From an early age, Kaycee Ensign was drawn to learning about inequalities, and in high school, she got involved with anti-poverty work connected to a local community kitchen. Now she has a role that takes her front and center in contributing to Nashville’s housing affordability solution. Ensign currently serves as the Housing Policy Manager working in Metro’s Housing Division, which is part of the Planning Department. She is among a group of local upcoming leaders with a passion for this work.
“I think [the community kitchen] was my first introduction to housing and homelessness issues,” Ensign said, adding that in college she regularly volunteered with a homeless day shelter. Meeting with people experiencing homelessness “lit a fire in me of wanting to learn more about housing and homelessness issues and the societal reasons for why homelessness was so prominent.”
Since its inception in January 2022, the Housing Division has grown from a three-member staff to 11, who provide planning and coordination assistance to move the city forward in building more housing units to help address the affordable housing issues in Nashville. The Housing Division is best known for creating and managing Nashville’s United Housing Strategy, managing the Barnes Housing Trust Fund, and staffing the Metro Housing Trust Fund, which oversees the Barnes Fund. Ensign spoke with The Contributor about her path to Nashville and how the city is grappling with growth.
You have been with the Housing Division for four years and previously worked in the northeast region of the U.S, mostly around DC. What brought you to Nashville?
I’m originally from Chattanooga, so not too far down the road. But my fiancé at the time, now my husband, we were living in Richmond, Va., and he matched at the Children’s Hospital [here in Nashville] for his pediatric residency, so that’s what ultimately brought us to Nashville. It was just really fortunate timing when we were looking to move … that there was [a job] opening for the Housing Division. This was over four years ago. I applied and was really fortunate to get the position and have been with the division ever since.
From a housing perspective, what stands out to you in Nashville compared to other cities you’ve worked in or studied over the course of your career?
Nashville is experiencing many of the same challenges that other cities across the country are facing. Many Nashvillians know this very well and experience this — the growth that Nashville experienced was in such a compressed time frame, [which] brought on our housing challenges at a rapid pace that, in many ways, the city was not quite prepared for. And so, that has been something that is unique to Nashville.
On the flip side of that, and having worked in other cities across the country, I have always been impressed by how deeply invested Nashvillians are in making sure that Nashville continues to be a place that new residents and longstanding residents can continue to call home. We have such a rich community of dedicated advocates, affordable housing developers, service providers, and faith-based institutions who are all constantly asking themselves, “What role can I play in making Nashville a more affordable place to be?” I think that is something really unique to Nashville.
I think we have the people at our disposal to be able to meet the challenges that we’re facing as a community.
There is also a lot of criticism from activists and advocates that Nashville is not doing enough or even the right things to keep people here. What is your take on that?
The scale of our affordable housing challenges requires lots of different partners and folks. Everyone’s going to have different perspectives on what might be the best solution. And honestly, from my perspective, that’s what we need because it’s not a one-size-fits-all, and we need different solutions at our disposal.
If I’ve learned anything from being in the housing policy space for many years is that it requires us to be innovative to really be able to make progress. While I can feel sometimes competing priorities and interests, it can be a benefit to Nashville to have those different perspectives and different solutions thrown out, so that we can attempt multiple things. Because again, just one idea is not going to be able to fix the challenges that we’re facing as a community.
You are a young community leader here in Nashville. What are some of the recommendations you have for other young leaders who enter this field of housing policy during a time when the entire nation is experiencing an affordable housing crisis?
Affordable housing needs can feel really overwhelming at times, and the progress can feel slow and incremental. For anyone who’s looking to get into this field, or really any policy field, it’s so important to have a real passion and understanding of the issue.
I help mentor current UVA (University of Virginia) students from time to time, and my first recommendation to them is to start by volunteering or getting engaged within your community in some way and get engaged in the community that you wish to serve. Because being able to get connected to that issue on a more intimate level will help you foster that passion that’s needed when sometimes the work can feel mundane or can feel slow, and that can be challenging to stay motivated. But if you have that underlying passion there and that understanding of the issue at a more intimate level, that can really help you in your career … and also help you understand the issue in a way that is grounded in the experience of the people that you’re wishing to serve.
I think that’s so important for anyone who’s working on a policy level and [who is] maybe less connected to the grassroots individual service on a day-to-day level. But if you have that foundation, that can help you in your career in many, many ways.
The Housing Division’s Unified Housing Strategy (UHS) includes a strategy to create more permanent supportive housing (PSH) units for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness. I understand you lead a committee that has been tasked to create a PSH plan for the city. Tell me about that and where it stands?
The Unified Housing Strategy, which was published a little over a year ago, includes seven core strategies with one strategy focused on increasing permanent housing for our unhoused population. There is a specific action within that strategy, Action 29, that calls on Metro to develop a permanent supportive housing (PSH) strategic plan that would provide a clear roadmap on how we can advance PSH in Nashville.
Over the last several months we have been completing a procurement process to identify a consultant team that will work in partnership with our team to develop the plan. We also have a PSH working group with representatives from a few Metro agencies and community organizations that will be serving as a guiding body for this consultant team. [Editor’s note: The Contributor is one of the organizations involved in this work.] We’ve done some initial work with the PSH working group, but the contract with the consultant team is in the finalization stage right now and will be headed to [Metro] Council for their review and approval. We expect the legislation to be filed [soon] for that contract. So we’re hoping to get the [planning process] launched after it goes through Council, in late September/early October.
This plan will be specifically for permanent supportive housing or will it include other low-income housing options?
It’s specific to permanent supportive housing. I was very involved in the development of the Unified Housing Strategy, and one of the reasons why we wanted to make sure there was an action included around permanent supportive housing is because we realized that this model warranted its own specific plan.
There are multiple kinds of pieces at play to be able to make permanent supportive housing work. And so, we wanted to make sure that as a city, we did have a plan specific to permit supportive housing that details what resources we would need to be able to advance this model. [We wanted a plan] that would be able to do a review of our existing PSH portfolio and give us a better sense of what’s working and what lessons learned we have from those existing projects that we can then take and hopefully advance this model across Nashville. And [we want] updated estimates on what is the level of permanent supportive housing is that we need for our community.
[It] has been really great to witness just how much our community has embraced the Unified Housing Strategy document and has been able to use it to mobilize resources for affordable housing initiatives. We saw historic investments in housing this current fiscal year from the Mayor’s Office and [Metro] Council.
Similarly, I’m hopeful that having a permanent supportive housing strategic plan will be something that our community can also take to mobilize resources and elevate this issue. There can be a lot of cooks in the kitchen [with] competing interests and priorities. And so it can be really helpful to have a plan elevating a policy area or a housing model that can help mobilize resources and attention around it.
We’ve been able to make some strides over the last few years, but we need a lot more permanent supportive housing to be able to meet the needs of our individuals experiencing homelessness here in Nashville.
What excites you about this work?
I take a lot of pride in being a public servant and giving back to my community. And again, housing has been an issue that I’ve always been personally drawn to. It excites me to be able to every day [get to] wake up and know that I’m spending my time on hopefully making Nashville a place that’s more affordable.
It’s a blessing to be able to do something that you really love. It’s not something that I think is everyone’s experience, and so I’ve just been fortunate that I get to use my skills and my expertise on something that I care about within the community that I also have grown to love over the last several years. That’s what excites me about being with Metro and working on housing issues day after day.