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Nashville's housing boom is forcing locals to sleep on the streets while wealthy newcomers snap up luxury apartments
The huge signs are everywhere – now leasing, luxury living, move in now!
In downtown Nashville, the apartment market is hot as Music City continues its relentless trajectory as a Southern boomtown.
But while towering condo blocks are being built at a frantic pace for a flood of aspirant new arrivals, that very prosperity is forcing others to slip through the net and on to the streets.
And it's not simply the traditional poor and struggling who are now being sucked into the twilight world of homelessness in the vibrant Home of Country Music.
Purple heart recipient Patrick James told DailyMail.com he was making $150,000 annually just three years ago. Now he's sleeping in a battered and immobile Chevy Suburban after losing his house through divorce.
The decorated veteran who served multiple tours in Iraq just cannot find enough regular money to meet rising apartment rents, despite having an Army pension.
Towering condo blocks are being built at a frantic pace in downtown Nashville for new arrivals, making apartments unaffordable for many locals
Trash is strewn across an area known as the Old Tent City, beside the Cumberland River. About 130 people are estimated to live there
An estimated 86 people a day moved to the Nashville metro area in 2023, boosting the population to 2.1million according to United States Census Bureau figures.
Big business is helping to drive the onslaught. Amazon has announced it will set up major operations there, while New York money firm AllianceBernstein has moved its headquarters to the Tennessee state capital.
Even a modest one-bedroom apartment way away from downtown can now run at $1,400. In the hipster neighborhood of The Gulch, where the skyline is dotted with construction site cranes, a new studio is easily $1,500 a month while two-bedrooms start at $2,485.
'Nashville is now all about the money and real estate, but that money and real estate is making the rich richer and the poor poorer,' James told DailyMail.com as he sat in in the passenger seat of an old Mercedes that he uses to get around.
'Nashville only cares about tourists, country music and cowboy hats. It's a dog and pony show. Forget those fancy apartments that are going up, I don't stand a chance of getting any sort of apartment in this city right now.
'You've got to make at least three times the amount of the rent to get approved,' he added. 'That's why I bought that old truck to live in and the car so I could get to places.'
The ancient Mercedes, which has a Purple Heart license plate, is next to the Suburban in an area known as the Old Tent City, beside the Cumberland River.
Derelict RVs and makeshift sheds, some fenced off in an effort to replicate a private home, are the grander living areas amid makeshift canvas constructions housing an estimated 130 people.
Five-times decorated James, who lived with his ex-wife in the metro area after serving his country, said he was awarded the Purple Heart after being shot in the neck in Tikrit, the home city of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Large signs like 'now leasing, luxury living, move in now!' are seen around every bend in Nashville's downtown area
Purple heart recipient Patrick James told DailyMail.com he was making $150,000 annually just three years ago. Now he's sleeping in a battered and immobile Chevy Suburban after losing his house through divorce
Local Courtney Trisdale lives on the street with her dog. She's pictured on the sidewalk outside of the Greyhound Bus Station in the city
Locals can't afford soaring apartment prices and have been forced to sleep on the streets of downtown Nashville
Shacks have been erected in Tent City for the homeless population in and around Tennessee's capital city
The 39-year-old former infantry sergeant, originally from New York, said: 'I was on Iraq in '05, '06, '07 and '08 when I was wounded. It was February 18, 2008. The bullet hit my spine and jugular vein As a result I suffered two strokes and was in Walter Reed Military Medical Center for a year.
'After my recovery, I went to college and started a law degree but dropped out. I became a store manager and was making $150,000 a year. Then the divorce which was so expensive I lost my home and eventually my job because I struggled for a stable place to stay.
Figures show that there are about 2,094 experiencing homelessness in Nashville
'At first I was in hotels but that started to get really expensive. In the end I had to take loans in order to stay in hotels. It was unsustainable.'
However, James, who showed DailyMail.com his military ID card, is fighting back. He has been accepted for a bachelor's degree course in criminal justice at Nashville's Strayer University.
'If you fall it's about trying to get back up,' he said. 'I hope I can work in probation and that my experiences will help me understand the situation of others.'
Fellow Old Tent City occupant and former auto mechanic Robert Sutton, 40, said he had been waiting four years on a list for affordable accommodation.
'I'm desperate. I fell off the system and now I just want a proper home again. I do whatever I can now to make money, like fixing things. But that's not enough to get anyway.
'I've been four years hoping for a place, on a Salvation Army list. The money that's coming into Nashville is doing nothing for people like me.'
Official figures for Fair Market Rent place the Nashville metro area as more expensive than 94 per cent of other areas in the United States, with a two-bedroom home cited as $1,253 a month, a 4.68 per cent increase on the previous year.
But potential renters are finding that figure to be a mirage. And a 2023 report by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County into the 'impact of rapid growth' in the area cited the 'exacerbated line between the haves and have nots'.
