Plus: Celebrating bagels | Wednesday, April 30, 2025
 
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Axios Nashville
By Nate Rau and Adam Tamburin · Apr 30, 2025

Good morning, Nashville. We wish you a wonderful Wednesday.

Today's newsletter is 919 words — a 3.5-minute read.

 
 
1 big thing: The 10-year roadmap to ease Nashville's housing crunch
 
Illustration of a small house with different large hands all reaching out to grab it.

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

 

Nashville needs 90,000 new homes over the next decade to keep pace with its surging growth.

State of play: The colossal need for affordable homes headlined the Unified Housing Strategy, which Mayor Freddie O'Connell unveiled Tuesday.

  • Metro leaders billed the report as the city's 10-year road map to address its housing challenges.

The big picture: O'Connell is expected to make an aggressive investment in housing in his upcoming budget proposal this week.

  • The city has committed $30 million to housing initiatives in recent budgets, but O'Connell's funding plan is likely to come in north of that figure.

What he's saying: O'Connell lauded the report for quantifying the city's pressing housing needs.

  • "There isn't one single approach that is suddenly going to make the starter home in every neighborhood in the city something that is realistic, but we know if we get all of these things right we should start to see the pressure of the housing crisis come down," he said Tuesday at a press event.

Zoom in: The report aims to align all Metro agencies working on housing issues and identify strategies to ease the affordability crisis.

  • O'Connell emphasized that the Unified Housing Strategy includes metrics to measure whether the city's approach is successful.
  • "The (Unified Housing Strategy) is Metro's first comprehensive housing strategy that looks at the city's housing crisis from all angles — from how much housing needs to be created and preserved to particular challenges residents encounter in their housing journeys," Metro housing director Angie Hubbard said.

By the numbers: The strategy calls for 20,000 homes targeted at residents earning 60% of the area median income, which is $64,140 for a family of four or $44,940 for a single person.

Flashback: Nashville is no stranger to studies and reports about affordable housing. In 2021, the city released the Affordable Housing Task Force report.

  • Earlier this year, Metro published the housing and infrastructure study, which showed that the typical Black and Hispanic family in Nashville can't afford the median-valued home in 99% of the city's neighborhoods.

Go deeper: Read the full Unified Housing Strategy report.

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2. Nashville bagel crawl will be carb-lovers paradise
 
Bagels from All or Nothing Bagels

All or Nothing Bagels is one of seven bagel shops participating in the first bagel crawl. Photo: Nate Rau/Axios

 

The city's bagel scene has exploded, and now top shops are teaming up for the Nashville Bagel Crawl.

Why it matters: Nashville used to boast just a couple of decent bagel shops, but a wave of newcomers brightened the scene and our mornings with doughy goodness.

Driving the news: The Nashville Bagel Crawl runs Thursday through May 15.

  • Seven bagel shops are participating and rolling out limited-time-only sandwiches.

State of play: Bagelshop and Retrograde Coffee collaborated on launching the bagel crawl "to bring Nashville's growing bagel community together to celebrate the people, the passion, and the love behind every bake," per a press release.

If you go: Bagel enthusiasts are encouraged to map out their routes to visit as many of the shops as possible.

  • All or Nothing Bagels (Nate's fave), Mr. Aaron's Goods, Ugly Bagel, Crieve Hall Bagel Co. and Benji's Bagel & Coffee House (Adam's fave) are the other shops joining in on bagel-mania.

Flashback: We profiled Nashville's bagel boom a year ago.

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3. The Setlist: Meharry buys eight clinics
 
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Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios