encourage new housing, Resnikoff said they can benefit low-income renters in the longer term.
“There’s an enormous wealth of evidence that building new housing, even if it’s ‘luxury’ housing, tends to bring down rents in the surrounding area,” he said. That’s because renters who can afford to move to better quality units usually do, freeing up lower-cost units for everyone else. More housing overall can also eventually lead to more competition in the rental market, which keeps rents down.
These changes offer little relief to Memphians experiencing precarious housing situations right now. But Resnikoff says Memphis’ regulatory reforms are a step in the right direction.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not a short-term solution,” he said of the housing shortage. “This is something that does require years of careful and consistent planning to really do something about it.”
Natalie Wallington is the housing reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Email her at natalie.wallington@mlk50.com.
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