First Steps Toward housing & Safety for all! A Statement on the Proposed Substitute Budget

Originally posted June 16, 2025

For more than 5 years, the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition has been asking Nashvillians how the city should spend our collective money. And every year we hear the same thing: people want more housing, more non-police community safety resources, and more funding for the public goods that improve our lives.

This year, we gathered input from more than 500 residents living in every council district across the city. With that input, we developed a budget proposal to lay the groundwork for housing and safety solutions that genuinely serve all of us. 

We call it the Housing & Safety for All Plan, a $1 million proposal to fund two critical investments: the Nashville Community Housing Fund, which would enable the city to use bonds to create permanently affordable, publicly-owned, community-governed, mixed-income housing; and a Nashville Community Safety Plan, which would engage impacted communities to develop a citywide non-police Community Safety Plan rooted in public goods, prevention, and trauma-informed response. 

A first step toward housing for all!

After six months of organizing, educating, and engaging community members and city leaders, we are pleased that the Fiscal Year 2026 substitute budget filed on June 11 by Metro Council Budget & Finance Chair Delishia Porterfield includes $100,000 to build the foundation for our proposed housing fund! These funds will be used to hire consultants that have helped cities including Chattanooga, Atlanta, Chicago, and Boston create their permanently affordable, decommodified social housing programs. This is an important step in establishing legal and financial structures to build bond-financed, permanently affordable housing in Nashville.

While we know that launching a housing fund capable of delivering permanently affordable housing rapidly and at the scale that Nashvillians need requires at least $500,000, we nevertheless celebrate this allocation as a crucial first step toward building Metro’s capacity to construct thousands of units of permanently affordable, community-governed housing in the years ahead — and shifting the way Nashville does housing in the process. 

We also know that we must remain vigilant and organized to ensure that these funds are actually used to lay the foundation for an entity that can build decommodified, community-governed affordable housing in Nashville. We will celebrate this win if the budget passes on June 17, and we will be back to work the next day organizing and collaborating to ensure that this project comes to fruition with integrity in the year ahead.

A potential step toward a non-police community safety plan

More than a month after developing our proposal for a community-led safety plan, we learned that the new director of Metro Public Health, Dr. Sanmi Areola, has been preparing to bring impacted community members, frontline advocates, and stakeholders together to develop a citywide community safety plan rooted in prevention. Our understanding is that Metro Public Health will begin developing this safety plan in 2025. Because this work is already in motion at Metro Public Health, the substitute budget does not contain any new funds for a community safety plan. 

While this is not the path we first envisioned toward a community safety plan, it is possible — but not yet guaranteed — that this process will result in an outcome similar to the outcome we hoped would come about through funding three positions at the Metro Human Relations Commission, as we originally proposed. 

The Nashville People’s Budget Coalition is open to supporting a community safety plan process led by Metro Public Health if the department makes public guarantees that:

1. the process will not involve police, courts, jails, or surveillance at either the planning or implementation stage
2. the process will go to the greatest possible lengths to ensure that a significant number of community members impacted by community violence, criminalization, economic inequality, and other forms of injustice play an active role
3. NPBC and other community-based organizations whose work relates to non-police community safety will be invited to play an active role in the development of the plan. We hope that the process reflects these standards and that we will be able to contribute to a principled, collaborative, and democratic process that grows genuine safety for all of us. 

Finally, in addition to significant participation from impacted community members and frontline organizations, we believe that the process should include thorough assessment of the existing community safety and violence prevention ecosystem — what’s working and what’s missing — and should culminate in a 10-year safety plan that functions as a living blueprint and roadmap that will shape municipal funding and policy decisions.

The inclusion of these items — along with the 1% increase in the pay plan for Metro workers and sustained funding for the Varsity Spending Plan — in the substitute budget means that its passage would benefit Nashvillians in ways that Mayor O’Connell’s proposed budget would not. We look forward to the hopeful adoption of the substitute budget and are proud of the work we accomplished in shaping it.

We’re still fighting endless money for cops

At the same time, it is completely unacceptable that our city continues to normalize massive increases in police spending — $24.5 million this year — while struggling to “find” funds to make investments that would radically improve a majority of people’s lives. Our “strong mayor” system, with its absence of mechanisms for residents to enjoy meaningful democratic participation in the process of developing the city budget, combined with a devastatingly narrow and detrimental understanding of what makes communities safe, is making it difficult to create a Nashville in which we all thrive, are all genuinely safe, and can “stay.” Adding $24.5 million in new funds to an already outsized police budget that does not deliver the kind of safety we all deserve means taking $24.5 million from the public goods that would, in fact, deliver the kind of safety we all deserve and make for a Nashville in which we all thrive.

Another Nashville is Possible

Nashville does not have to be governed this way, and if we continue to educate and organize to build a Nashville for all of us, it will not always be governed this way.

Whatever the outcome of this year’s budget process, we are committed to continuing to organize, collaborate, and build power not only to defend and expand upon this year’s wins and potential wins, but to radically shift our city’s budget and policy priorities toward the housing, genuine safety, public goods, and participatory democracy we all deserve. 

The third and final “reading” and final vote on the Fiscal Year 2026 operating budget will take place Tuesday, June 17, during the 6:30 p.m. Metro Council Meeting at City Hall (1 Public Square), when council members will discuss and vote on Budget & Finance Chair Delishia Porterfield’s proposed Substitute Budget, which, in addition to funds devoted to lay the foundations for our proposed permanently affordable housing fund, makes other important investments in fair pay for Metro workers, youth safety, and more.

Stay Tuned!

Stay tuned for ways to join the fight to continue building housing and safety for all!