Using the newly built Kirkpatrick Park mixed-income development in East Nashville as a backdrop, Mayor David Briley announced Tuesday the city will commit $500 million for affordable housing as part of a new plan to address Nashville’s growing housing crisis.

The Under One Roof 2029 initiative seeks to create at least 10,000 units over the next decade, mainly by funding the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency and the city’s Barnes Fund for Affordable Housing, which provides grants to affordable housing developers.

"This is a radical, intense step forward for the community," Briley said in an interview with The Tennessean. "We need to be focused on getting this done for the city. Our growth needs to be balanced by continuing to invest in people. This will help ensure we all move forward together."

While Nashville’s recent growth has brought jobs and opportunities, home prices have nearly doubled in the past six years. Combined with scarcer home inventory, rising interest rates and population growth, the boom has left behind many lower-income residents.

SERIES:The costs of growth and change in Nashville

The city will provide $350 million to MDHA to help pay for 5,000 low- and middle-income homes, primarily through the redevelopment of aging public housing communities. An estimated 1,000 of the 5,000 new units will be dedicated to individuals at the lowest end of the income spectrum.

The new funding will come through general obligation bonds and will be spread out over the next decade.

Metro also will allocate $150 million to the Barnes Fund during the 10 years — a 50 percent increase from its current funding levels. That money will come from the city's operating budget.

The bonds and Barnes Fund money will require Metro Council approval.

Meanwhile, as part of the initiative — the most ambitious housing plan in Nashville's history — Briley will challenge the private sector to make $250 million in voluntary investments in affordable housing. If successful, the private investment would bring the total affordable housing push to $750 million.

The administration, Briley said, is exploring several avenues, including the creation of an affordable housing real estate investment trust.

"There's not one single thing we can do to address affordable housing," he said. "But we know a $750 million commitment by our city ... is incredibly important and the first step in addressing affordable housing in our community."

Push for housing at lowest income levels

Before this proposal, affordable housing advocates had long questioned MDHA’s public housing redevelopment strategy because it would not increase the amount of housing for individuals with the lowest incomes. MDHA has dubbed the redevelopment projects "Envision" plans.

MDHA leaders said the city's investment will allow them to "accelerate" those projects and create some 4,000 middle-income homes with an approach meant to break up concentrated poverty.

ENVISION CAYCE:Nashville public housing redevelopment painstakingly slow as funding hard to find

DAILY BRIEFING:Keep up to date with Nashville and state news delivered to your inbox, every morning

In addition to the estimated 1,000 new units dedicated to extremely low-income residents — defined as making less than 30 percent of the metro area median income — MDHA will retain 2,800 extremely low-income homes.

"In order for us to build successful communities, they have to be mixed-income," Briley said, adding that concentrated models have led to multi-generational poverty. "We can't just spend money on one part of the menu."

The need for housing is dire at the lowest end of the wage scale, said Phil Manz, the chair of the Affordable Housing Task Force at NOAH, a faith-based advocacy group. He commended the addition of roughly 100 new homes annually for people with very low incomes, but said it’s not enough.

“It’s good to hear that they’re going to put more money into housing,” Manz said. “The reality in Nashville is that over 100 people die on the streets from homelessness every year.”

State Rep. John Ray Clemmons, who is challenging Briley in the mayoral race in August, said Briley's plan "falls short."

In a statement, Clemmons said the investment "does nothing to address" the overall shortage of units for very low-income residents and the Barnes Fund increases are "woefully insufficient."

MDHA is currently dipping into its reserves as it struggles to finance the first of its housing overhauls, at the red-bricked James A. Cayce Homes in East Nashville, just 2 miles from downtown.

Since the Envision Cayce master plan was finalized in 2014, only 70 units have been completed.

Kirkpatrick Park — where Briley made his announcement Tuesday — is part of that plan. Officials said 94 mixed-income units will be available in August.

"They're gorgeous, just gorgeous," said Henrietta Wagner, who came to tour the units Tuesday.

Wagner — who lives in Edgefield Manor, MDHA's senior-residents-only property in East Nashville — supports mixed-unit complexes because they create "an overall better environment."

She said she already submitted an application at Kirkpatrick for a one-bedroom.

