by Brian Floyd
For many families in Knox County, the dream of homeownership feels further away today than it did just a few years ago. Rent has climbed drastically. Home prices remain high. Too many hardworking residents cannot find affordable housing. Rent in the Knoxville area increased by more than 60 percent between 2019 and 2024, while wages grew at less than half that pace. The affordability challenge is real. Local leaders are right to be concerned about it.
When housing costs rise this quickly, residents want action. Yet good intentions alone will not make housing more affordable. The Knox County Commission’s proposed ordinance restricting certain investors from purchasing more than 100 single-family rental homes is unlikely to lower rents or home prices because it doesn’t address the county’s underlying housing shortage.
Housing affordability is fundamentally a supply-and-demand issue. When more people want to live in a community than there are homes available, prices rise. That is what Knox County has experienced over the past several years. According to local housing data, Knox County faces a shortage of approximately 23,000 housing units. At the same time, the population of Knox County is expected to rise more than 15% by 2040. Without a significant increase in new housing, affordability pressures will persist regardless of the restrictions placed on individual buyers.
The proposed ordinance assumes that large investors are the primary reason families are struggling to purchase homes. The facts show otherwise. Investor purchases represent a relatively small share of the local market. Most single-family rental properties in Knox County are owned by small-scale landlords, who own less than ten properties, rather than large corporate entities. Many of these are local property owners who rent a home inherited from family members or who maintain a small investment property as part of their retirement savings. Restricting one category of buyer may be politically popular, but it will not create a single new home for a family looking to buy.
As one of the most heavily regulated sectors of the American economy, housing is subject to numerous layers of federal, state, and local regulations that play a key role in determining both cost and supply. Further government interference by the county will disrupt free market investment and ultimately restrict availability instead of lowering costs. Policies that discourage investment can reduce housing production, limit rental options, and leave residents with fewer choices.
The reality is that Knox County needs more housing of every kind. Knox County needs more starter homes for first-time buyers. Knox County needs more rental options for young professionals, working families, and seniors. Achieving those goals requires attracting investment and encouraging development, not building new regulatory barriers that discourage both.
Policymakers at every level of government are grappling with the same challenge to have more available housing for all income levels. The most effective solutions focus on increasing supply, encouraging construction, and removing barriers to building new homes. More government restrictions will have the opposite effect of what county commissioners are trying to do; it will disincentivize the building of new homes in the community.
Homeownership helps provide stability for families and communities. Owning a home remains one of the most important ways families build financial security and generational wealth. Every Knox County resident deserves the opportunity to pursue that goal. However, we cannot achieve this goal by overregulating ourselves out of the problem and treating private investment as the enemy. We will get there by encouraging smart growth, cutting red tape, protecting property rights, expanding housing supply, and ensuring that the next generation of Knox County families have more opportunities, not fewer.
The path forward is not more government control and regulations. It is more homes, more choices, and more opportunities for the community and its families.
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Brian Floyd serves as a board member of The Tennessee Conservatives Coalition.
