[dropcap]When[/dropcap] Amazon announced in January that Nashville had made the list of 20 finalists being considered for its second North American headquarters, city leaders cheered. They saw the project as the next step in Nashville’s transformation from country-music capital into a regional and even national economic force. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″]
To some locals, Amazon represented something else: more people, more traffic and, most of all, higher rents in a city where a rising share of residents were already struggling to afford a place to live.
“With the onslaught of new people, with the onslaught of higher-income earners, I just think it’s going to further exacerbate what’s already a crisis situation,” said Paulette Coleman, a local affordable-housing advocate.
Ms. Coleman has reason to worry. A new analysis from the real estate site Zillow estimates that rents in Nashville would rise 3.3 percent per year if the city landed the Amazon campus, almost four times as fast as currently projected. After a decade, that could translate into Nashville residents paying $400 more per month in extra rent because of the project.
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