The creation of new affordable housing units in Chattanooga has made some headway in recent years, but the processes are slow and the need is high, local affordable housing advocates said.
“For anybody who keeps saying, ‘Why aren’t we building affordable housing?’ it’s just that the costs are so expensive,” said Martina Guilfoil, CEO of Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise, a housing development nonprofit group with a waiting list of Chattanoogans in need of affordable housing. “Plain and simple, the numbers don’t work.”
A patchwork of federal, state and local programs requires a lot of expertise – and a great deal of patience – to work through to make affordable housing projects successful, said Heather Bradley-Geary, director of Supportive Housing for the Missouri-based Vecino Group. Vecino has worked for more than a year to establish low-income housing in a property on West Main Street.
“There are programs out there dedicated to affordable and supportive housing, but navigating them is difficult,” Bradley-Geary said.
Chestnut Flats, an affordable housing complex of 199 apartments on Chattanooga’s Southside, opened in the fall of 2019, becoming the biggest new federally subsidized affordable housing project in Hamilton County since 2007, according to developers at Elmington Capital Group.