It says: 'Economic growth has created affluence for some but has clearly left many others behind. Poverty remains as high as when the growth boom started…
'And the ability of many Nashvillians to afford housing has rapidly declined as the economic boom continued.'
Camping tents are used as shelter for the unhoused in Nashville. Soaring housing prices have left many without a home. Data shows there were 135 more homeless people in 2024 than in January 2023, a 23 per cent increase.
James Weaver is on the street, but came tantalizingly close to living in an apartment. He scraped together the $1,200 for the first month's rent and more cash for a deposit for the one-bedroom place. As he was about to move in, the landlord upped the rent to $1,400
Glancing at the high rises and cranes, Weaver said, 'I've seen Nashville change and grow. Where we're standing, I could count 12 cranes, that's 12 construction sites at the same time'
Outside the Greyhound Bus station, overshadowed by newly-built apartment blocks and surrounded by rubble-covered ground destined for new construction, James Weaver contemplates his predicament.
He's on the street, but came tantalizingly close to living in an apartment. He scraped together the $1,200 for the first month's rent and more cash for a deposit for the one-bedroom place.
As he was about to move in, the landlord upped the rent to $1,400. It was just too much. So Weaver, bitterly disappointed but not crushed, continued to make the outdoors his home.
Even if he had stretched to the extra amount, there was another sting in tail. The landlord had decided to install someone else there as well.
'So it was going to be a shared room kind of situation,' 59-year-old Weaver told DailyMail.com. 'Not even a place of my own. I'd paid the deposit, then the game changed.
'I later heard other people had similar experiences. Some of these landlords just find any excuse to jack up the rent. They wanted $200 more from me. That was impossible. I try to work with whatever construction jobs I can get, but at my age it's tough.'
Weaver has his entire possessions in one small green bag. It was hanging on the railings outside the bus depot, with him keeping a firm eye on it.
'The problem with being on the streets is that you constantly are losing your things,' he said. 'People are constantly stealing your bag. If you leave it somewhere and then turn your head, it's gone. You've got to start over.
'My goal is to be able to find some affordable housing. Something that I can afford at whatever my income happens to be at the time.
'If I'm unemployed, then I need a place to stay at that for a person that's unemployed. And if I'm working, I want something at that price that I can afford. But the words affordable housing in Nashville shouldn't even be in the same sentence.'
Glancing at the high rises and cranes, he continued: 'I've seen Nashville change and grow. Where we're standing, I could count 12 cranes, that's 12 construction sites at the same time.
Derelict RVs and makeshift sheds are the grander living areas of Tent City amid makeshift canvas constructions housing an estimated 130 people
'I lost my apartment 18 months ago. Those apartments right there, they want $2,500. There's no hope.
'It's the rate of the rent of the rental properties here in Nashville that got me personally in the homeless situation. And as I talk to other fellow community members that are living on the streets, it's their issue as well. The rental properties are just not affordable.'
Nashville’s boom is partly fueled by lower personal and corporate taxes, attracting companies and individuals fleeing high tax regimes in blue states such as California and New York.
The city has become a vibrant hub for tech companies, start-ups, investment firms and healthcare corporations, sending previously low real estate prices rocketing.
Tennessee levies no personal income tax, compared to The Golden State’s 13.3 per cent and New York’s 10.9 per cent – meaning dramatic savings for higher earners.
The Volunteer state’s corporate income tax at 6.5 per cent is also lower than New York on 7.25 per cent, California on 8.84 percent and blue state New Jersey on 9 per cent, according to figures from leading think tank Tax Foundation.
A homeless man if pictured laying on the ground. 725 'unsheltered' people in Nashville were living mostly in encampments (51 per cent) on the streets (27 per cent) and in vehicles (six per cent)
Old Tent City occupant and former auto mechanic Robert Sutton, 40, said he had been waiting four years on a list for affordable accommodation
Tech company Thnk moved to Nashville from New York in 2020 after considering Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia.
‘We looked at crime rates, education and entertainment,’ chief executive Brendan Kamm told a report for major financial services firm Morningstar.
‘Ease of business here – tax rates, hiring, lower wage costs, universities, commercial space – were all advantageous over New York.’
Figures from Nashville city's Office of Homeless Services show there were 2,094 homeless people in the area during a spot check on one night in January this year.
Of those, 725 'unsheltered' were living mostly in encampments (51 per cent) on the streets (27 per cent) and in vehicles (six per cent). There were 135 more than in January, 2023, a 23 per cent increase.
The rest were in sheltered accommodation provided by organizations such as the Salvation Army and Room In The Inn. Twelve per cent of all homeless were veterans. The total was a 1.6 per cent decrease from January, 2023.
Office of Homeless Services director April Calvin told DailyMail.com that Nashville was a city where 'growth does not always equal equality'.