Upper Cumberland Habitat for Humanity officials said they are not surprised by a new report from the Tennessee Housing Development Agency showing Cookeville’s significant need for affordable housing.
The report showed Cookeville will need roughly 3,000 additional affordable housing units over the next decade. Upper Cumberland Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Jeremy Byrd said Cookeville and the Upper Cumberland have focused more on rental property development than affordable homeownership.
“It seems like we have focused on those for the last couple of decades, maybe even [longer],” Byrd said. “So I am not really surprised that we need affordable housing in the area to that quantity.”
Byrd said Habitat for Humanity defines affordable housing as housing that costs 30 percent or less of a family’s income. He said the need is especially great because Cookeville’s population continues to grow, while the supply of affordable homes has not kept pace.
“Even in an area such as Cookeville where there’s a lot of houses and a lot of real estate activity happening all the time, you might have six to a dozen homes at any given point that would be considered affordable that a family could actually buy and move into that don’t require substantial renovation or are not so far out of their price range that they would have to come up with an exceptionally large down payment to make the monthly payments affordable,” Byrd said. “So it really is a need in our area. We see it at Habitat day in and day out.”
Byrd said surrounding counties have similar availability needs for affordable housing as Putnam County. However, he said Putnam County has way more demand.
“I think that we feel the pressure more in Cookville and Putnam County, because it’s not an urban area, but it is more urban and trending more that direction every day, especially when you take into consideration, you know, not just Cookville, but people are very excited about everything that’s happening at Baxter and the great school systems there at Upperman, and so they’re trying to move that way,” Byrd said. “Monterey is always a hard place for us to find lots to build on, because they seem to get snatched up pretty quickly up there. So all of the towns in Putnam County are highly desirable for people moving to the area.”
Byrd said Habitat builds an average of four to five affordable homes per year. The recent report, he said, reinforces the nonprofit’s desire to increase that number.
“We wish we could do more,” Byrd said. “We really do. Our board of directors has set a goal to try to get us to an average of six new constructions a year, which is a sizable increase considering the last few years we’ve been able to do three to four houses. That’s a healthy percentage increase. We’re going to trust the community to partner with us, and we’re going to try to do the very best we can to serve as many people as we possibly can.”
Byrd said rising costs have largely impacted the number of affordable homes the nonprofit can build each year.