Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s administration has joined the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, First Horizon, the Metro Housing Division and other funding partners to launch the Nashville Catalyst Fund, a new tool to create, preserve and develop more affordable housing.
The fund was created to provide fast, flexible capital to mission-driven developers to enable them to move quickly in Nashville’s competitive real estate landscape.
The fund will launch with an initial $75 million – $20 million from Metro, $50 million credit facility led by First Horizon and $5 million from Vanderbilt University – with a goal to raise an additional $25 million.
“The fund will provide fast, flexible loans to help affordable housing partners preserve affordable rental homes that would otherwise be lost to the market and increase affordable housing production so more Nashvillians have dependable housing for themselves and their families for the long term,” O’Connell says.
The loans from the fund will support affordable housing developers working to preserve and develop income-restricted housing for 30 years and beyond, as well as bringing unregulated housing into income and rent regulations, which ensures the population in need is benefiting the most.
“We know that to meet the goals of the Affordable Housing Task Force we need to create 55,000 housing units by 2030,” says Metro Housing Director Angie Hubbard.
“While we have made progress toward that goal, a true public-private partnership and tool like the Nashville Catalyst Fund ensures more swift execution of transactions so mission-driven developers can move quickly on projects to serve Nashvillians in need.”
Metro’s initial investment of $20 million comes from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds and after a competitive procurement process, Metro partnered with Forsyth Street Asset Management and the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to set up the fund’s structure and find investors.
Built on national best practices, the fund offers loan products to mission-driven developers that are not available anywhere else in the market including acquisition loans, predevelopment loans and bridge loans.
These loan products are designed to include and support nonprofit and emerging BIPOC developers within the affordable housing sector and aid in jump-starting these projects without the developer waiting to receive public subsidy or grant proceeds.
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Puryear Law Group is now Puryear Pippenger & Cook
Puryear Law Group PLLC has changed its name to Puryear Pippenger & Cook PLLC to reflect the firm’s continued expansion and the leadership of partners Andrew Pippenger and Charles Cook. Puryear Pippenger & Cook has offices in Nashville and Chattanooga.
Pippenger joined Puryear Law Group in 2019 after spending over two decades at Leitner, Williams, Dooly & Napolitan, PLLC. Based in Chattanooga, Pippenger specializes in litigation, from real estate to contract and property disputes.
An industry veteran with 30-plus years of legal experience, Cook joined Puryear Law Group in 2022 after a tenure at Adams and Reese. He primarily represents clients in commercial litigation, bankruptcy matters and commercial loan workouts.
Pick Tennessee partners with vet group
The Tennessee Department of Agriculture’s Pick Tennessee Products program has joined together with Homegrown By Heroes to better promote local agricultural products produced by Tennessee farmer veterans.
The Homegrown By Heroes label is the official farmer U.S. military veteran branding program. Administered by the National Farmer Veteran Coalition, it certifies ranchers, farmers, and fishermen from all military branches to sell their products as veteran-owned and produced.
PTP has been connecting people everywhere to all the great things that come from Tennessee’s farms and food businesses for more than 30 years. The PTP logo informs consumers the products displaying it were produced in Tennessee.
The mission of the Farmer Veteran Coalition is to mobilize veterans to feed America. They work to cultivate a new generation of farmers through the collaboration of the farming and military communities. The Tennessee chapter of the Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC-TN) assists veterans by finding resources that will help them start their agricultural dream.
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TDOE announces Perkins grant awards
The Tennessee Department of Education announced more than $2.6 million in Perkins Reserve Grant funds have been awarded to 55 school districts for the 2024-25 school year to support career and technical education across the state.
The PRG grant awards support the implementation of programs of study aligned with emerging technology in regionally identified high-skill, high-wage and/or in-demand occupations or industries, implement STEM in all CTE classrooms, and increase support for special education students. Additionally, the PRG grant opportunity is designed to support districts in rural areas and maintain high CTE student participation rates.
This year’s PRG grant award recipients submitted grant applications with action steps to support the department’s state plan – Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act – by ensuring alignment to at least one of these focus areas—foundations in elementary and middle grades, careers in emerging areas, and STEM in the CTE classrooms.
