State of Memphis Housing 2020 Report

Memphis is in the midst of a crisis which calls for unprecedented levels of collaboration and communication. To answer this call and to facilitate the hard but necessary conversations throughout the Memphis housing and community development field, the City of Memphis Division of Housing and Community Development (HCD) in partnership with Innovate Memphis, has put together the first housing report of its kind: 2020 State of Memphis Housing: Rising to Respond to Crisis.

The City has changed dramatically over the past 50 years, with an increased geography, persistent residential segregation, and a shift from ownership to rental in many neighborhoods.There are similarities and differences between the 2008 housing crisis and the current COVID-19 pandemic, but we can use lessons learned to identify successful interventions that will help with the future recovery.

This report used the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis as a lens to examine how Memphis can proactively and collaboratively respond to COVID housing impacts already underway and possibly on the horizon.Specifically we examined Housing Mortgage Act Disclosure data, Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Housing Price Index, US Postal Service Vacancy at the tract level, and a number of locally sourced property level datasets from 2000 to 2020.