Metropolitik is a recurring column featuring the Scene’s analysis of Metro dealings.
When scorned homeowners lined up behind the podium in the Metro Council chambers last week in coordinated red outfits, every seasoned Metro-watcher got comfortable. Some councilmembers’ effort to add two new zoning categories — residential neighborhood and residential limited — to the city’s code has become an animating force in Nashville politics in recent weeks, and the gallery was packed with organized opposition. The rewrite would not change a single parcel — yet. The bill (BL2025-1004) is largely seen as a preliminary step toward loosening city property laws that have locked up thousands of homes in the city’s most desirable neighborhoods as exclusively single-family.
Housing bills with both support and opposition advance, to be discussed further in December
Matching clothing means business during any city public comment period — the open-mic time for residents to address elected officials about legislation in two-minute intervals. At a time when her predecessor Jim Shulman was known for taking Red Bull inventory in his seat on the dais, current Vice Mayor Angie Henderson last week got her buzzer ready. Speakers on both sides came and went. Some quoted the Constitution. Some came with personal attacks. For almost two hours, democracy in action vacillated between reasoned argument, grassroots passion and adult tantrums.
Less than 24 hours later, Henderson, who presides over the chamber flow as council parliamentarian, became opponents’ new object of fury.
“Watch these videos!!” reads a Nextdoor post about the meeting whose comments drew pledges to vanquish Henderson, the mayor and the entire council. “Metro Vice Mayor is condescending and rude! Vote her out and never re-elect her.”
The meeting’s tensest moment occurred early, when Green Hills resident Tom Gormley mistakenly tried to speak during supporters’ comments.
“Sir, this is the time for people speaking in support,” explained Henderson.
Gormley threw up his hands.
“Do we get a chance?” he said, seemingly equal parts frustrated and embarrassed.
Citing the city’s dire housing need, supporters see zoning flexibility as a crucial step toward increasing Nashville’s housing supply. Shut out of home ownership by the city’s unaffordable housing market, supporters embrace zoning reform as an overdue response to population growth.
“BL2025-1005 establishes two new zoning codes for building types that we currently don’t have building standards for in our code,” explained District 3 Councilmember Jennifer Gamble, a co-sponsor, later in the meeting. “We’re talking about townhomes, we’re talking about house courts and three- and four-unit plex houses. A diversity of housing types that provide opportunities for our middle-income working people. Our teachers, firefighters, nurses.”
Throughout the hearing, supporters and opponents agreed on many major topics. They agree that the housing market is expensive. They agree that the city has grown rapidly, straining public resources. They agree that currently expensive single-family neighborhoods like Sylvan Park and West Meade are great for those who live there. They disagree on whether these areas are ready to absorb more people.
Gormley was back up a half-hour later with his comrades. Tracing its ideological roots to anti-NEST factions that emerged in early 2024, Nashville’s zoning preservationist movement is, ironically, a big tent. (NEST — an acronym for Nashville’s Essential Structures for Togetherness — was an attempt at zoning reform that was proposed but ultimately put on hold last year.) This coalition seems to believe any move toward zoning density anywhere existentially threatens single-family homes everywhere. (One speaker derided upzoning as “anti-American.”) Developers have destroyed Nashville, they argue, condemning associations with the real estate industry as public corruption.
With the scant biographical information speakers share publicly, it’s easy to confirm that many preservationists own million-dollar homes. Some bought in decades ago when West Meade had “fixer-uppers,” one opponent proudly told the council. Nowhere do opponents acknowledge their overall disdain for the free market exchange of goods or the simple fact that single-family plots have sellers as well as buyers. Some outright deny that the city has a housing shortage. While their appeals indicate that preservationists desperately miss the Nashville of the past, its growth has also brought them life-changing financial stability.
They have brought scorched-earth energy to the political arena. Most of it has been directed at District 20 Councilmember Rollin Horton, a banking attorney and lifelong political wonk who won his first Metro Council term in 2023. Horton backed the NEST legislation in 2024 and has envisioned his district, dominated by The Nations, as a proving ground for the benefits of higher-density housing. (Horton’s new Urban Design Overlay for the neighborhood passed in August.) With it, he has sought quality-of-life bonuses like walkability, bike lanes and thriving neighborhood commercial life centered on public meeting places like bars, restaurants and Ohio Avenue’s Urban Dog Bar.
Recall filing cites The Nations rezoning plan as reason for District 20 councilmember’s proposed ousting
Most of the single-family hand-wringing comes from outside his district via single-family havens like West Meade, Belle Meade, Green Hills and Bellevue. Realtor Lauren Magli — who identifies as a Franklin local on her website — led an unsuccessful October charge to recall Horton, accusing him of ignoring constituents and shunning public feedback. (He has disputed both in lengthy public statements.) The same group later shifted its focus to a planned ethics complaint against Horton and has organized under “Voices for District 20.” Its treasurer, Douglas Jahner, spoke at last week’s meeting and lives in District 35. Magli has help from Chris Remke, an obsessive zoning reform opponent who stood up “Save Our Nashville Neighborhoods,” a fear-baiting website that casts upzoning as a developer conspiracy. Remke’s accompanying Substack puts the same circular arguments next to cartoons that appear to be AI-generated. At last week’s meeting, an opponent called Horton a “carpetbagger.”
“The tone has gotten coarser and more extreme, and it’s not symmetrical,” Horton tells the Scene. “It’s surprising and discouraging. We spent almost two years speaking as a community about this and engaging everyone that we could speak to, from neighborhood associations to businesses to church groups to HOAs and achieved a high degree of consensus — only afterwards to be subject to a deluge of misinformation largely led by people who do not live in the neighborhood or the district.”
The Horton camp has made its own rookie mistakes. He attacked Magli for her generous financial support of Donald Trump, importing fierce federal partisanship into local politics. When Magli was collecting signatures at the Richland Park Farmers Market without the proper permit, sympathetic Horton constituents notified Metro Parks police, further escalating the situation.
A few dozen citizen reactionaries can drum up websites and line up for public hearings. For now, the failed recall effort suggests that maybe upzoning opposition is just a facade.
