Alisha Haddock is the Senior Vice President and Director of Community and Economic Development at The Housing Fund, a CDFI (Community Development Financial Institution) private nonprofit that is dedicated to providing affordable housing options, financial education and resources to support homeownership and community development activities throughout Tennessee.
Specifically, The Housing Fund provides access to capital to for-profit and nonprofit developers who want to build affordable housing and offers programs to help individuals and families access affordable housing opportunities.
Haddock also serves as the co-pastor at Christian Journey Fellowship Church. She describes her ministry as being “centered around God’s people being a voice for the voiceless.”
“We focus on living out our ministry and our day-to-day lives,” Haddock said. “It really means we are not leaving anyone behind because of who God made them.
If her name sounds familiar, it may be because she has recently been in the news through her volunteer work as the chair of Metro’s Community Review Board where she strives to lead with integrity according to her beliefs.
You work as the Senior Vice President and Director of Community and Economic Development at The Housing Fund. In a nutshell, what does your day job entail?
I oversee a multi-million dollar commercial loan portfolio at The Housing Fund and essentially ensure that loans are booked appropriately and balanced monthly. I monitor loans for compliance and accuracy of documents. I promote The Housing Fund’s commercial loan products to a diverse array of potential nonprofit and for profit borrowers, community key organizations and agencies that develop affordable housing, or have affordable units included in their projects, or want to build commercial spaces that serve low- to moderate-income individuals and families.
That’s pretty much what my day job entails. But I do also develop new initiatives and implementation of the Housing Fund’s development loan products and related policies.
Prior to working at The Housing Fund, you ran the McGruder Family Resource Center in North Nashville. What are the most urgent needs you saw when working with families and where do you still see gaps that our community needs to focus on?
The most pressing need I saw when working with families was the need for affordable housing.
The McGruder Center sits in the heart of a historically Black community, North Nashville, which has a rich culture and community. But it had been severely underdeveloped, and little resources were put into the community.
The McGruder Center serves as a beacon of hope. When clients and neighbors come to the McGruder Center, they feel a level of comfort that allows them to express not only how they feel about the issues that affected them such as food insecurity, unemployment, lack of family support, adequate youth development, a safe place to go within the neighborhood, technology training, a lack of resources to start a small business — all of these issues we tried to address at the McGruder Center, and in my opinion, we addressed them.
But the issue of keeping people in their homes was probably the most challenging. We were hemorrhaging neighbors, we were seeing rampant displacement, skyrocketing rent, and purchase prices within the community were just soaring. So that’s actually what led me to pursue affordable housing full time.
You were appointed to the Community Oversight Board (COB) in October 2022 and are now serving as the chair of the Community Review Board (CRB), which was created after the COB was dismantled in response to a recent state law. Can you describe the main duties of the CRB and how they differ from the COB?
The main duties remain the same in terms of taking citizen complaints of allegations of police misconduct, making sure citizens’ voices are heard in matters of public safety, making policy recommendations to increase accountability and transparency within the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD), and really ensuring that Nashville is the fair and equitable place most of us want it to be.
The dismantling of the COB was a pretty hard blow as we investigated cases on the front end. As the CRB, we now review the investigations after MNPD has conducted its initial investigation of the complaints that we intake. We continue to receive complaints on a daily basis. That hasn’t changed. But the fabric and the essence of our work remain the same.
The COB was birthed out of a 2018 referendum that was voted by 134,371 people. That’s close to 60 percent of Nashville voters who voted in that November election for Amendment I. The community said that they wanted the Community Oversight Board. Needless to say, we were pretty upset when we were preempted by the state legislature. But some of the things the state legislature could not take away from us are the vigor, passion, and purpose, that was the COB had and the CRB still has, we still take the charge that Nashville gave us very seriously. We want to make sure that we have the best police department in the country which respects the dignity of all people in Nashville. That’s our goal.
And so as we recommend best practices and policies to the Police Department, which we hope that they implement, we will continue to strive to create this accountability and transparency model with the Police Department and the community. And the work isn’t easy.
Since we became the CRB, we’ve had some serious issues obtaining completed case files from MNPD, which by law we should be receiving. We’re currently working through that clear conflict, but we have been steadfast in keeping the charge of the people who voted for the Community Oversight Board in 2018 and leading with integrity while we do it.