MDHA: New initiative a partnership

It’s been a painstakingly slow process to achieve the vision of vibrant urban neighborhoods with a mix of affordable and market-rate residences.

MDHA Board Chair Charles Robert Bone said the new initiative achieves what he's long wanted — a partnership with the city. In recent years, the city has not funded MDHA directly.

"This allows it so we're not operating in some vacuum," Bone said. "It allows us to really execute on a plan the mayor and the council have come forward with."

But some, including Metro Council member Bob Mendes, question whether using city dollars to fund a project MDHA has struggled to do is a sound investment.

"If we're supposed to now understand that MDHA was not going to succeed on its own, I want to know that $35 million a year is going to get the job done," Mendes said. "I want to know a lot more about the creditworthiness about MDHA's ability to do the job if we're going to be investors."

Briley said he believes MDHA could've executed its housing overhaul on its own, but it would have "just taken too long for our city, for the people who live here."

"We're making it happen more quickly," he said.

Mendes said he needed to see more details for the plan but that operating budget questions have been raised.

"This seems to assume there's a tax rate increase at some point," he said. "I can't imagine the city can afford to engage in this without it."

Brett Withers, also a council member whose district includes Envision Cayce, said he hopes the city's investment can provide the help the affordable housing projects require.

"MDHA has had to borrow housing dollars for public infrastructures that benefit the whole region," he said. "My hope is that MDHA can be focused on building now."

While the plan is a "bold step," Withers added that a big part of the affordable housing issue isn't just housing, but helping residents connect to employment and having jobs that pay wages to afford rent.

Bone will lead MDHA through the initiative, and Matt Wiltshire, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development, will move over to the agency in April in the role of chief strategy officer.

Private sector pushed to contribute

The growing gap in affordable housing is affecting other parts of the economy.

Businesses are looking to relocate or expand, for instance, where employees can find housing within their budgets.

This problem, Briley said, cannot be shouldered exclusively by the public sector because it is also a significant workforce development and quality-of-life issue that employers and private philanthropy must help address.

"Business and community leader after leader have said, 'We want to do something,' " he told The Tennessean. "We're just answering a question that people have been asking over and over again."

Withers said private investment could help bring amenities such as grocery stores, along with job opportunities, something that can help in building a community.

Manz from NOAH was skeptical of the private investment initiative.

“When we’re asking the private sector to do housing, that’s not their role," Manz said. "We shouldn’t have to rely on the voluntary nature of their commitment. Historically the private sector has not funded housing.”

NOAH has advocated for a dedicated tax that would be used to pay for affordable housing — from short-term rentals, for example — but Briley said there was “no mechanism” in the city’s current financing system for such a permanent fix.

Private sector support to help create new workforce housing could address the long-standing hospitality industry worker shortage in the city, especially for culinary and housekeeping jobs.

The tourism boom has brought many new hotels to the downtown area in recent years. Yet most of the city's hotels are chronically understaffed due to the lack of affordable housing in the area.

NASHVILLE ELECTION:Affordable housing shaping up to be key issue in mayoral election as Clemmons criticizes Briley

"If you're a company in Nashville and struggling to find people to work for you, this is a great opportunity to help potentially create a bigger workforce in the city and help your future employees by volunteering to help the affordable housing fund," council member Fabian Bedne said.

Bedne, along with co-sponsor Colby Sledge, has filed legislation that would require the city to make a contribution to Nashville's affordable housing fund whenever economic development incentives are granted to companies.

Calling Metro's commitment to MDHA and the Barnes Fund as the first step for more affordable housing funding, Bedne said it fulfills what he looked to achieve with his bill.

"People tend to have an idea that the issue we're facing as a city is only to build new homes. It's more complex than that," Bedne said. "This has potential to be more inclusive and comprehensive. We have to continuously invest in housing for people that are of all income levels."

DOWNLOAD:Nashville's changing. We'll keep you up to date. Get the Tennessean app.

Want to read more stories like this? A Tennessean subscription gets you unlimited access to all the latest political news, podcasts like Grand Divisions, plus newsletters, a personalized mobile experience and the ability to tap into stories, photos and videos from throughout the USA TODAY Network's 109 local sites.

DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get news from The Tennessean on your mobile device

Reach Yihyun Jeong at yjeong@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @yihyun_jeong. Reach Mike Reicher at mreicher@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @mreicher.