Nashville's housing trust fund just had its biggest year ever, and a lot of that money is headed for job sites.
Mayor Freddie O'Connell's office says Metro will award $40.2 million through Round 16 of the Barnes Housing Trust Fund. It is the largest single round in the fund's history. The money goes to 14 nonprofit developers and service groups to build or repair 1,106 affordable homes. In a release from the mayor's office dated Oct. 6, the city says that is the most homes ever supported in a single Barnes round without federal dollars.
The Housing Trust Fund Commission approved the awards July 28. The first grant agreements went to the Metro Council at its Oct. 6 meeting. Each contract needs its own council resolution, and the city expects every approval to be done by the end of November.
Some television coverage of the announcement reported 11,000 homes. The city's own release puts the number at 1,106, and that is the figure used here.
Who is getting the money
The grantees range from household names to small neighborhood groups:
- Affordable Housing Resources
- Habitat for Humanity Nashville
- Woodbine Community Organization
- Westminster Home Connection
- Disciples Foundation
- New Level CDC
- Urban Housing Solutions
- McNeilly Center
- Pathway Lending
- Neighbor 2 Neighbor
- Rebuilding Together Nashville
- Corner to Corner
- Be a Helping Hand
- Living Development Concepts
The city says the round pays for four kinds of work: repairs to homes people already own and live in, rehab of rental housing, new homes for sale and new rental homes.
The round mixes leftover money from the 2026 budget year with new money from O'Connell's 2027 budget. The city says that let it fund every active proposal that met the qualifications.
"Our budget included the largest-ever contribution of local funding for the Barnes Fund," O'Connell said in the release. "Meeting the urgency of the need, I'm glad to see these funds awarded immediately to qualified projects that can deliver or rehabilitate more than 1,000 affordable homes."
The rules that come with it
Barnes money comes with rules that last a long time. Rental homes must serve households earning 60% of area median income or less, which the city lists as $69,660 for a family of four. Homes for sale must go to buyers at or below 80% of median income, or $92,900 for a family of four. Except for repairs to owner-occupied homes, the units have to stay affordable for at least 30 years.
The city's release lists the kinds of workers these homes are meant to house, including bus operators, 911 dispatchers, childcare teachers and HVAC technicians.
Since the fund started, the city says it has put in $224 million, attracted more than $1.9 billion in other investment and supported more than 7,600 units.
Cheryl Floyd, an early childhood education specialist, lives at Park24, a development backed by an earlier Barnes grant. "I have never, ever lived in anything brand new," she said in the release. "I save over $400 a month in Uber and Lyft fees."
Council Member Burkley Allen, the council's appointee to the trust fund commission, said she looks forward to "getting shovels into the ground and new keys in the hands of the Nashvillians who make our communities thrive."
Dhathri Chunduru, the mayor's senior advisor on housing, said, "Thirteen years after Nashville created the Barnes Fund, this is its largest grant round ever."
Why it matters for Contractors
This round is spread across 14 organizations and four types of work, so it is not one big bid package. Expect a long run of smaller jobs: roofs, HVAC swaps, accessibility upgrades and whole-house rehabs for the owner-occupied and rental repair programs, plus new single-family and multifamily starts.
Because each grant needs its own council resolution, the work will roll out contract by contract through November instead of all at once. Contractors who want in should get to know the grantees now. Ask how they buy work, what paperwork and insurance they require, and when their projects are scheduled to start.
The affordability and income rules last 30 years, but they sit on the owner and the nonprofit, not the builder. What a builder does feel is cost pressure. Every dollar saved on a rehab or a new home stretches a fixed grant across more households, and nonprofit buyers tend to remember the contractors who help them do that.