Launching ‘Housing as a Public Right’

By Veronica Foster, Communications + Advocacy Manager

5 min read We flipped the script on PARK(ing) Day Nashville this year. Learn more about our theme, Housing as a Public Right, and find out how to get involved on September 16th, 2022. Deadline to sign up is August 1st, 2022.

What does PARK(ing) Day have to do with housing, you ask?

Why not, we say! PARK(ing) Day has been in Nashville since 2012—that means this is our 10th year organizing it—and we think that the public space conversation should not be talked about in a vacuum. We have had so many successes with #PARKingDayNash—Lower Broadway sidewalks have been expanded, more and more businesses have been interested in sidewalk cafés since the pandemic began, and a new parklet permit process in the works with Metro Council.

Now it is time to do what the Design Center does best, and educate the public about the ecosystem of our city, especially since we just updated our Guiding Principles for Civic Design to include a principle specifically about housing. Public space and housing are two of the most interconnected issues we have in Nashville right now, so creating a theme for PARK(ing) Day this year felt like a natural progression.

Park(ing) day 2022: Evaluating the Idea

[Photo By: Alejandro Ramirez, Nashville Scene]

We need our design community consulting with housing and homelessness experts to demonstrate creative solutions to the complex issues of housing affordability and homelessness in Nashville. Why now? Let’s backtrack with the facts. 2021 was the highest recorded deaths for our homeless community in Nashville; 194 lives were lost. There are a myriad of issues that contributed to this record number from resource access to urban design, but the primary concerns are that the housing affordability crisis is growing and the number of unhoused people in Nashville is growing. Our city is not building housing fast enough, and our transitional housing programs are minimal at best.

In February 2022, Senior Designer at EOA Architects, Lorraine Ensley, reached out to us requesting all of the resources that we have on affordable or transitional housing in Nashville. She also had this idea that we could somehow partner on a design challenge related to transitional housing in Nashville to empower skilled professionals to donate their time to such a critical issue.

When Lorraine and I met to discuss her ideas, the topic of PARK(ing) Day came up as a way that many design firms already engage in creative installations that double as public space advocacy. Why not push them a little bit outside their creative comfort zone, and guide their advocacy even deeper?

Amidst our planning, a new state law was passed that makes camping on public land illegal. Now, our homeless community has nowhere to go and they risk a felony charge, which would not only take away their voting rights, but also make it that much harder for them to find housing down the line. Public space became distinctly not public for all, and the homeless crisis became even more dire overnight.

This was on our minds in our planning stages, making it clear that whatever we decided to do was only the beginning of our housing advocacy efforts. We met with the team at EOA, concluded that PARK(ing) Day would be our first iteration of this partnership, finalized the theme “Housing as a Public Right”, and finally drafted a proposal to send to a few members of the Affordable Housing Task Force. The members helped us refine the language so that the idea was as clear as possible, and the deep work began!

Recruiting Housing and Homelessness Experts

The team curated a list of housing and homelessness experts in Nashville to start building upon the PARK(ing) Day theme. We explained the idea in brief, particularly outlining the history of PARK(ing) Day Nashville and how it is different this year. We wanted experts to know that the design community would be consulting with them in-person to have all the tools and resources they need to create a PARK(ing) Day installation under the theme.

People Loving Nashville staff, Nikki and Stephanie, chat with Jason Kocmar, of Gresham Smith, about their prompts

We explained that installations will be in a parallel parking spot for one day only in Downtown Nashville. Because the theme is so complex, we chose to direct the design community to consider how a specific prompt under that theme could be demonstrated in their parklet. We worked with our group of housing and homelessness experts to create 3 prompts each, offering a total of 39 different prompts that will all evolve into educational or design-solutions oriented parklet installations.

Since our housing and homelessness experts each have different foci and different ways of approaching what they do, all of the prompts are very unique. You can check out the prompts now!

Skyline Social was a hit!

On Thursday, July 21st, we hosted Skyline Social, our annual PARK(ing) Day launch event at Gresham Smith. During Skyline Social, design-build groups usually meet to select their parking spot for they installations on PARK(ing) Day, but this year, the groups selected their prompts instead. The prompts were released 7 days before selection day so interested design-build groups could create a shortlist of which prompts they were most interested in. All of the prompts will be automatically connected to a parking spot in Downtown Nashville.

After the traditional briefing presentation going over PARK(ing) Day rules and guidelines, the atmosphere was like fast-paced speed-dating as aspiring design-build groups quickly spoke with housing and homelessness experts and chose their prompts. It was not only exciting energy, but we saw really deep conversations unfolding. Because we made it very clear that prompts were first-come first-served, a lot of design-build groups met before the event to strategize what they were most interested in and spent a longer time speaking with a few choice experts. Skyline Social was required for any interested PARK(ing) Day builders in order to facilitate those conversations, but there are still a few prompts available for anyone interested in following up with the experts after they decide to participate.

Metro Planning Housing Division Director, Angela Hubbard, introduced new Golden Cone Awards categories this year—the Affordable Housing Taskforce’s Guiding Principles. Those Principles are 1) Racial Equity, 2) Innovation, 3) Connectivity + Accessibility, and 4) Resilience. Each of the parklet installations will be judged on these criteria by the housing and homelessness experts on PARK(ing) Day. The following week, we will invite our participants back to receive awards based on the results.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to have the design-build groups thinking creatively about such a complex array of issues, and we look forward to seeing their final installations on Friday, September 16th, 2022.

Gresham Smith customized their infamous block wall for us on Skyline Social, and we were thrilled!