Jennifer Carlat is the executive director of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Nashville with deep roots in Nashville and Middle Tennessee.
Carlat served for 11 years at Metro Nashville’s Planning Department, where she rose to the role of assistant director. Prior to joining ULI, she worked at the Nashville Chamber of Commerce as their chief policy officer. In that role, she led advocacy efforts on issues involving workforce development, transit, housing affordability, and fiscal policy.
“When I look back on my work, I have always been really intrigued with the built environment — buildings, streets, parks and where amenities are located — and how that built environment impacts our lives and the lives of our loved ones and our neighbors,” Carlat said.
How has your journey led you to your current position at the Urban Land Institute Nashville?
Not long after college, I moved to Nashville and worked in enrolling children and families into TennCare, which is Tennessee’s Medicaid program. At the time, we were really encouraging these families to make changes for the health of their children, [specifically] to eat healthier and to exercise more. But as I was in their neighborhoods, I could see that these neighbors lived in neighborhoods that did not have healthy food, did not have groceries, did not have sidewalks or safe park places. It felt really disingenuous to me that we were saying to parents and caregivers you should offer these things to your children but the neighborhoods that we had built did not allow that.
Ever since then, I just thought a lot about the built environment and its impact on our and our children’s future. Every job I’ve had since then, whether it was at the [Metro] Planning Department and then later at the Chamber of Commerce, they each have given me a platform and an opportunity to try to positively impact the build environment.
I guess the other thing is, I just love Nashville. I love this city. It’s offered so much to me, and so I want to be part of trying to make it better for all of our neighbors as well. So that’s how I think I came to be at the Urban Land Institute. It’s a new platform and new vehicle for me to get to work on the issues that matter most to me, which is changing the built environment for the benefit of Nashvillians.
You have been heading up ULI Nashville for nearly three years. What does ULI do?
ULI is a nonprofit, and we are a member-based group. We have about 1,000 members and all of our members are in roles related to commercial real estate. They are developers, brokers, architects, engineers, city planners, academics.
Our members want to build their skillset and their connections and want to grow their business, and they want to have a positive impact on Nashville and Middle Tennessee through their commercial real estate work.
At ULI Nashville, we do not lobby or endorse legislation. We do a lot of programming for our members that is exploring best practices, and how we can all learn together and elevate our work. We also create a lot of networking and connections around ideas along the way. We specifically work in affordability, mobility, and sustainable and resilient development.
What are some of the impacts ULI Nashville has on our local community?
Because ULI doesn’t lobby, we can play a unique role in being a sounding board and a thought partner for the departments in Metro Nashville government and for the Metro Council. We have experience with a councilmember or a department. [When they have] an idea on a new tool and a piece of legislation, a new program, a new policy, and they want to see how this would play out in commercial real estate, we can workshop that with them. Whether that’s a new tool around affordable housing or a new tool around how to incentivize sustainable development, our members can get together and say, “OK, on the ground, this is how that tool will play out and this is the effect it will have.”
We also hosted technical assistance panels — about three in the last five years. One on creating sustainable, resilient affordable housing; one on building for heat resilience, which is the biggest climate related challenge that Middle Tennessee faces; and then one on how to rebuild Third Avenue after the 2020 bombing.
Finally, we also celebrate models of good development and developments that bring the public and private sector together to benefit the community. One recent example, we did a tour of the redesigned and expanded Donelson Plaza development. We have a gorgeous new Donelson Branch Library that was created through a public-private partnership. Touring that, hearing about that, and sharing that model with our members, that’s the kind of impacts that we have.
Affordability is on top of every conversation whether it’s related to housing, transportation, health care, homelessness, etc. What are some of the projects you are currently involved in that focus on addressing the affordability crisis in Nashville?
There are three that come to mind.
ULI Nashville hosts an affordable working group that can be used by private sector members of ULI who develop affordable housing. It brings them together with leaders and the departments in Metro government that approve permits. We’ve been meeting for a year to discuss barriers to efficient, effective permitting and creation of affordable housing. And we’ve made some progress on streamlining permitting [reviews] to get these affordable housing developments through faster.
Earlier this year, we launched a Mobility Action Council. This is a group of ULI Nashville members that want to raise awareness and education about the transportation referendum that is on the ballot on Nov. 5. And while ULI does not endorse legislation or a referendum, we can provide education to our members on the Choose How You Move proposal. We’ve held three events thus far and have another one coming up in late October that are all discussing elements of the Choose How You Move ballot proposal.
And then finally, we’ve been in partnership with Think Tennessee, a statewide think tank, on work where they’ve done research on faith-based organizations that have land and potentially interest in using their land for affordable housing. So, we’ve been working in partnership with them to make our members available to faith-based leaders who are interested in exploring the use of their land for affordable housing. We’ve been part of a series of three meetings that occurred over the summer and continue that conversation as well.
What, in your opinion, can Nashville as a community do to ensure the working-class people can live in Davidson County rather than having to move out of the county because they cannot afford housing here?
I think through the work that I’ve been part of with ULI Nashville, I’ve really expanded my understanding of affordable housing to think of it more in terms of affordable living. For me, the affordable housing work that ULI is part of is critical. It’s something that will continue and our members and our strategic plan want to continue working on that. But the shift into also working in mobility and making our members aware of what their developments can do to support mobility, to support greater use of transit, to support walkability and bikeability, giving people more options for how they access jobs and education and amenities, that is also big.
I think the next frontier for our city is really to think about how affordability is impacted by the climate. So, thinking about how it’s our neighbors who have the least resources who are going to be most impacted by climate-related weather events. We’re seeing this play out in East Tennessee. And so, starting more of a conversation about how we are making housing both more affordable but also sustainable and resilient so that in the face of weather events, neighbors can bounce back and even bounce forward because they’ve got secure housing, and they continue to have access to jobs and education even when there are tragic weather events. I think that’s going to be kind of the next space that our community needs to work on in terms of affordability.
Especially with increasing extreme weather events that make people homeless, is homelessness coming up as an issue among your membership?
I’d say among our members, there is interest in how commercial real estate can be a partner in addressing homelessness. [One way] our members generally think about it is in terms of their individual support or their firm’s support for the providers addressing homelessness today. The other way they think about it is how to be part of the solution in offering more affordable housing and keeping affordable housing stable, so that people don’t lose their housing either because of something that happens to them as an individual or as part of a weather event.