Middle Tennessee school systems awarded PRG awards include Cheatham County ($26,781), Rutherford County ($50,000), Sumner County ($50,000) and Wilson County ($50,000)
The PRG is a competitive grant opportunity made possible through the federal Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) legislation passed in 2018, which provides annual federal funding to support CTE programs nationwide.
Newly built apartments filling slowly: Redfin
Less than half (47%) of newly constructed apartments that were completed in the fourth quarter were rented within three months. That’s down from 60% a year earlier and is the lowest share on record aside from the first quarter of 2020, when the onset of the pandemic brought the housing market to a halt.
That’s according to a Redfin analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s seasonally adjusted absorption rate data for unfurnished, unsubsidized, privately financed rental apartments in buildings with five or more units, dating back to the first quarter of 2012. The most recent data available measures apartments that were completed in the fourth quarter of 2023, and either rented or not rented within three months of then.
New apartments are taking longer to rent out because there’s a near-record number of them hitting the market, meaning building owners are competing with one another for tenants. There were 90,260 new apartments completed in the fourth quarter – the highest number on record with the exception of the second quarter of 2023.
For the past three quarters, the rental vacancy rate has hovered at 6.6%. That’s the highest level since 2021, though it’s worth noting that the vacancy rate is no longer growing like it was during the pandemic.
TSU lands USDA grants
Tennessee State University College of Agriculture research scientists recently secured grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The five different research grants come as part of the national agency’s recent $30.8 million investment into all 19 of the country’s 1890 land-grant HBCUs. The grant awards for TSU range from $449,000 to $600,000 in total.
The grants will fund projects on topics such as nitrogen management in cover crops, climate-resilient urban forests, drinking water sanitation management on poultry farms, artificial intelligence, the impact of dietary fiber on gut microbiota and much more.
Dr. Yujuan Chen, associate professor of urban forestry, says these grants will enhance the college of agriculture, and a specific grant tailored to forestry will fuel the nation’s future scientists.
The grant Chen is referring to will fund a project titled, ‘Growing Future Climate-resilient Urban Forests from an Equity Perspective.’
“This grant will significantly strengthen TSU’s urban forestry program by enabling cutting-edge research in climate-resilient urban forests, heat equity and community needs, especially for historically excluded populations,” Chen says. She also noted that the grants will enhance partnerships with USDA agencies, other universities and the private sectors.
“In particular, it will allow us to establish a long-term urban forestry research site … which will provide numerous opportunities for urban forestry-related research, education/teaching, and extension activities and have long-lasting impacts on diverse stakeholders in the region and beyond.”
The investment, made through NIFA’s 1890 Institution Teaching, Research, and Extension Capacity Building Grants Program, will support groundbreaking research for the College of Agriculture on all aspects as faculty and students can address some of the nation’s most pressing agriculture challenges.
‘Obesity paradox’ aids immunotherapy
Immune system cells called macrophages play an unexpected role in the complicated connection between obesity and cancer, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center-led research team has discovered.
Obesity increases the frequency of macrophages in tumors and induces their expression of the immune checkpoint protein PD-1 – a target of cancer immunotherapies. The findings, published June 12 in the journal Nature, provide a mechanistic explanation for how obesity can contribute to both increased cancer risk and enhanced responses to immunotherapy. They may also suggest strategies for improving immunotherapy and for identifying patients who will respond best to such treatments.
“Obesity is the second leading modifiable risk factor for cancer, behind only smoking, and obese individuals have a greater risk for worse outcomes. But they also can respond better to immunotherapy,” says Jeffrey Rathmell, Ph.D., Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Immunobiology and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Immunobiology.
“How is it that there can be this worse outcome on one hand, but better outcome on another? That’s an interesting question.”
Postdoctoral fellow Jackie Bader, Ph.D., led the studies to examine the influence of obesity on cancer and to explore this “obesity paradox” – that obesity can contribute to cancer progression but also improve response to immunotherapy.