Housing Advocates Rally to Fully Restore the Barnes Fund

Affordable housing advocates rallied in front of the Metro courthouse Tuesday evening in response to Nashville’s recent cuts to the Barnes Fund. The action gathered dozens on Nashvillians despite the cold, and a series of speakers called for the city’s budget to invest in housing.

“Once again the very ones who need a budget that is fair … have been pushed aside, thrown away and overlooked,” said the Rev. Edward Thompson, who is the chair of Nashville Organized for Action and Hope, which helped organize the rally. “To cut [the Barnes Fund] is a social injustice.”

The Barnes Housing Trust Fund was set to award $10 million in grants this year to housing development. But one hour before the commission that oversees the Barnes Fund met to approve of the grant winners, the Metro Finance Clerk halved that amount, impounding $5 million. The city said in a release they hope to reallocate the withheld funds in spring 2020.

However, affordable housing developers say that losing on Barnes grants puts their projects at risk since they often rely on multiple sources of funding. 

“When you pull these sorts of projects together, it takes months … to make that happen,” said Kay Bowers, director of nonprofit developer New Level Community Development Corp, which lost the Barnes grant it was set to receive this year. “We worked over seven months to pull this together and spent upwards of $25,000 on things from architect and engineering fees.”

New Level was planning on developing 51 townhouses that Bowers said would have housed 200 people. But without the Barnes grant, the project is on shaky ground. Bowers said she met with Mayor John Cooper on Tuesday afternoon to discuss possible ways to help the project.

Some speakers at the rally argued that the goal should be to increase the Barnes Fund, not slash its budget.

“The Barnes Fund was already woefully underfunded,” said Lindsey Krinks, co-founder of Open Table Nashville, a nonprofit that works with people experiencing homelessness and poverty. “To cut it further is to dice the crumbs.”

The changes to the Barnes Fund were announced just before the commission that recommends the grant distribution met. Commission members were upset, and some members of the Metro Council also criticized the impoundment — a move from the mayor’s office that didn’t require council input. 

Councilmembers Delishia Porterfield, Freddie O’Connell and Burkley Allen spoke at the rally, and Sean Parker and Sandra Sepulveda were also in attendance.

At a council meeting later Tuesday night, the council voted to extend its deadline to determine whether to preserve an existing housing initiative tool — a late bill filed by O’Connell.

In a statement addressing the rally, Mayor Cooper’s office called the Barnes Fund withholding “a difficult decision made in order to plug the city’s $42 million budget gap and [to prevent] state supervision of the city’s finances." The statement said the city is working to identify revenue sources to help “fund the delayed Barnes grants as soon as possible.”