Nashville’s Eastpoint Neighborhood groundbreaking marks largest affordable housing project in Tennessee

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Nashville’s newest neighborhood is starting to take shape. The Fallon Company broke ground on the Eastpoint Neighborhood, which developers say is the largest affordable housing project and investment in Tennessee right now.

Mayor Freddie O’Connell says the mixed-use development is designed to benefit all families, accommodating incomes from $20,000 to $80,000 a year. In addition to housing, the development will include upgraded parks and green space, on-site childcare, and retail space.

“This is gonna be how we build Nashville’s next great neighborhood,” O’Connell said.

“We’ll have upgraded parks and green space, it will literally have on-site childcare here,” O’Connell said. “Basically all the ingredients that happen in a great neighborhood are going to be here.”

The development comes as many Nashville families struggle to make ends meet.

“They’re working jobs that are $10, $12 an hour jobs and they cannot afford basic living expenses,” Tony Turntine said.

Turntine and his family are success stories of UpRise Nashville’s free career training program. Through that experience, he has seen firsthand how getting to a better life requires studying, working, mentorship — and help with housing.

“The affordable housing that gives them an opportunity to come out of some of the really lower income neighborhoods they’ve been in and have better, quieter, more wholesome places to live,” Turntine said.

“If people can afford a better opportunity, we see everyone blossom from it. It’s a great day,” Al Brady with UpRise said.

Turntine says the tough choices Nashville families face are real.

“Whether I’m gonna pay the car out or whether I’m gonna get food for the kids,” Turntine said.

Now living and thriving in a new opportunity, Turntine has made it his mission to help others get there too.

“We’re living in a better neighborhood now — we actually just moved last weekend to a house twice the house of what we were in before,” Turntine said. “When you make different choices in life, that gives you different opportunities.”

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