Statements
Mission
Urban Housing Solutions (UHS) develops and manages affordable, well-maintained apartments for low income Nashvillians. Understanding that home is more than just a shelter, UHS provides a host of services to help our residents live independently, access essential resources like healthcare and transportation, and build strong, resilient communities with their neighbors.
Access to safe, stable, and supportive housing is needed now more than ever in our city. UHS continues to develop high-quality, supportive, and affordable housing for the individuals and families who need it most. With over 1,600 apartment homes created and preserved since 1991 and hundreds more on the horizon, your support helps ensure even more Nashvillians have a place to call home.
Background
Urban Housing Solutions, Inc. was founded in 1991 to address Nashville's lack of affordable housing for homeless people. An offshoot of the Council of Community Services, the organization had no significant experience operating or managing affordable housing, much less finding the $1,700,000 needed to buy and renovate its first property, an old motel on Murfreesboro Road called Mercury Courts. With the help of nine local banks and a dedicated councilman, Urban Housing Solutions purchased Mercury Courts and began its rehabilitation. One year later, it opened its doors as Tennessee's largest SRO (Single Resident Occupancy). SROs are efficiency-style apartments designed especially for the homeless and those with very low incomes. UHS later purchased other properties for different target audiences--people living with HIV/AIDS, individuals struggling with mental illness, and people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Today, UHS owns and operates 34 properties located across Davidson County. Many properties have a resident monitor who lives on site, but all property management, program administration, and leasing activities occur at the organization's headquarters on Woodland Street. We're able to provide below-market rents through a combination of grants and subsidy programs. UHS also offers a variety of programs and services not typical of other permanent affordable housing providers. It maintains a resident transportation service, which carries people to work, doctors' offices, grocery stores, and social service appointments. On-site service coordinators are available at some of our properties to help residents address mental and physical health issues, obtain basic needs, and navigate government benefit programs. Three of UHS' properties have been set aside for Journeys of Hope, a comprehensive addiction recovery residential program.
Impact
In the beginning, UHS focused on renovating old properties into housing for other populations with special housing needs, including those living with HIV/AIDS; individuals needing mental health support; those struggling with addiction, deaf and hard of hearing adults; and other vulnerable individuals and families. In these partnerships, UHS has always provided the "hardware" of housing through its development/property management activities, and our team of service coordinators connect residents to the "software" of supportive services provided by other nonprofits and social service agencies.
Nashville's rapid economic and population growth over the last decade brought a lot of new job opportunities and benefits to our city. Unfortunately, this added market demand has come at the expense of our housing affordability. UHS recognized and responded to this emerging housing crisis several years ago, increasing the scale of our development efforts, with a focus on new construction and the preservation of larger apartment communities. Currently, UHS provides over 1,600 affordable apartments to individuals and families in Davidson County -- and over 700 of those apartments were developed/preserved since 2018 -- with several more projects in our pipeline. In addition, we've bolstered partnerships to continue addressing unmet housing needs and to expand access to essential services like health and transportation, along with neighborhood services through development of mixed-use buildings with "community assets" like clinics, banks, and neighborhood retail. We also recognize the inequitable -- and unacceptable -- health disparities that continue to impact low-income communities as a result both of past policy decisions and environmental conditions, so our new construction and rehabilitation projects integrate sustainability standards like Energy Star and Enterprise Green Communities. Where feasible, we also seek to integrate renewable energy production with solar panels and to provide more resilient properties that will be more comfortable and livable in the face of power outages, weather hazards, or other community disruptions. Ultimately, we believe everyone deserves a healthy home, not just for the sake of our community -- but for our planet.
Needs
For the next three years (through 2026), UHS is focused on expanding services, partnerships, and infrastructure to support resident needs to ensure residents can endure economic, natural, and community crises. We are working to launch an integrated Resiliency Hub model at each of our largest apartment communities, which will leverage community health providers and other partners to address the diverse needs of our residents and to expand access to health/wellness services. This includes expanding broadband access, strengthening our property and programmatic infrastructure, improving disaster response protocols, and advocating and partnering with our local housing authority to expand rental assistance that promotes housing security in our communities. This will be a complicated and expensive undertaking that will require more community engagement, as well as staffing and technical expertise to oversee financing, design, and construction of new affordable housing and community development projects. Along with pressures on affordability, Nashville's growth has underscored our transit needs. We will advocate for transit improvements while undertaking our own efforts to create communities that are mixed-use and prioritize transit connectivity, walkability, and accessibility.
CEO Statement
UHS formed in May 1991, when Rusty Lawrence, then the director of the Council of Community Services, spearheaded an effort to create Nashville's first permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. Responding to a critical, unmet need in the community, Rusty secured a rental assistance contract for 100 Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units and helped assemble a partnership of nine local banks to purchase and convert an old motel into Mercury Courts, which became the largest SRO development in the state. With a small staff, UHS slowly built on this initial success to address other unmet housing and community needs across Nashville.
Three decades later, UHS is a leading nonprofit affordable housing and community developer in Tennessee. We have developed over 1,600 apartments and 27,000 SF of neighborhood commercial space across 34 properties, and we aim to create or preserve hundreds of additional affordable homes by 2030. We now have nearly 50 employees, and we are growing steadily. When Rusty retired in November 2020, he left behind a legacy of innovative and collaborative action that has served more than 8,000 Nashvillians since UHS' founding. With a new strategic plan focused on increasing the resilience of our properties, our organization, and our residents, we are committed to expanding on this legacy that has set us apart from other housing agencies.
I feel very privileged to be in my position as the managing director of UHS. I worked alongside Rusty Lawrence for over 14 years before he retired, and we had a great working relationship, in part because we have a similar "action bias"; we both share an instinct to start producing visible results when presented with a problem. This drive to produce a tangible solution is what attracted me to housing and community development in the first place.
Board Chair Statement
Urban Housing Solutions (UHS) is Nashville's largest non-profit provider of affordable housing. We own and operate 34 properties with over 1,600 apartments and 27,000 square feet of commercial space. We work to find creative solutions that serve individuals and families with special housing needs. My involvement with UHS goes back over twenty years. I have served as board chair almost 10 years. My interest, along with all of our board members, advisory members and numerous volunteers, stems from a deep concern for providing housing for our most vulnerable citizens. Interestingly enough, most of our residents (over two-thirds) work. This population simply cannot afford traditional housing in Nashville! Our dedication and commitment is to creatively find ways and resources to help bridge that gap. With all of us, including our staff, this is a passion!
Service Categories |
|
| Primary Category: | Housing, Shelter - Housing Development, Construction & Management |
| Secondary Category: | Human Services - Centers to Support the Independence of Specific Populations |
| Tertiary Category: | Mental Health & Crisis Intervention - Substance Abuse Dependency, Prevention & Treatment |
Areas Served
| TN - Davidson |
