If the mayor and the council honestly look the cause of the crisis, they will find it is caused by zoning restrictions (see previous post) that limit supply. With 100 people moving to Nashville each day, the only thing that can adjust is price.
The standard feel-good response is affordable housing mandates on new construction which raises the cost of new construction and limits supply--exacerbating the very problem it is designed to alleviate. (See What Nashville can Learn from NYC: Affordable Housing Mandates Reduce the Supply of Affordable Housing.)
...mandates reduce the profitability of new development. This will lead to less new development, or developers will substitute towards smaller developments, not subject to the mandate. In the former case, fewer new developments would be built; in the latter, lower-density development would take place. Either way, this represents a decrease in supply. A decrease in supply would increase price, exacerbating the very problem--lack of affordable housing--that it was designed to ameliorate. (And don't forget that density is green.)
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