As the CRB chair, what are your responsibilities?
I govern a seven-member board, including myself. We make recommendations on issues of police misconduct. One of my main jobs is to support the executive director in her position as she oversees the day-to-day operations of the office. I support her, I support other board members, and I really encourage community engagement because the people who are closest to issues of police misconduct bear the brunt of the actions of being over-policed and hold the solutions. The community’s voice is top of mind to me and I consider and center their voice in the decisions that I make.
It does not matter what neighborhood you come from, it does not matter what your income is, you deserve to feel safe within Nashville. And so, we are champions and advocates for public safety and the administration of justice.
How can people approach the CRB when they feel they have a complaint about police misconduct?
You can get in touch with the CRB via our website – Nashville Community Review Board (https://www.nashville.gov/departments/community-oversight/complaints-and-commendations)
We are on all of the social channels, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can “dm” us. You can give our office a call (615-880-1800 or on our 24-Hour Complaint Line, 615-880-1801).
We are trying to create a more equitable community through the Community Review Board. We want to hear from people. People can reach out and make sure that we hear what the issues are. It does not matter if you are housed, unhoused, or if you are an immigrant. We will ensure that your voice is heard no matter who you are or where you come from.
Biggest barrier right now to moving the CRB forward?
The biggest barrier is coming to an agreement on how the Community Review Board does its work and how we’re supported legally. The new law stated we can not have any outside counsel unless the Metro Law Department deemed it a conflict. And the issue is the Metro Law Department represents the Nashville Community Review Board and the Nashville Police Department and members of the CRB and cannot provide impartial legal advice. We have very different interpretations of the law, and in many instances MNPD has been advised by the Metro Law Department not to give our Executive Director information that the law states she can have access to.
Mayor Freddie O’Connell recently presented the CRB with a proposal for independent counsel. We are currently working through it to come to an agreement we can all be satisfied with, even community members.
I think that’s pretty important because we’ve had some high-profile cases. We just had a 61-page whistleblower complaint. It was [from] a retired police officer, and it had about close to 40 allegations of police misconduct, one including that two high-ranking officials worked with state legislators to overturn the will of the people. That [action] is what led to the abolishment of the Community Oversight Board.
We have all of these issues that we’re currently facing and actively dealing with and the support of the community is critical in how we move forward because if 60 percent of Nashville voters voted in favor of oversight that means that 60 percent of Nashville voters’ voices were silenced by the state law.
What we want to do is ensure not only that doesn’t happen again, but that we could also get our voice back. The whole political climate has turned issues like police accountability on its head because we were making really good progress and then it was rolled back. And so, the struggle continues. But I do think it will take all of us to ensure that police accountability and transparency is one of the main goals in Nashville.
You are a staunch affordable housing advocate. When you look at recent news, especially with the announcement of a Unified Housing Strategy and the launch of the Catalyst Fund, do you think the city will be able to fill the affordable housing needs in the next few years? If not, what else is needed?
I think the Unified Housing Strategy and the Catalyst Fund are great initiatives and steps in the right direction as it pertains to increasing the affordable housing stock for Nashvillians, some of whom are the most vulnerable residents, some are our working class, and they help make the city the successful Nashville that we know and love. There’s always more that we can do though. It will take local government, it will take the private sector, it will take the philanthropic community to solve a big problem like affordable housing.
Just think about it. It was predicted we need 55,000 new housing units by 2030, and 18,000 of those units need to be for people earning below 80 percent of the area median income, which currently equates to a family of four making around $85,000 or less. The Catalyst Fund is designed to currently help fund the preservation and creation of about 3,000 of those units over a 10-year span. We definitely needed those resources. The Unified Housing Strategy can help keep us focused on the needs of the community, goals that need to be met, hopefully provide creative strategies, put best practice and policy recommendations before us that ensure safe, healthy, and affordable housing is available for all Nashvillians.
But what I hope is that we continue to build on the momentum we’ve gained in terms of big new projects in Nashville, including affordable housing units. Those affordable units will be critical in big projects like the East Bank development and other big projects that are coming along with private developers, ensuring that affordable units are included willingly within some of these projects that we know will make a huge impact in Nashville.